Advice for growing a thriving brand

THE ENTREPRENEUR’S RADIO SHOW

Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs that Grow Your Business

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Episode 120: Jeff Staple

Advice For Growing A Thriving Brand

In this episode, Travis speaks to successful entrepreneur Jeff Staple. Jeff is a both a successful

business owner and a fashion icon, and has built his fashion business from the ground up.

Today, he has established his brand worldwide and has collaborated with a number of well-

known brands and large companies to create a brand that is highly recognized and coveted by

the masses.

Jeff and Travis talked about various concepts and shared ideas that would benefit

entrepreneurs. Jeff gave his thoughts on how fame and notoriety is a by-product of your hard

work. He also shared his pieces of advice in building a successful business, which is trusting

your instincts, working hard and delivering on what you promised, and making sure you’re

legally covered. These and so much more are what are in store in this episode of The

Entrepreneur’s Radio Show.

TRAVIS: Hey, it's Travis Lane Jenkins, welcome to episode 120 of the Entrepreneur's Radio

Show, a production of rockstarentrepreneurnetwork.com, where each and every week I'm going

to connect you with a rock star entrepreneurs that explain their journey to success and what's

been the key principles to finding that high level of success as an entrepreneur. So that you can

see that successful people are just every day people that stayed committed to taking constant,

focused action each and every day. So today I'm going to connect you with Jeff Staple who has

built a very impressive and successful business and brand. Although before we get started I

want to say thank you to Vernon Lesser. Actually he used Vernonlesser78. Vernon, thanks for

leaving a comment over on Stitcher he gave us a 5 out of 5 stars, with a title of Can't Miss

Radio. Vernon, thanks for the great feedback my friend, I'm glad you're enjoying the show.

Vernon also went on to say that the podcast keeps him in the right mental state of mind each

week. Vernon I really appreciate you taking the time to write the review and love the feedback,

so thank you my friend. Just in case you don't know, writing a review really helps us reach more

entrepreneurs just like yourself so if you have the time and you do find value in the show I'd

appreciate it if you'd go ahead and leave us a review and just tell me how we're doing. And of

course, I'll thank you personally on air.

One last thing before we get started remember you can take the interviews with you on the go

through iTunes, Android, or Stitcher. Just go to rockstarentrepreneurnetwork.com, there's

buttons right there on the menu bar, click on them it'll take you directly to the shows rather than

http://rockstarentrepreneurnetwork.com/





having to look them up on whichever platform. Now that we've got that out of the way let's go

ahead and get down to business, what do you say? Without further ado, welcome to the show

Jeff.

JEFF: Thank you very much. Hello, how are you?

TRAVIS: Excellent. Excited that you come and hung out with us for a little while, I've got some

questions from you. Although I'd love to hear kind of the back-story of how you got things going.

Do you mind sharing that story with me?

JEFF: Sure. Basically what we do, Staple design does three main things if I can put in the

bucket. We're first a men's wear collection called Staple Pigeon. Pigeon being our icon and the

logo. And that's a men's wear collection that deals mostly with young men's contemporary, it's

sold all over the world in better boutiques and shops, as well as some large stores like in Urban

Outfitters, and American Rag, and Karmaloop, and things like that. And Staples also a creative

agency, so we also do design work and creative direction, marketing, ideation for laundry list of

clients from all over the world. And one thing that we do is we operate a retail business called

Reed Space, and that is a lifestyle, multi-brand boutique shop that also doubles as an art

gallery. And with Reed Space we have two locations in New York. We have Tokyo, and we

have Singapore, and we are looking to expand that within America in the coming year. So those

are the three things that I founded. I'm the founder of all three of those things. And between all

of them there's-- I treat them quite separately but essentially I sort of act as founder and creative

director of all of them. And that was the set-up for your question.

TRAVIS: Right.

JEFF: But I started it actually while I was attending Parsons School of Design. And the first

thing that happened was the clothing, so in the form of the t-shirt which pretty anybody can learn

how to print a t-shirt. And I was hand silk screening t-shirts out of Parsons School of Design

somewhat guerilla illegal style because the silk screen lab in Parsons didn't allow you to print on

shirts. It was a paper silkscreen lab and me and a buddy would sneak in at night, we'd sort of

leave the window open and we would sneak in the through the window with a pillowcase full of t-

shirts. And we would just make our own little sweatshop all through the night printing t-shirts

using the school's money and finances.

