122: Entrepreneurial Lessons from 15+ Ventures & Multiple Exits with Josh Felber

Today, I’m joined by Josh Felber, a growth hacker, digital marketing consultant, and serial entrepreneur who has grown 15+ ventures with multiple exits.

Josh is also 2x best-selling author, 2x Emmy award-winner, a contributor and guest on NBC, CBS, ABC, Fox, Entrepreneur.com, and Forbes.com, and has been the host of the popular Making Bank podcast since 2015.

Josh started his first business at 14 years old. Since then, he’s built, failed, and succeeded, making a high 8-figure exit of his merchant payment services company. Now, Josh uses his growth hacking expertise to help business owners find the fastest paths to their target markets.

In this episode, you’ll learn from 30+ years of entrepreneurial success and failures. You’ll also hear about deciding when to sell vs. when to keep building, why an 8-figure exit might not be as lucrative as you think, and how to comb through legal documents to make sure you aren’t met with any unfortunate surprises when closing a deal.

Inspiring Quotes

• “You can either pay a 30% markup and have somebody else do it, or you can control everything from the manufacturing to the distribution to the support to the marketing.” – Josh Felber

• “When you’re making decisions, you have to look at everything from a technical aspect and also trust your gut.” – Josh Felber

• “When you go to exit, nobody thinks about the fact that the government’s getting 40% or 50% of that money right off the top.” – Josh Felber

• Working on vacation as an entrepreneur
• Becoming an entrepreneur at 14
• Making a high 8-figure exit
• Deciding whether to sell or keep building
• The best way to read a contract with a lawyer
• Standing out in the crowded supplement industry
• Building a business with your spouse
• The inside details of starting a podcast
• The worst mistake Josh has made

Brad Weimert: Josh Felber, man, I appreciate you carving out some time of your vacation to hang out.

Josh Felber: Yeah, brother. Man, it’s awesome to see you. And I was like, “What the heck?” Let’s just rock this while I’m at the beach and have some fun. And it’s an amazing day in Florida. Beautiful sun and working and get to hang out as well and enjoy some time. I think as an entrepreneur, you got to be able to do that as well. You got to be able to have the time for yourself, but then also spend the time on your business growing it because if you’re always working, you’re working and driving hard, you’re going to get burned out and you’re going to lose interest. And so, you got to be able to manage all your time effectively, I think.

Brad Weimert: Yeah. So much of my time is spent with entrepreneurs these days that I don’t have these conversations as often, but still, periodically, I have conversations where people are like, “Oh, that’s too bad. You have to work while you’re on the beach.” And I’m like, “F*ck, what are you talking about?” This is elective. I’m so glad that my life is such that I get to work while I’m on the beach.

Josh Felber: Right. Well, that’s funny, because I was talking to a friend of mine the other day, and they owned a pretty big company, and I was like, “Hey, man, I’m down at the beach.” I sent him a photo, and he is, “Oh, man.” I go, “Hey, if you ever want to use our place for a week and come down.” He goes, “Yeah, but then I wouldn’t get any work done.” I go, “Yeah, but look, I’m working. I’m on the beach right now.” I go, “This is the way you’re going to do it, ingrain, intertwine it all together, and then just make it happen and be effective with your time,” because I like the way you think.

Brad Weimert: Well, for me, I’m really thinking about, there’s no question that I’m much more focused when I’m in an office. But I like to think about when I’m traveling, what are the types of things that I can be doing and still be super effective at while I’m on the road and certain environments? So, recording is one of them, right? When I go to live events or when I’m traveling, I try to jam in as much content production and recording as possible because I’m in the mind state to do it for you. Like, right now, you’ve got a ridiculous backdrop, and it’s a fun way to do it.

Josh Felber: Yeah. No, that’s awesome. That was always a huge thing for me with my podcast was, like you said, when you go to events, and especially if it’s like a two or three-day event and you grab a room, you set up your gear, and then you can rock out like 15 interviews in three days and you’re super focused, dialed in, and produce some amazing content, I think that’s the best thing. And that’s awesome that you’re doing, because I think that creates some of the best interviews and you’re able to extract a lot of the great information due to being so focused.

