Hi everybody, welcome to podcast Episode #5 of Season 2 of the Mobile Alabama Business Podcast. My name is Marcus Neto and I’m your host. This is a podcast about the people behind the business community here in the Mobile area. I know you have a lot of choices when it come to podcasts so I’d like to thank you for spending time with us today.
In this episode we had a chance to sit down with Jeff Jones. Some of you may remember Jeff from his days with Big Daddy Weave. He was their drummer for a number of years until deciding that he wanted to spend more time with his family and come off of the road. Jeff has taken an interesting route in that he has started an online business selling customized drumsticks. He also touches on how his business is expanding into the FBA or Fulfillment by Amazon arena which is super interesting to me. Jeff also talks to us about how he stats disciplined and how that helps to keep him motivated.
So let’s dive right in with Jeff Jones.
Transcript:
Marcus: Welcome to the podcast, Jeff.
Jeff: Hey, thanks for having me. It's my pleasure.
Marcus: Yeah. As I mentioned earlier I think we kind of run in similar circles, right? I'm excited to get to know you a little bit. I think you made contact with me through Facebook and we've never met before, but guys like Andy Cloninger and the like. Carl, is he a buddy as well? I don't know, he came into Andy's life after you or-
Jeff: It might have been after me. I was connected with Andy around 1997, so way, way back.
Marcus: Dog named David?
Jeff: Yeah, Dog Named David. That's right.
Marcus: Yeah, that's awesome. I think most people are going to know you from your background with a little band here locally that nobody's probably ever heard of, but why don't you tell us about Big Daddy Weave and your time there?
Jeff: Sure. Sure, so I went to the University of Mobile and I was playing with a band called Dog Named David with Andy Cloninger and we heard about this band that wanted to come and open for us and we're like, "What's the name of the band?" They said, "It's Big Daddy Weave and the Institution." We're like, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a minute. What kind of a band is this?" Well we heard they were really a good band and we're like, "Great. We'll let them open for us."
We do the performance, this is in 1998, and Big Daddy Weave opened for us and I remember thinking, "Man, I want to be in that band." They were incredible. A few months later their original drummer, he decided to go back home and they asked me to be in the band as the drummer. That was 1999 and I did that for just over thirteen years.
Marcus: Wow. That is cool. I would imagine the life of a musician doesn't lend itself well to, normally, it doesn't lend itself well to family life, being home, being involved in kids, and stuff like that. Is that the reason why you stepped out of that role?
Jeff: You would be correct.
Marcus: All right. Yeah.
Jeff: Yeah, I mean it's really interesting, we're downtown Mobile, I look outside Saenger Theatre, there's a couple of tour buses out there and when I see that it's both a great thing, but also it's a little painful because it's reminiscent of all the things that I missed. When I was in the band I was gone probably an average of about a hundred and fifty days a year. This was over a thirteen year period.
I've been to forty-nine states states, over fifteen-hundred concerts, and here I am getting to do what I love to do, I mean, this is what I've wanted to do since I was ten years old. Getting to travel the world, I've been to multiple countries. Getting to do, I mean I am getting to play the drums for a living. How many people get to play an instrument and have that be their sole source of income?
Marcus: Sure.
Jeff: But the problem was that came with a cost and that was missing dance recitals, birthdays, anniversaries, Valentine's days, weddings. I mean I was in a friend's wedding one time and it cost me fifteen-hundred dollars just to be in the wedding, because I had to hire a sub, pay for his flight, pay for my flight, and it was a big, massive ordeal. Those are the things that are not so glamorous.
I just kind of saw the writing on the wall and I said, "You know what, if I'm going to be the kind of dad I need to be, the husband, if I'm going to be able to be involved in my community and have that impact, then I'm going to have to come off the road," but at the same time, we can talk about this later, is my heart was really transitioning. It wasn't that I was giving up this huge dream and I'm going to be giving up playing the drums, it was like my focus it had already changed and so it was really a natural transition for me to leave.