TRAVIS: Right. So how do you build successful businesses from there? One thing that jumps

out at me is you gave yourself permission, and this is terrible simple and a lot of people never




do this. I did it and I have a strong sense that you did it too. You just gave yourself permission to

do it, right?

JEFF: Yeah. I'm not a lawbreaker. I wouldn't even really call myself a rebel. But what I really

hate is when you tell me no and then when I say why you say just because. I don't accept just

because. If you have a valid reason why I can't do that that's fine, I'm a law-abiding citizen. But if

there's just some stupid archaic reason whatever can't happen then I'm down to be a change

agent for that. So, on this particular instance they just said no, the teacher said no, I said why,

and she was like just 'coz you can't. And I was like, "All right, well, I'm going to show you that I

can." I had no intention of starting a business actually. It was really an expression of art. I just

love the idea of expressing an idea using a t-shirt as the canvass for that. And they started

selling on their own. I would just walk in to a store and the store I walk into would place a 12-

shirt order. And 12 became 24, and 24 became 36. And I just kept snowballing that same

concept into larger and larger things. And before I knew it I had a business. But it wasn't my

intention to start a fashion label at all.

TRAVIS: So your sense of style and sense of art you think maybe is something that initially hit a

cord with other people, and from that you grew a business, is that fair?

JEFF: Yeah, I guess that's fair. I don't want to say I had an eye or whatever. I guess because I

was a designer and I was taking design classes I did okay, and I could compose an image fairly

well and I could layout some type. But I don't think by any means that my actual designs were

groundbreakingly amazing. I think there's better designers out there in the world than me for

sure. I just think I touched on some ideas that weren't really being touched on. Executed them in

a halfway decent manner that was pleasing to the eye, and sold them. And that was it. I'm not a

Picasso, you know what I mean. I just think that I have the ability to sort of see what's missing in

the market and what people might be yearning for next. And then jumping on that with a creative

eye.

TRAVIS: Yeah, and I don't want to oversell it, but I think you're underselling one part of who you

are is-- creativity is one thing, but then a lot of times people don't do anything with it. And so,

when you pair creativity with action, especially when you combine that with a strategy some

pretty cool things start happening even if you're not the Picasso, right? Picasso wasn't Picasso

initially. It's just something he grew into, right?

JEFF: Yeah, totally. You're right. Picasso's got a best friend who was better than Picasso but

couldn't get off the coach.




TRAVIS: Right.

JEFF: And we don't know that guy's name now.

TRAVIS: Yeah, exactly. And so, as a young person myself in business I used to think that

people like Picasso was an anointment. Like god just somehow said "You're going to be

special." And as I grew older and as I started going through the trials and tribulations of life, and

figuring things out I really realized that Picasso's are developed. You develop into that over time

through refinement and through a lot of silly mistakes, and then getting up and trying again. And

constantly moving forward. So take me down that path. You've obviously got to become a pretty

savvy entrepreneur when you start setting up creativity, and marketing, and all these other

things for other people, and then you can create multiple businesses as well. How did you

develop those skill sets? How did that story unfold?

JEFF: First off, I want to agree with you 1,000% on that sentiment about a lot of people thinking

that being a Picasso is just something that's bestowed upon you, like someone just came and

gave it to you as a gift. I completely agree with you. And I also want to add that I think in this day

and age of social media and "millennials" in the internet I think it's worsened, that sentiment has

been made worse by the internet and social media because now young people-- When they

look at Instagram, and Twitter, and Facebook all they see are the successes. No one's

Instagramming their struggle. No one's Instagramming their overdue credit card bill and back

rent.

TRAVIS: Right.

JEFF: You only Instagram popping bottles in the club, hanging out with a cute girl, stacks of

money, I bought this new car, that's what people Instagram. So then, when young people look

at that they're like, "Well hell, I never heard of this guy last year and this year he's got a Ferrari.

This must be easy." And then they go out there without the proper skills, without the proper

experience and knowledge, and then they fall flat on their face, get disheartened, and then give

up. So they don't know that it's like a honed skill like you were saying it is. So I completely agree

with you on that.