Brad Weimert: Yeah. And at events, in particular, you get a lot of people in one area. So, you got to get face-to-face interviews, which would otherwise not happen.

Josh Felber: Yes, for sure.

Brad Weimert: So, I want to talk about the podcast at some point, but let’s give a little backdrop here. So, I know you’ve had a litany of different companies over the years. You’ve had multiple different exits. Let’s start kind of at the beginning, and then I want to go through the journey of a couple of the exciting ones. But how did you get into entrepreneurship in the first place? What was the first company?

Josh Felber: Yeah. So, for me, it started, I am 14 years old, doing kind of that normal. I would cut people’s lawns and do the stuff locally. And one day, I was like, “Man, I really wanted to get–” and this would kind of date me a little bit, but a Commodore Amiga computer or any of the cool graphic gaming computers back then, and I think it was right around $800 and I had about a little over half saved up. And I was like, “Man, there’s got to be a better way you can buy these than just paying retail.”

So, after researching the library, when you had to go to the library and look up stuff back then, I figured out there was like a distributor and retailers and all this stuff and start learning about it. And so, I talked my dad into getting, setting up a company and a business license and everything and went and called him. They mailed me the forms, applied. Long story short, I got set up as the first Commodore Amiga dealer in my area in Northeast Ohio. Yeah, and like 14 years old and started going to user’s groups and selling them after I bought mine. So, I bought mine, and then all my friends were like, “Dude, that’s awesome.” I’m like, “I can get you a better deal than you can go buy it at Micro Center or whatever.” And so, then we started going to user’s groups, selling floppy disks and all those things. So, that was the first real entrepreneurial venture that I kicked off with.

Brad Weimert: Dude, that’s bizarre. Why didn’t you just keep cutting lawns and buy that water and keep going? What was the drive? You’re like, this is what I should do.

Josh Felber: It just hit me. I was like, “Man, this is what I wanted to do,” I mean, and right when I was in school and stuff, too, I was doing, like, back then, AT&T and USA Today had an investment challenge. They would give you a fake $250,000 or $200,000 account, something like that. But you would trade stock in real time and I did really well with it. I was like, I think number 1 or 2 in the whole US, like one year. And then the second year, I was number 4. And this is out of 20,000 people trading stocks and stuff. And so, I was like, “Oh man, maybe I wanted to be a stockbroker.” But the whole entrepreneur thing just really hit home with the ability to control what I was doing. Just the fun, like, I love computers and all that. And I was just like, “Man, this is where I want to go with it.”

And back then, it wasn’t like, you’re like, “Oh, I want to be an entrepreneur.” That’s not what you’re thinking. I was like, “Oh, I’m a business owner.” And it was kind of funny when my wife and I got married in 2007. We got married in Fiji, and so, we had to fill out the marriage license. And so, they were like, “Well, what is your occupation?” I said, “Business owner.” Well, they abbreviate on the marriage certificate bus owner. So, now, that’s the big joke because she’s like, “I married a bus owner.”

Brad Weimert: It’s great, man. Well, okay, so that was the spark for you. You’re 14. You’ve got not the physical paper route, but the metaphorical paper route that you’re doing. Yours was unusual. Where’d you go from there? What was the first kind of successful business that you had? And how did you start it? Why did you start it?

Josh Felber: Yes. So, the next one, actually, it’s in the space that you were in. I started selling. After I graduated high school, I sold the company that I had, the computer company to a local guy that was buying, or he was buying a lot of the computer stuff from me. And so, he kind of took it over and gave me some cash for it. And so, in college, I was like, “Man,” like going to school, but I’m like, “Man, you got to take all these math classes again.” And there’s no business classes that seem to be teaching me anything.