Marcus: Right. Well and obviously you're not here because of your time on Big Daddy Weave, you're here because you've made that transition from full-time musician into the business world. I don't want to belittle, because I know there are aspects of running a business when you're a musician and negotiating contracts and stuff like that, but why don't you tell us about Custom Stix?
Jeff: Sure, absolutely. You talk about the aspect of running a business with a band, typically in the band you pay people to do that: your manager, your business manager, your booking agent and so you can truly be the person onstage, the creative, that's writing and doing those things. I guess it was probably eight or nine years ago I was going to lunch with a buddy of mine in town, he's a local real estate developer named Paul Powers and he told me, he said, "Man, you need to read this book." I'm like, "Okay, what is this?"
It was "Rich Dad Poor Dad" by Robert Kiyosaki and I read that book and it opened my mind and changed everything that I've done from that moment on. I began, I had a couple of inventions. I had an invention of a fan for musicians on stage, it was called My Biggest Fan. It was housed in a monitor speaker cabinet, so it looked like a speaker but it was really a fan. It had a foot switch. I kind of dabbled in somethings, but then I was also the merchandise manager for Big Daddy Weave. I handled all the bracelets and the CDs and Tee-shirts and I saw a band that we were playing a concert with, they had drumsticks with their faces on them and I thought that was the coolest thing I'd ever seen.
Long story short, I reached out, I got connected with the manufacturer and I told him, "Not only do we want to order these, but I think I can sell these drumsticks. I mean I really think that I can do something with it." I came up with this idea, threw up a website, and started selling to bands and that grew and grew. I had a goal of twenty-five clients my first year and I actually met that and exceed it to twenty-eight clients, and hat included bands like TobyMac, Casting Crowns, 3-11, some bands I worked with.
Then I had this big ah-ha moment and I thought why don't I make this available not in mass quantities, like five-hundred pair to be sold at the merch table, but what about small quantities where somebody can just order one pair and get their name printed on it and rock out to the Rock Band video game?" That's kind of where the website came about and things just progressed from there.
Marcus: No, that's really cool. I mean it sounds so simple, like, "Oh, well I knew this guy, he was doing this and so I just threw up a website." I mean obviously there's a lot more to it than that. I mean what were some of the lessons learned? What were some of the things that you encountered as you were kind of going down that path?
Jeff: Well probably the main thing I learned was I had lunch with my mentor and in Nashville. This guy's name is Dan Miller and if you've ever listened to the Dave Ramsey show, well Dave Ramsey, he talks about when somebody's broke and they can't pay their bills and they're doing everything, they cut out cable, they're delivering pizzas and it's like, hey what you really need to dig out of your hole, you need a bigger shovel and you need to get a different job. You need to check out my friend Dan Miller with "48 Days to the Work You Love." That's what Dave Ramsey would say.
I got connected with Dan Miller and we're driving around in Dan Miller's Mercedes-Benz and I'm telling him my story and what I want to do and he said, "Well Jeff," and he said, "That's what you need to do." He said, "You need to focus on the drumsticks. Quit trying to go out and do these other things." He goes, "It's right there in your backyard." Kind of the story of Acres of Diamonds. The guy went out looking for everything around the world only to find out that it was in his own backyard. I have this built in influence with all these other bands. I mean here I was the drummer of Big Daddy Weave, I had a natural connection, so I threw up a simple WordPress website.
I did it myself. It was pretty bad, but then when I wanted to kick things into gear I had to really make an investment, so I connected with a good friend here in town. He built a website. It cost me five-thousand dollars for this website that would automate the personalization of the drumsticks. This was a huge investment for me because I was growing the business without taking out a loan. I mean I was going to use the money I made from the drumstick business and sow it back in. We launched the website and I had a couple what I like to call sympathy buys from family and friends, but then we were featured, Big Daddy Weave was featured on the Rick and Bubba Show based in Birmingham. Those guys have a massive audience and so I-
Marcus: Rick and who?
Jeff: Rick and Bubba.