TRAVIS: Yeah. And also, they start seeking fame and notoriety for the sake of fame and

notoriety, when really fame and notoriety is a byproduct of what you produce on a regular basis.

JEFF: Yeah, they don't want to do the hard work part, they just want the fame part.




TRAVIS: Exactly.

JEFF: So, to go back to your question about how I learned and developed it. It was really

through constant trial and error, and like so many mistakes. Those days when I was breaking

into the silkscreen lab that was 18 years ago. So, I've just gone through 18 years worth of like

screw ups and mistakes. And I'm a double dropout. I dropped out of NYU with a journalism

major, and then I dropped out of Parsons with a design major. So I'm a double dropout, didn't

graduate, no degree, didn't go to business school, never took a vocational class. So anything

that I learned in terms of how to operate a business I-- in retrospect full heartedly did it myself

because I couldn't pay anyone to help me so I just had to do it myself. And of course I would do

it wrong, it helped. People take econ for 8 years and they still do it wrong, how am I going to get

it right? So, I would do it, mess up, learn, but I think it's really important to do that because then

later on when I started to hire people to do the work I could at least be at checks and balances

for them to be like-- I know a little bit about how this works so at least you can pull it all over my

eye completely. I have some inner working of it. So, it was really helpful I think.

TRAVIS: Yeah, I completely agree with you. But it's useful to hold every position in the company

for some period of time.

JEFF: Yeah. I think there's a fine balance between-- I think no matter high of a CEO you get

and how high level I should say, you should always know what day is garbage pick-up in your

company. You should always know how to tie a garbage bag, right?

TRAVIS: Right.

JEFF: But at that same token I think in order for our business to grow, one piece I had to

develop and learn is delegation. And if you don't delegate properly I think you can stop running

your own company. You can literally suffocate your company by not delegating.

TRAVIS: Right. I completely agree with you. So, 17, 18 years of this constant refinement

process. How many years into it before things really took off and you started reaching a level of

pretty decent success. I know success is relative for everybody, but at what point did this whole

venture start taking flight and you're thinking, "I've got a future in this."

JEFF: It's interesting that you say success is different for everybody because I can honestly tell

you I still don't think I've made it. Like I haven't crossed any finished line or goal line by any

means. I think probably in '97 was when I was able to stop doing side jobs and do stable full-

time. So there was that one point where I had four jobs at the same time while starting Staple.




And it was in '97 that I finally stopped all the other jobs and just did Staple full-time. So that was

obviously a huge risk/stake in the sand of the company because I was fully invested in it from

the time standpoint now. And from that day 'till now I've just been-- I often equate it to like a guy

who's trying to make a diamond out of coal and how much-- You just sit there with fine grit

sandpaper and you just keeping rubbing at this piece of coal until it gets shinier, and shinier,

and shinier. That's what I've been doing for the past 18 years is just constantly trying to buff out

this piece of coal that I found and turn it into something pretty. And that's just what I've been

concentrating on. So, it's that type of progress that I've been honing on, just trying to sort of fine-

tune my craft really.

TRAVIS: Yeah, and I also think that the reason why it's kind of hard to say, "I made it when XYZ

happen is what impresses us or your goals change. It's a moving target, right? So, for the first 5

years of being in business I wanted to reach a million dollars. And then once I reached a million

I want to reach 5, and then I want to reach 10.

JEFF: That's right.

TRAVIS: So, tomorrow never comes. I don't know if you have Joe's Crab Shack over there in

New York but here in Houston it says, "Free crabs tomorrow, well tomorrow never comes",

right?

JEFF: Exactly right. Or the other one is do you know what the most popular day to start a diet

is, right?

TRAVIS: Tomorrow, right.

JEFF: Exactly, that's the most popular day.

TRAVIS: Yeah, let's start that tomorrow, not today, tomorrow.

JEFF: Right.

TRAVIS: So, it's elusive.

JEFF: Right, it’s a moving target.

TRAVIS: Right. So, the threshold levels, financial levels, one of the things about products is you

can, or product type of business is you can really scale them and you don't have some of the




lower level bottlenecks early on as you do in service-based businesses. So, the majority of my

life has been building service-based businesses. And you've really kind of straddled the fence

on both to where yours are product and service. Which do you prefer and why, or do you have a

preference between the two type of business models?