And so, I started working for a company in sales, which is great, like sales is the perfect thing to start to learn. And it was called cherry payment systems. So, it was the original company putting in merchant terminals way back when with the first electronic terminals. And so, I ended up opening some sales offices for them. I was one of their top sales reps for a long time for about eight months. And then one of the things I noticed, they expanded so quickly, they kind of started to contract a little bit, and I’m like, “Okay.” I was like, “Well, I can figure out how to do this on my own.”

And so, I moved from– because they had transferred me around. I was down in the middle of, Louisiana, in the middle of nowhere, running offices for them. And so, then I moved to Dallas because I always like the Dallas Cowboys. And I was like, “Let’s do this.” Go figure the logic. And so, I ran into another gentleman while I was there who had just moved back from Hawaii, and he was like, “Hey, I was in Hawaii. And I just started to do electronic credit card terminals, but moved back here.” And I was like, “Well, I was going to start a company. Let’s do something.”

And so, we set up Merchant Financial Services. And so, this was ‘92, we launched it. And so, we were one of the first companies putting out electronic credit card terminals and ATM machines. We were on Ross Perot’s network for the ATM machines while down in Dallas and stuff. Our focus was on restaurants and nightclubs and places like that. And we grew it all across the United States. We had multiple sales offices and grew to over 20,000 merchant bases. And then the merchant base was acquired by Society Bank, which is KeyBank now. So, that was kind of my first big company and exit and everything.

Brad Weimert: What were the numbers like on that one? I mean, 20,000 merchants is a lot. What did you end up? And I know our industry very well, obviously, from a payment perspective and how things work there. But for everybody else, what’s the exit like on that? What are the multiples like?

Josh Felber: Yeah. So, you’re working off basis points for margins. So, those are like 0.00s if anybody knows. It’s not like 1% or anything. But when you have 20,000 merchants and they’re in recurring revenue and things like that, it works a lot better. So, I mean, we were in the eight to nine-figure range for an exit, like high eights for an exit and stuff, overall. I can’t remember what our multiple was. It’s not like they– well, I don’t know where they are now because I haven’t been in the industry recently.

Brad Weimert: Yeah, that’s good. That’s enough. I mean, that’s a good framework. I mean, I think it’s important for people listening to have an idea of it’s very easy for somebody to say, I sold a business and it to be, they left with a quarter million dollars or they left with a million dollars, and then paid taxes on it. And it’s a different thing entirely to sell something for eight or multi-eight or nine and have that kind of relationship with it. Also, similarly, you have people that sell for nine or nine-plus, but they’ve diluted their value in ownership so much by raising money that they only leave with 10% of the company.

Josh Felber: For sure.

Brad Weimert: So, I think all that’s just important to understand as an entrepreneur when you’re building something and thinking about selling. So, I like to double click on those a little bit.

Josh Felber: Yeah. No, and that’s a great point. I mean, obviously, nobody thinks about like, when you go to exit and stuff, and then it’s like, oh, okay, the government’s getting 40% or 50% of my money right off the top. And then from there, it’s like, oh, okay, well, then I got to pay for this or this has to get paid for, and then this debt or whatever it might be. And all of a sudden, yeah, it goes down to where you might have 5 million bucks, goes down to 2 million bucks pretty quick.

Brad Weimert: Yeah. Well, that’s awesome. In payments, usually, companies get valued a bunch of different ways, but one of the cool things about payments is you can liquidate your portfolio to basically anybody and you’re paid on gross as opposed to EBITDA or net.

Josh Felber: Right.

Brad Weimert: So, whatever you’re making, somebody is going to come in and pay you a multiple of the top line because they know they can just take that portfolio and plug it into their existing systems. And that’s kind of a neat liquidation path. It’s like, I’m always looking at risk mitigation in everything because that’s what I’ve been conditioned to do through both adventure and payment. And that’s one of the neat things about payments is just how do I get out of this?

And I would encourage anybody in any business that they’re doing to just think about what are a couple of different exit strategies if you don’t have the big exit, right? What’s another way to contingency plan and get out of it if you want to? Why did you sell it? Because one of the things that I think we’re going to end up seeing with you is when you have a dozen or 20 companies that you’ve had over the course of time. Some people sell those and keep going, and some people keep driving the same damn thing for 20 years.