Marcus: Yeah. Yeah, I think everybody's heard of that show. Yeah, that's cool.
Jeff: The two sexiest fat men alive, that's how they describe themselves. We were on there and I had thought, I had come up with this idea to create some Rick and Bubba drumsticks, so we're being interviewed on the air and I give them the sticks and I slide the website to the producer and he sees it and he's like, "I got you covered." He mentioned my website three times on the air over the course of an hour and I had about sixty orders in one day. That moment alone, that set the stage and success for my business. Everything else kind of trickled. I started developing the search engine optimization, getting some ads in some major websites and magazines and features locally on the news. Then it grew and grew and grew and that's kind of how it happened.
Marcus: Yeah, we were talking beforehand and I had mentioned to you that I think it's very interesting because you're taking a different route than most people in this area would think, right? I live kind of in the space that you're operating and that we often times will work with small startups and stuff like that, that are not necessarily doing what you're doing, but they're creating a business and it may just be a very small like one person or a small team of people that are doing it. I don't know that that idea hasn't, at least I've not run across it here in the Mobile area so much, but you were mentioning that not only are you doing this but you're also running into other people that are even doing the Amazon program where you can sell your goods there and stuff. Why don't you talk a little about that?
Jeff: Exactly I came to the realization of a business principle, it hit me between the eyes, a lot of times we focus on, "Okay, we've got to build this thing, and then we've got to get people to come to it. We've got to buy advertising and do all these things" and then it hit me, wait a minute-
Marcus: Or you can just go to them.
Jeff: Absolutely, you can go where the people are and you know where the people are, they're on Amazon and so I connected with a group online of other Amazon sellers. At this point I'd already been selling on Amazon the last two years, couple sales a week, nothing big, and I had some nice reviews and that sort of thing, but I connected with this guy locally who had over fifteen-thousand individual listings on Amazon. That's crazy to conceive, but he has three warehouses and he has a full-time employee. He even has a machine that cleans DVDs and CDs all in his network. He's doing this and I'm thinking, wait a minute, why haven't I heard of you? I mean this is right here in Mobile.
We connected and he's helped me to get established with Amazon's FBA program and that stands for Fulfillment by Amazon. Anytime you go on Amazon and you see that little badge that says, "Amazon Prime," well that actually means that item, in most cases, is actually held at an Amazon facility, in an Amazon warehouse, so it's not even being touched by the manufacturer. I thought that's the key, because how many times have you bought something on Amazon and had that purchase be influenced by whether or not it was associated with Amazon Prime?
Marcus: Absolutely, I mean I think we were mentioning when I got Prime three or four years ago, there was no going back. I mean it's not just for books, I mean I literally just had an inversion table sent to the office, got it in two days. It was an inexpensive price. I didn't have to look and see who even had inversion tables locally and whether they were priced competitively or anything like that. Honestly it was an impulse buy. I was in pain, I thought, well I'm paying a hundred dollars, or maybe not that much, to go to a chiropractor, and I'll still go to a chiropractor, but if this can alleviate some of the pain then I'm going to go ahead and do it.
Prime is a very powerful thing and I don't think people realize just how powerful the search engine of Amazon is. I've heard it, in our space we sometimes hear rumblings, but Google's the number one search engine. Bing isn't the number two search engine. Amazon's search is the number two search engine. You're right to be going down that path, because if you want people to find you, there's certainly no better place to be. How are you kind of going into that realm? I know that's not easy, especially when you think of somebody that's got fifteen-thousand products. How are you kind of diving into that?
Jeff: Well when I first started looking into Amazon Prime and understanding, hey, I've really got to make a strong presence here, well there's this thing out there on the internets called private label. What most people don't understand is the majority of products available today are actually private label. I talked about my invention earlier. I created this fan and I met with the folks at Lasko Fans up in Pennsylvania. I actually met with a Lasko relative, so it was kind of cool to have that. It's like the entrepreneur's dream to have this private meeting with Mr. Lasko himself, but that product is sold in Walmart under the name Stanley.