JEFF: Actually, when I had both burgeoning I felt like from a common sense standpoint I should

probably pick one and focus on that, right? That would be the normal thing to do I think most

people would do. But I found it really hard to give one up because I really liked each one

equally. And I'll tell you why. I think from the clothing manufacturing product standpoint it was

really my creative playground, like whatever I wanted to see being worn I would just make it, I

would design it. There was no "client involved", it was whatever was in my head, came out of

my hands, became a garment, and I would wear that, and it was awesome. From a client side

it's almost a complete opposite. Someone's paying you to service them. And you have to make

a satisfied customer. And you should be able to inject your creativity into that but at the end of

the day the customer is always right so you got to do it his way or no way. But often times

clients would come to us. We're a design studio and a creative agency, so they would come to

us with a problem. And it would be our job as designers to fix that problem, and I really love

trying to fix problems within a set parameter, whether it was like a budgetary parameter or a

timeline parameter, or a consumer parameter. They sort of gave you guidelines like, "Listen, it

can't cost more than 300 grand, it's due in a month, it's got to hit this market, and show me what

you got." That's very comforting to me to have those kind of constraints versus the clothing

product side where I can do pretty much anything I want under the sun and that freedom can

almost be like numbing at times. It's almost like you get brain freeze because there's too many

possibilities.

TRAVIS: Paralyzing, yeah.

JEFF: Yeah, paralyzing with possibilities. So I love going back and forth. When I got a little bit

sick of the client work then I'd focus more on the clothing and I have freedom. And then when I

got tired of the freedom I'd be like, "Let me work on a problem that has constraints." And I hop

back over to the client side. So, I love both equally.

TRAVIS: Interesting. So, based on the things that I know about you, so far you spend the

majority of your time in your right brain, so where did you develop these left-brain skills for

business metrics, analyticals, stuff like that?

JEFF: It really just came out of necessity. I'm actually really quite horrible at math and finances.

And early on and really doing it myself was a mistake, I knew so that pretty early on, like maybe




within the first years I know I had to get outside help from in terms of like financial

advisement thinking that was the first thing that I delegated out and finding people that I

trust that was key. So now, because I did sort of bootstrapping every project that we do now I

understand that there has to be something like financial advisement behind it. You can't just do

stuff with complete disregard for financials. But that's something that I definitely had to delve

about a necessity over the past few years.

TRAVIS: Yeah, I was going to guess that you probably brought somebody in on that because

you seem to be so strong in the right-hand side that I was going to guess that maybe you

brought a CFO or somebody in. Because there's a lot of metrics in business that would just-- if

you don't enjoy living in that space could be a nightmare for you.

JEFF: Yeah, completely.

TRAVIS: And so, you just outsourced it. I'm so glad to hear you say that, because a lot of

people think because they hold the top position that they've got to manage that piece of the

business which is not true.

JEFF: Yeah, it's a difficult thing to let go of because of how important it is. That's the fuel for

your engine. So, you don't want to let that go off the rails.

TRAVIS: Yeah.

JEFF: And you really trust to take care of it.

TRAVIS: Yeah. Now, as long as you're not-- And this is advise to everybody listening. As long

as you're no delegating the check writing, but you can have someone deal with all of the metrics

of the business, but just keep your hand on the pulse of the check writing in that way you can

protect yourself from things that can happen whenever you delegate check writing things as

well. I don't know if you've had any problems with that or had any negative experiences with

that, have you?

JEFF: Recently, like in the past 3, 5 years relinquished the actual payment process so other

people can actually cut checks now. But I still think that you need a trained mind to be able to

sort of see when something's gone awry or something's amiss. And sometimes that's just

randomly checking in on how statements are checks cleared and deposits and stuff, and seeing

if anything's out of whack. And I think that being able to sort of get in touch with the energy and

chi of your business is really important. Whenever I hear of someone that like he's getting stolen




from or embezzled from, they really were quite out of touch with their business and they were

just out there doing dumb stuff. So, proper delegation's really key but I'd still try to keep one eye

on the ball while trying to juggle all these other balls at the same time.