Josh Felber: Yeah. That was a, I mean, good question is, one, the business partner I had, he was older and he was looking to kind of take an exit anyways. And at that point, I was like, “All right, I’ve kind of already done this. We had a good number come back to us and let’s just exit and see what else is the next in line.” And it’s kind of interesting because when I look back, most of the companies that I have owned have been anywhere from three to five-year range before an exit or something, most recent was 10 years or maybe longer, 12 years. But overall, that’s kind of always been the process where it’s been because my personality and the way I’ve always worked is I’m a great, I’m a super starter. I move fast and get things done, and then I got to have somebody kind of like, take it and continue pushing it along and pick those things up and continue to drive the overall business and stuff like that. So, quick start, and so, for me, when I hit a certain point, I was like, all right, I’ve kind of tapped out the excitement level and things like that. And it’s built to a solid foundation. And now, it’s time to move on and go from there.

Brad Weimert: Got it. Good at the creation and launch phase.

Josh Felber: Yes.

Brad Weimert: Either not as good at or just not excited by the rest of it.

Josh Felber: Right. Yeah, yeah, not excited usually. Once you kind of like– I mean, you do ultra, you do all kinds of crazy rock climbing and adventures, adventure-type stuff and all that and you do it because every time you go, there’s that excitement level and it’s back at it. But if it’s kind of the same thing and it was like the same rock all the time and it was the same climb and all of that, you’d be like, “Okay, this is kind of okay now.” And so, you’re always looking, having that new adventure. So, that’s the way I kind of look at a business as.

Brad Weimert: That’s fair, man. I can appreciate that. So, you sold that and give me time frame. You said that that was like mid-90s, ‘92, ’95?

Josh Felber: Let’s see. ‘92 to ’97, so end of ‘97. So, yeah.

Brad Weimert: So, you sold that end of ’97. It is 2024, currently. So, there’s a huge gap in here.

Josh Felber: Yes.

Brad Weimert: And we could talk about all of them. But in that next 17-year period, how did you think about what businesses to get into? And how did you pick your next journeys?

Josh Felber: Yeah, I mean, some of the journeys were interests. So, I would find an interest in a certain area and open up. So, we opened up a Fast & Furious, like, sports car shop. But it was before Fast & Furious ever came out, and so, it did okay, but it never really took off. If we would have kept it for maybe another year and a half, then it would have just exploded, but it wasn’t that big. So, that was one that didn’t work out and we just ended up shutting it down.

And other ones we had was a company we called, Slim Mints. There were actually two other gentlemen that owned the majority of it or owned the company, and I came on board with them. They were looking for somebody to help them do sales and grow it and everything else. And I had a lot of the internet experience, helping, when I left the company that I sold, Merchant Financial, I went to work for a friend’s company in Cleveland in the merchant payment side and helped them basically build out from ‘98 to 2000, their whole internet processing and their whole– way before internet processing was a thing. And like how to build websites and how to integrate the codes, like we did all this stuff. And so, I had a lot of experience in that area.

So, when I came on board with him, my deal was set up right on 10% of the company. I would grow retail sales, build out their internet presence and all that. And we built Slim Mints, which is like an Altoids mint that had natural weight loss ingredients in it. And we had it gotten in over 40,000-plus retailers across the country and worldwide and ended up selling that to Irwin Naturals out of California. But I had a wording in my contract that somehow my attorney and I didn’t catch that said up to 10% ownership.

Brad Weimert: Oh, wow.

Josh Felber: So, when the company sold, they said, “Well, you’re up to is like 0%. Sorry.” Yeah, so I spent like two and a half, almost three years building it and getting them in retail accounts. had zero experience of going and getting retail accounts set up, but was able to get us in over 40,000 of them in two and a half to three years. And so, at that point, it was a good learning lesson because I learned how to understand and very proficient now when I read legal contracts. So, most of the time, I can read them and get back and say, “Hey, attorney, here’s what I’m seeing. Let me know what you’re seeing.”