Well Stanley's a big brand in the tools and in that industry, but they don't make fans, so they're private labeling that and it's coming from Lasko. Now I don't know if Lasko manufactures it. They might get it from China, who knows, but the point is they're selling the item under their brand. For me, I thought about, how can I do that with my brand? The actual umbrella name of my company is Blown Away Innovations. What can I bring under that name?
Marcus: That's too clever. Blown Away Innovations.
Jeff: Blown Away Innovations. There you go. I did it in a very generic term so that it can encompass many products. It's not like I called it a drumstick company, because then I couldn't sell something related to another industry. I thought how can I develop my own private label? I've reached out through a company called Alibaba and they are, I guess it's based in China, but they're actually bigger than Amazon, if you can imagine that. They're for wholesalers, manufacturers, and so I've ordered some products.
I'm bringing them into my house now. I've got a miniature drumstick keychain. I've a drumstick bag. I've go a drum key. I'm sourcing those, getting the samples in-house and then once I've established that this is the route I want to take, then I'm going to order a minimum quantity, probably five-hundred units, then bring it in and so now I've got four items. I've got the drumstick keychain, I've got the drum key, I've got the drumstick bag and then I've got the combo pack where I put all three together. All of that sold under the umbrella of Blown Away Innovations and then I can ship it all to Amazon Prime and then I essentially do nothing.
Marcus: Right. I mean this whole realm just kind of blows me away, because there's a home, and we were talking about this earlier, Pat Flynn did a whole podcast with some guys that are really just kind of killing it and you knew the name. Tell me the name again, because I can't remember it.
Jeff: I believe his name is-
Marcus: Now you can't remember it.
Jeff: Oh, I can't remember it now.
Marcus: That's perfect. Anyway, if you want ping me and I'll send you a link to the show that I'm thinking of, but they talk about the home system, so there's even like SEO within Amazon's search engine. There's ways of ... If you get a couple of initial reviews sometimes that means that you'll rank higher and then there's the feeding off of, like if you have one product and then you've got other products from that same vendor, there's the feeding off of each other.
Jeff: The recommended items.
Marcus: Yeah, recommended items and stuff like that and so it's really interesting to me, because like I don't have any products, but that whole realm of having like a physical good, having somebody else basically handle all of the fulfillment for those physical goods, that just blows me away. I mean that's like a game changer for most people.
Jeff: It is and what I would say is the reason that I'm going down this route and I believe the reason that most people do, it's so the entrepreneur, the small business owner, is then allowed to do what they're supposed to do. For me that is not to be up in my office handling tape and boxes and my enVista shipping program and going to the post office. I mean I'm on a first name basis with those folks, you know?
That's not me using my time wisely, that should be handled by someone else so that then me, the entrepreneur, the business owner, can then function in the realm that I need to be, and that is creating ideas, that is facilitating things, putting people together and coming up with the big vision. Now I'm not spreading myself too thin doing all those other things that can be outsourced and so for me that's what it's about.
Marcus: Well and the creativeness that you have in that realm too, and correct me if I'm wrong, but if you find something on Alibaba, it's not just purchasing from Alibaba and then ... I mean there is some element of that, you can just purchase and then repackage and sell on Amazon, but you're also creating a relationship with the manufacturer that's actually generating those things in China and you can actually make suggested changes to those items.
Jeff: Absolutely.
Marcus: It's really giving you a starting point to have a dialog with somebody over a widget. Like, okay, I don't necessarily like this widget the way it is, but if you just make this tweak and this tweak, then it becomes my mine and nobody else can get it or you can't get that from anybody else. Not just necessarily, no let's make it digital. How would you get them started down the path of having a product, selling it in the digital marketplace? Would it be to put up a website, WordPress website? Would you use some other tool? Where would you find help if you needed help? You mentioned oDesk earlier. How would you kind of guide them in that process?