TRAVIS: Good point. So, have you ever brought in mentors or an outside company to oversee

what's going on and help you grow the business?

JEFF: Not officially, no. So I have a really unique viewpoint on mentors because many people

ask me to be their mentor. And I have mentors, I have maybe like 5 mentors, but the thing is

they don't know that they're my mentors. I've never called them my mentor. I reach out to them

and occasional I seek information from a book. For the most part it's like us just sitting down,

breaking bread, having a nice meal occasionally, and just sharing ideas back and forth and

learning from each other. I think when you put the title mentor on someone, it's like way too

much pressure on the other guy to be able to deliver for you, like insightful ideas every time. I

think you can learn much more from people you respect and how they operate their life both

professionally and personally. And then just taking away from key points that you can observe

out of them. And trust me, no one person's going to be your complete mentor. That's why I have

like sort of half a dozen or so, because each person does something really good and really well

in their life. And my philosophy is if I can sort of learn from 6 of these incredible people's

strengths then maybe I can better my life in that way, like completely and holistically.

TRAVIS: Yeah, I agree with you. I think what you're talking about is more of a mastermind

effect. And so, you're surrounding yourself with successful people and then you guys are

sharing best practices and just kind of speaking on a level that it's hard to communicate with

other people that are not in business. Because a lot of people don't get what business owners

go through on a daily basis. Even your friends and family really don't get what you go through,

right?

JEFF: No, you're exactly right.

TRAVIS: Until you sit down with a group of people that are fighting the same battles that you

are, and they can give you their perspective. I think where a mentor really offers value is two

ways. I think the mentor should be considerably more successful than the person that they're

mentoring for several reasons, because they have a much broader view rather than a myopic

view on certain things. And then also, if they possess those skills and they've built businesses

well beyond what you're doing a lot of times having a mentor look into your business and look at

those metrics, they can see things that you can't see. And because they are not emotionally tied

to what's going on they have a level of clarity that's not present for anyone else.




JEFF: That's right, yeah. I would agree with you. But I would also add something to that

because I have mentors, and maybe mentor is a wrong word. But I definitely have people that I

surround myself with that aren't business owners and I just admire the way they go about living

their life in a completely different manner. So, I've got for instance an artist friend that doesn't

give a crap about the money that he makes on his art. He sinks all of it into his next project and

he lives like a pauper. And that's not necessarily how I want to live my life but I observe the way

he lives his life almost like just to see how is the grass on the other side of the fence.

TRAVIS: Right.

JEFF: I have a great friend, one of my best friends is a doctor. He's a very successful doctor but

fully works in the system of a hospital. And it's just great to hear some of the stuff he goes

through because I like to pull from the not obvious and see how it might apply to my world.

TRAVIS: Yeah. I think that's the creative in you. I like that. I try to do the same thing also. I love

to stand by and watch what's going on. I'm just naturally curious. I want to see how people deal

with things. I like to ask people questions without leading them and seeing which direction they

go. A lot of times people are looking have a confirmation bias, and so they tend to ask questions

which lead people to a certain conclusion.

JEFF: Totally, to the answer they want to hear. They ask you in a way where it's like, well, yeah,

TRAVIS: Right.

JEFF: It's not helpful that way.

TRAVIS: Yeah, and I try to stay completely clear from that because I wanted a clear, concise,

objective piece of feedback. And I think that I become much clearer on that and much better at

accomplishing that when I got in my 40's because being very candid I got to a place where I

didn't need to be right.

JEFF: Exactly, yeah.

TRAVIS: And for a long time unfortunately I wasn't wise enough to where I could let go of that.

And being some of the tenaciousness and strong-headed qualities that help me build the

business prevented me from moving forward because I had to be right when I was a younger

man. And so I let that go as I got older and that's when things really started evolving for me on

the next level.




JEFF: Yeah. Just allowing the mistakes to happen, right?

TRAVIS: Right. And just letting the answer be whatever it is. Let me ask you, looking back, what

do you feel like are the key things that help you become successful that if you were to give other

business owner's advice for building a successful business. What would you say those 3 things

are?

JEFF: The first thing for sure I think when we were just talking on this a little bit, but it's to trust

your instincts because basically there's two scenarios that could happen out of the decision.

One of that it goes right and one of that it goes wrong, right? If you trust your instinct and it goes

really right, well then, you're seen as a genius and a maestro, right? You're seen as very

insightful.

TRAVIS: Right.

JEFF: When you trust your feelings and it goes wrong, at least you stood your ground and you

did it 110% because it was the thing that you originally wanted to do. If you didn't trust your first

instinct and you went with option B, C, or D and it goes wrong, well A, you never really had your

full heart into it in the first place. And B, you're always going to not be second-guessing, "What if

I had did it the first way that I wanted to do it, wouldn't it been right?" So you're constantly going

to be saying, "What if, what if, what if." That's why now I'm just like, "Hell, I go with my gut

feeling, my strongest feeling." And even if it's wrong it's fine. I did it the way I wanted to do it. I

could live with it.

TRAVIS: Right. I completely agree.

JEFF: That's the first major piece of advice. You want three, right?

TRAVIS: Well yeah, or however many works for you. It doesn't have to be three. Just looking

back over the years, 18 years in business, there's got to be some critical points where you think,

a really kind of aha moment, you thought, wow, if I'd known that I could've fast forwarded the

success of this business much faster.

JEFF: Yeah, okay, I have some more. So, I'm giving two more. One is that I think, in a business

like mine where it's really predicated on skill, right? We're dealing with artistic things, so there's

have a skill level involved where you have to actually be good. It's kind of like basketball.

There's good 3-point shooters and there's bad 3-point shooters. In some of the way there's like

good designers and bad designers. And in my field there's always going to be someone that's




better than you coming out of the woodwork. There's always going to be a better artist, a better

designer, same basketball now, there's always going to be some kid that comes out that shoots

3's better than you. The only thing that you can really do to separate yourself from the pack is

diligence and accountability is what I've learned. I've learned that no matter who comes up to

my task, I will outwork that person, out hustle that person, and I will deliver as I promise. I'm a

man of my word. And I think those things are things that you cannot put on a measurement

scale. Like you can't say-- no one ever says how accountable is he. No, it's just he either is or

he's not. If he's 1% not accountable, you can't trust the dude, that's it. So I try to always instill

that into my work ethic, it's just work my butt off and just be a man of my word. If I say I'm going

to deliver it, I'm going to deliver it as I said I would.

TRAVIS: Right.

JEFF: And then the other bit of advice that's a little bit more pragmatic, and I think early on it's

on the topic of lawyers. Nobody really likes to deal with lawyers but early on I think there were

some decisions that I made where I said, "You know what, how much is this going to cost to

have a lawyer really look at it?" And you know, whatever, it could've been a time like 10, 12,

$15,000. And I thought to myself, you know what, let me save that money and I'm going to try to

deal with this myself. And more often than not when I made that decision it came back to bite

me in the ass. Law is one of those things who are like, you don't want to tinker around with law

and you want to really like have professional eyes be looking at it. So I would say, another bit of

advice is to have the right people looking at something like a contract or an agreement just to

make sure you're not getting screwed or something's not being left out. And it really does pay

for itself in the end even though it might seem like an expensive proposition upfront.

TRAVIS: Boy, that's an excellent advice. Even in my own personal experiences I completely

agree with you. The amount of exposure and loss that can come from half weighing legal stuff

like that is downright scary.

JEFF: Yeah. And on the positive side I've been in deals where like my lawyer brought up

something. Let's say, "Hey, you know if you just ask for this you might get X." And you just ask

and they just put it in. It's like, whoa, you just paid for your whole bill and then somebody…

TRAVIS: Right. In one of my businesses we had a terrible situation where somebody was

killed.

JEFF: Wow.




TRAVIS: And due to the fact that I had all of my legal T's crossed and my I's dotted I was saved

from a multi-million dollar lawsuit.

JEFF: Oh my god, what a blessing!

TRAVIS: Yeah. Not to mention I was absolutely sick over what happened, but I'd covered all of

my bases, whereas as a younger man I would not have covered those bases and I would've

looked for a shortcut. Because I've learned almost everything that I've learned-- over the first

half of my life I learned the hard way.

JEFF: Yeah.