Jeff: Well the first thing that I would say is you need to kind of understand the market. Don't try and sell something to someone that's not buying. I would say go and find where people already are, find what they're doing, their buying habits, and then be a part of that and I think that education will let you know, it'll let you understand the market, what people want. Then, also, this is key, and now there are some people who disagree with this, but you kind of need to be in that world. For me, if I were to sell lawn equipment, then there's not a direct connection.
For me I'm selling products related to the music industry, to drumming, to all of those things and that's my world, so if I get a customer service email back and they're asking about something, I don't even have to think about it. I don't have to consult anyone. I know it because I've been playing drums for thirty years. I think that's important, to find a direct connection with what you're selling, because in the beginning it's exciting, but after the honeymoon phase wears off you're going to be answering customer service emails and doing these details and you better enjoy it, because otherwise it's going to be a thorn in your flesh.
Marcus: Well, and correct me if I'm wrong too, but I mean you even alluded to this earlier, that having that platform also made things a little bit easier to kind of kick start and I know that there are guys like Michael Hyatt and others that are talking about the whole idea of building a platform is one of the more important things that you can do, because then when you do end up going into whatever product it is that you're looking to sell you have an audience that is paying attention, of like mind, right?
Jeff: Exactly, they already are there, so for you to present a product to them this is not a foreign thing, this is not something that's disruptive to their life. They're already in sync with you.
Marcus: Yeah, so what else? What would you say to that twenty-something year old? Maybe a struggling musician that's thinking I really need to find some way of getting out of this. I want to stay in the music realm, a 9:00 to 5:00 desk job just isn't for me, but I've got some really great ideas. How do I get started?
Jeff: I think first of all the most important thing that you can do above all things, when it comes to business, is make sure that you're able to understand the attitude with money. So many people have this scarcity mentality, as opposed to an abundance mentality, and that's what I believe holds a lot of business owners back, is they're not able to embrace the idea of success and growth, that they're almost afraid of it. Once you can understand this abundance mentality, and this is key, is don't think that if you make a million dollars then that's taking a million dollars from somebody else.
I mean the world is a huge place and so once you can get past that, embrace that mentality, then you can start to put together this puzzle. Then ask yourself, "What does success look like?" A lot of people have a hard time defining success. We've got these different voices we're listening to and success is this car or this or whatever, but truly, for me, the way I define success is closing your eyes at night, exhausted in the bed and you're looking up and you're thinking, man, today I did exactly what I was supposed to do and I made a difference in the world.
Marcus: Yeah, that's really-
Jeff: You've heard people talk about having the end goal in mind and knowing what your why is, all those things are important, because otherwise you're kind of just treading water, but if you don't what you're aiming at you will certainly, like Zig Ziglar says, you'll never hit it.
Marcus: Right, it's important to have goals. I mean you speak at schools and stuff, is that correct?
Jeff: That's correct.
Marcus: You have a message and I think with your background you would be more accepted by students then most.
Jeff: Sometimes. Yeah.
Marcus: I just think it's cool. I mean you definitely have a message that I think is worthy of students hearing and I'm hoping that whatever exposure we might get with this podcast that people, if there's somebody involved in the school systems here locally that they'll pull you in more, because I just think there is something very important that students need to hear. It's not just about going to college and coming out and having the 9:00 to 5:00, there's an importance in knowing what you're called to do and there's a satisfaction in, like you were mentioning, at the end of the day I'm just completely exhausted but I did it and this is something that I own and I know that it was something that I was created to do, right?
Jeff: Totally.
Marcus: You mentioned and you brought some visuals, and I don't know that we'll be able to display these, but you mentioned or you brought these visuals in and one of them is kind of like what you're, and it's not necessarily a mood board, that's not what I want to call it, but it's a board, an inspiration board, right?
Jeff: Sure, like a vision board.
Marcus: Vision board, something that you keep in front of you to kind of drive you. Is that something that you visit every day? Is that something that you keep in front of you as a reminder?