TRAVIS: And so, this show is really about reaching out to people like you that can look back

and all of us can share some of these lessons that we found out the hard way and hopefully

build a bridge that allows other people to kind of fast forward and just completely go around

those major hurdles in life and in business, right?

JEFF: Right.

TRAVIS: I don't know if you share this but what type of revenue have you generated in those

businesses? Have you crossed the $10 million mark yet?

JEFF: Yes.

TRAVIS: Yeah.

JEFF: Yeah, we're right at about 10, 12 million.

TRAVIS: Nice. And that's a very tough feat. A lot of people don't realize how few businesses

reach that level. It's 10% of the 10%, of the 10% that reach that level, right?

JEFF: Oh, I didn't even realize that. Is it really that rare?

TRAVIS: Yeah, it's extremely rare so congratulations. Listen, how do people connect with you--

Well, you know what, one quick thing I wanted to ask you 3 questions, and I had actually sent

them over to your assistant, or I had my assistant send them over to your assistant.

JEFF: Okay.




TRAVIS: And I don't know if you've prepared for them but what book or program made an

impact on your related to business that you'd recommend and why?

JEFF: Related to business-- Let me think. You know what's really good is David Allen's Getting

Things Done. I don't know if you're familiar with his methodology.

TRAVIS: I am.

JEFF: So, I think that really-- I don't follow GTD to a T, I'm not like a diehard of getting things

done but I was able to pull out some really key things I think helped me a lot in terms of

productivity and organization. And like with any program, whether it's a diet program or an

exercise program. I think it's foolish to follow it word for word, yet to sort of curtail it to what your

needs are. So, I think that one helped a lot. And his story is just amazing. He was like an ex-

heroin addict on the verge of suicide and then came out of it and just became this like guru. His

story itself is amazing, but then the getting things done concept is quite good.

TRAVIS: Right, very cool. Hey, what's one of your favorite tools or pieces of technology that

you've recently discovered if any, that you'd recommend to other business owners and why?

JEFF: I'll give you two answers, you could tell me which one you want listed. Evernote and

Uber.

TRAVIS: I love them both. We'll list both of them.

JEFF: Okay. So, Evernote is just awesome. I use Evernote as like a dumping ground for ideas.

Every time an idea comes in my head I just Evernote myself and just dump it in to this inbox and

it gets filed later. The beautiful thing about Evernote is it has an OCR character reader built into

it. So you can take a picture of your notes, of your prescription pills, of like an airline ticket and

then if you search for that word it actually looks through photos to find that word, which is,

excuse my French, but it's phenomenal. It's incredible like that technology is amazing. And then

Uber just changed the game as well. Uber is obviously from a business standpoint. It's been in

the headlines recently but I was an Uber user from the first month that it's been available in New

York. And just how they sort of revolutionized something that was so old school an archaic, and

then put a new spin into newfound technology, it's a game-changer for sure having on demand

driver.

TRAVIS: Yeah, I hear they're trying to squeeze Uber out-- many of the municipalities are trying

to squeeze Uber out of the picture.

http://amzn.to/1r02fSs

http://amzn.to/1r02fSs




JEFF: Yes, because it's same story as the music industry when they tried to squeeze out mp3

for download. Because the inevitable is coming, they're just trying everything they can politically

to stop it. But it's so far and away better than anything else. And it's just amazing how Uber--

Uber in New York actually has some other really interesting things like, Uber now is venturing

into messenger servicing. So, we have a lot of bike messengers in New York but now Uber's

getting into that with Uber Rush, so you can actually see on a map exactly where your bike

messenger is.

TRAVIS: Oh, cool.

JEFF: And then they have these other initiatives where they have like Uber ice cream truck

where you can call an Uber ice cream truck to your office and then it's like free ice cream for

your whole office. They do some really cool stuff. They have Uber Skywriting so you call a plane

and then you just type in a message and then the plane sky writes whatever you want.

TRAVIS: Oh, wow.

JEFF: Yeah, so they're busy experimenting.

TRAVIS: Yeah, I'm going to have to check those out. I downloaded Uber after I was in San

Francisco on a trip. And I was at this building checking out the architecture or something with

my family, and then we couldn't find the taxi. And so, we ended up walking 4 miles trying to flag

down a taxi. And then somebody told me about Uber and I thought, "Man, I'm never going to get

stuck like that again." Because I couldn't even find a taxi.

JEFF: Yeah, it's funny. If you look at now in New York, like if you look at somebody who's

actually got their hand up trying to wave down a cab. And it's sort of equivalent to like looking at

a caveman now. You're like, what is that person doing? They're trying to actually flag a nasty

cab down, it's so strange.

TRAVIS: Right. So, what quote would best summarize your belief or your attitude in business?

JEFF: So I know this one. When I was younger and I just started a company I saw the movie

Shawshank Redemption which is an old Tim Robbins--

TRAVIS: Yeah, one of my favorites.

JEFF: Do you know that movie?




TRAVIS: Yeah.

JEFF: And one of the greatest lines in that movie is there's only 2 options in life, you got 2

choices. You either get busy living or you get busy dying. That's it. There's no in the middle. And

when I heard that it was at a point in my business where I was really-- it was the 5-year itch.

First 5 years you're sort of struggling, you're getting tired of it, and you don't know if you can

progress past the first 5 years. And it was right there that I heard that, and it just rang so true.

There's no such thing as slowing down the business when you're have your own company.

Once you put yourself in the neutral you go backwards. You have to constantly hustle, pedal,

run, just so you maintain headspace. And so that, whoa, when he said like you get busy you're

going to get the design. I ain't quitting at the business. If you're not going forward you are dying.

There's no hovering in the business. You got to keep, keep pushing. And that really spawned

me to this day. Now, I just-- I think what I had to do was-- the secret there was I had to turn-- I

had to get rid of the stuff that I didn't like doing and make my everyday just stuff that I love to do.

Because when you love doing everything it doesn't feel like work anymore, so you just

constantly want to do it. I actually don't want to go to sleep at night because I love everything

that I do. And when I wake up in the morning I don't dread looking at the alarm clock and hoping

I get 10 more minutes. I actually want to pop out of bed and start going right at it. And so, I think

the secret there is like figuring out what to get rid of, keeping the stuff that you love, and then

that sort of automatically happens where you don't want to stop and you just keep going

forward.

TRAVIS: Yeah, I completely agree with you. Hey, do you have any special super powers you'd

like to share with us?

JEFF: So, there's a lot of entrepreneurs that are really into poker. And I'm a fairly decent poke

guy, and I have this trick that-- it's actually pretty good. I would show it to you if I was in front of

you, but basically I fan out a deck of cards for you. I have you look at a card and I have you

really think hard about the card. We stick it back into the deck, we shuffle the deck. I expose

every card to you one at a time. And I don't even look at the card, I just look at your face. And

when it gets to the card that you've picked I know it by looking at your face.

TRAVIS: Oh, okay. So you study micro expressions?

JEFF: Yes, like just looking-- I tell you, try to hold as still as possible. Don't make any smirk or

any face when you see your card, okay? And I'm like pretty accurate at that game. So, I don't

know if that's a special power but it definitely comes in handy when you're negotiating a deal

across the conference table with somebody.




TRAVIS: It does, it does. Good stuff. Hey man, how do people connect with you? How do they

learn more about what you do, and connecting with you, and maybe checking out some of your

products?

JEFF: Yes. So, I love social media. I'm really big into Twitter and Instagram, so those are the

two best ways. I don't have a Facebook, I'm sort of anti-Facebook. So, Twitter and Instagram

are the best and for both of them it is @jeffstaple. And that's Instagram and Twitter.

End of Interview

TRAVIS: Excellent, Wonderful, thank you very much. Listen, remember that you can find all the

links to the books and resources mentioned in this show in the show notes. Just got

to rockstarentrepreneurnetwork.com. And of course if you like transcriptions you can get that

there as well. Before I close the show today, I want to read a quote from basically someone

that's unknown, or I don't know the source. And the quote reads, "One of the most important

keys to success is having the discipline to do what you know you should do even when you

don't feel like doing it." This is Travis Lane Jenkins signing off for now. To your incredible

success my friend, take care.





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Business Mentor-Turn Around Specialist

Radio Host of The Entrepreneurs Radio Show

“Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs That Grow Your

Business"

http://theentrepreneursradioshow.com/

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