Jeff: Every day that I can. I'm a creature of extreme habit, it probably goes with being a little OCD, but every day if I can. I like to get up at a certain time and part of my ritual is to sit down in front of this board and go over it. I mean I literally look at every picture and read every caption that I've got and that is a reminder as to why I'm doing what I'm doing, why did I leave the band, what do I have this business, why do I do all of these things? Well it's because of this picture and then it also spurs me on to be successful.
Hey, I've got a picture of a family on a Disney vacation. Well that is one of the goals I have this year, my family and I are going to go to Disney, we're going to get to do that. Throughout the day I can reflect on that and go, "Hey, this is why I'm not sitting in front of the television or in front of Netflix, like all home-based entrepreneurs can do, but the reason I'm not doing it is because, hey, we're going to Disney World this year and it's part of a big plan.
Marcus: No, it's cool. You mentioned, I've gotten away from asking this question, because I found, surprisingly, that a lot of entrepreneurs don't have, they don't have the same rituals like ... I mean I do, I wake up every day pretty much at the same time, I go to the gym, or I have breakfast, I get the boys up and to school, I go to the gym. I'm at work pretty much the same time every day and also my day's typically hold the same kinds of things in them, it may not be the exact same. You mentioned having kind of a ... What does that ritual look like for you in the morning? I mean what time do you get up?
Jeff: Sure.
Marcus: Coffee or iPhone-
Jeff: Absolutely.
Marcus: Go for a jog, go to the gym? What does that look like?
Jeff: Well it all starts with going to bed at night. I have to paint to a short picture, is that when I was in the band we would typically go to sleep around 1am to 1:30am on our tour bus and then of course we go to sleep and the driver drives through the night and we get up the next morning at 10am, we mosey into the catering, that was my life. For me to come home what I realized was all the people that I really aspired to, I looked at, I'm like, "Man I really want the things that that person has in their life," almost every person they get up at the crack of dawn. I had this huge struggle and I had a hard time getting up, so I started going to bed earlier and that was key. I usually get up during the school year at 4:45am.
Marcus: Wow. Okay.
Jeff: I know it's crazy, but wife is a teacher and so she has to get up 5:45 and we get our kids up and so if I want to have any me time then I've got to get up early. I get up, I go upstairs, grab my coffee, one cup a day, that's it, and I have my devotion time, I have my prayer time, I'm reading, I'm listening, I'm going over my like mantra, and then I go downstairs. I wake the girls up, I make their lunches, I make their breakfast, I get them out the door and then change into my gym clothes, I get on my bike and I usually go for about a five mile bike ride or a one to a one and a half mile run. I try to alternate every other day. Then I, yeah, shower, get ready for the day and I head up to the old office about 9am. That's pretty much my morning ritual.
Marcus: No, it's really cool. I mean I'm a creature of habit, so I don't like deviating from my schedule either. I don't know, that's probably not a very good thing to admit.
Jeff: Well I think it's okay in some ways, because being an entrepreneur, there are a lot of things that we can't control, but one thing we can control is our little morning ritual and that gives us this foundation that then we build our whole day upon.
Marcus: Yeah.
Jeff: Hey, I'm cool with that.
Marcus: No and I keep going back, like I'm having flashbacks of like Oprah, and I know that seems like a really weird thing, but when I was younger, like in my thirties, bad joke, but anyway when I was younger I would occasionally watch Oprah and I remember there was this one episode where she was talking about, and it's typically a thing that mothers have, where they spend all their lives serving others, serving others, serving others and they get to the end and they're just like, "What about me? When I'm going to get my time?"
It was about that time where I realized now I've really got to carve some time out of my day somewhere that's going to be for me. Your time is at 4:45, mine usually starts at 7:30 or 7:45, when I hit the gym and I'm with my small group of guys that we've been working out together for a number of years and we just, it's therapy for us. I think that's important, because, like you said, there's so much that we can't control, to be able to control one thing about my day and how that goes is key. What are the last two books that you've read that you found helpful or inspiring or taken like a little nugget away from?
Jeff: Sure. "Miracle Morning," by Hal Elrod, that book was a game changer for me, because it really helped me understand the power of having that miracle morning and that's where he talks about the ritual and the consistency. That would be a big thing for me. Another book that was a game changer for me, a local author, Andy Andrews ... I know Sandy Stimpson and Andy are good friends and Andy has several books, but one in particular called the "Noticer," where Andy tells the story about meeting this guy when he lived under a bridge and he's kind of this wise old man, he imparts wisdom. Andy tells this story through the eyes of multiple people: a middle aged, an older woman, all these different areas of life. That book really helped me as well.
Marcus: No, that's cool. What was it about that? Was it just kind of the relating to the story or what was it about that that-
Jeff: I think more than anything was it helped me change my perspective and that's what Andy always talks about. It's about perspective and how you look at things. All of these people, they had challenging circumstances. Some of them were in really extreme, difficult situations, but it really was about how you looked at life and how you reacted or responded once you were in those circumstances. It really comes down to attitude and what you make of life.
Marcus: Wow, that's really powerful. What do you like to do in your free time?
Jeff: Free time?
Marcus: I know we both kind of laugh and smirk when we say that, but do you have any hobbies or anything?
Jeff: Yeah, without sounding too much of a Debbie Downer, I was gone so much from my family that, I've been home now for about three and a half years, that it seems that all I can do is spend time with my family. I mean I was gone for so long that it's almost like I'm continually playing makeup and so for me I love taking the girls down on a Saturday to downtown Mobile and we'll just pick something to go and do and we love it. We went to the different museums, Fort Conde.
We've walked on Water Street, all these different things, the GulfQuest Museum, but I love doing that. A lot of that comes back to the fact that I've traveled so much, I always take advantage of the downtown areas wherever we went. I kind of like to do that. Then of course I'm your movie guy. I love going to movies. I don't care what is, but you have to include popcorn and Coke. I cannot separate those two items-
Marcus: That's too funny. It's the experience.
Jeff: Absolutely.
Marcus: Yeah, absolutely the experience.
Jeff: That's it.
Marcus: It's interesting that you're talking about rediscovering downtown, because there is just so much going on down here. Where can people find you?
Jeff: Well a couple of places. JeffJones.org. You can go there, I've got all the details about public speaking that I do. You can connected with me there. I'm at Twitter @Jeffdrummer, but then if you want to see a little bit about the drumsticks and what I do, it's customstix.com, that's stix with an X. That'll kind of give an overview of the different things we do.
Marcus: And Facebook?
Jeff: Facebook, I believe it's Jeff ... I can't remember. I think it's Jeff Jones Drummer.
Marcus: I think, yeah, if they just search for Jeff Jones I think your page comes up.
Jeff: Jeff Jones. Mobile, Alabama.
Marcus: That's what I did yesterday. I mean I just encourage like if you're involved in the school system here locally I think Jeff would be a really great guy, especially with his background, to have him come in and speak. I think it's just phenomenal. It would be phenomenal to get you involved in that more. I want to thank you again for coming on the podcast. To wrap up, any final thoughts or comments you'd like to share?
Jeff: If I could just wrap up one thing and share with anyone that's an entrepreneur that wants to start, the greatest thing that I ever learned was what I was not good at. Once I learned what I was not good at then I stopped trying to perfect that and then I looked to other people that extreme strengths in the areas where I had deficiencies and I connected and that's how I started having a little peace in my life. I felt like I could have a little bit of success by me not trying to be Superman and do everything, but allow other people to be powerful forces in my life, helping me really fulfill the vision that I believe I was created to fulfill.
Marcus: Right and as a musician like if you're a really great drummer do you try to become really good at playing guitar?
Jeff: Nope.
Marcus: No.
Jeff: Nope.
Marcus: You just get really awesome at the drums.
Jeff: That's right.
Marcus: Jeff, I appreciate your willingness to sit with me and share your journey as a business owner and entrepreneur. It was great talking with you, man.
Jeff: Hey, thanks, Marcus. My pleasure.