Brad Weimert: Well, that’s a really good lesson because I can’t tell you how many clients and friends I have that read contracts themselves and don’t have an attorney do it for them or have an attorney do it for them, but don’t bother to pick it apart themselves at all and just trust whatever the attorney says. And at the end of the day, it’s on you. At the end of the day…

Josh Felber: Oh, for sure.

Brad Weimert: You’re the one that’s impacted positively or negatively, so you have to have some grip on it.

Josh Felber: I mean, yeah, I kind of blame the attorneys and all. He’s an idiot. Why didn’t he find it? But I mean, I read through it multiple times and it’s two little words which changed the dynamics of that contract totally.

Brad Weimert: Yeah. Also, it’s very common to go back and forth on contracts with people over the course of time. I had a contract with a banking partner in the recent years. And at this point, I’ve had dozens of relationships with banks of all variety of sizes and shapes and jurisdictions. I’ve read these things front to back dozens of times, hundreds probably. And at one point, we’re going back and forth in redlining, which is just altering the contract, change to kind of like just swapping versions back and forth. And at some point, I got a sentence thrown in that said basically, “And you take all liability for everything.” Oh, yeah, it was like in merchant services, it’s a huge problem because if a business closes, all refunds, all chargebacks that come in roll back to me. And that was not the intention of that contract. So, I got stuck with it. But I think there are a couple great lessons there. One is read your damn contracts, and another is use the red line feature in any of the contract platforms, whether it’s Acrobat or Word.

Josh Felber: With track changes, for sure.

Brad Weimert: Yeah, actually, track all the changes and force people into that frame so that you can see them. Yeah, terrifying stuff, man. Okay, so you didn’t make any money on that one. What was the best one that you dove into? And I saw a glimmer of supplements in that mint. You had a mint with weight loss.

Josh Felber: Yes, yes.

Brad Weimert: Where did you go from there? What was the biggest thing that you feel like you’ve taken or the best success so far that you feel like you’ve learned the most from?

Josh Felber: Yeah. So, I mean, since then, there was a handful of other companies. We were in the wireless energy space for a little while. I left that company to end up in 2010. I ended up opening a CrossFit gym in my area that ended up being one of the largest in North America, let alone, Northeast Ohio. It was the largest. And then we ended up opening three more. So, I had that for a handful of years. We ran because I just wanted to be around fitness and health. And I’ve been doing CrossFit since 2003 with the original white and blue CrossFit website. So, it was pretty ingrained in me and wanted to make sure other people were getting the experience.

And then during that time frame, my wife had started a small business on the side selling. She would make it, like natural skin care and dental care under a different brand. And during the CrossFit part of it, I brought home the paleo diet, healthy eating more, and things like that. And so, she’s like, “Huh. I wonder if there’s any paleo skincare or paleo dental care out there.” And so, she looked and didn’t see anything, but search traffic was big. And so, she actually just gave birth to our twins at that time. And so, a couple years later, she’s like, “Hey, maybe we should do this.” And then that’s when we launched the one company that we had.

And so, that one turned in, it was a direct to consumer. She ran most of it until probably the last five years when I came over and then came on board as kind of the growth strategist and digital marketing side to stop. And then we just really blew it up in there and worked with multiple big influencers and just sold products worldwide, tons of different retail chains and everything.

Brad Weimert: So, let me ask a question to tee it up. Okay, so you got into the paleo space, what’s the name of the company? And what are you selling at this point? and how did you grow it?

Josh Felber: Yeah. So, the company is Primal Life, and we grew it all through direct-to-consumer space. It’s natural products to help improve your dental health, skin care, and things like that. And we grew it through working with influencers, digital ads. And everything that I learned over the years from how to get in retailers, how to run digital ads, how to be effective and sell on the internet all kind of came into play to really help us grow the company into a bigger brand over those years. And so, I think that would be the longest company that we’ve held on to. It’s something that she developed all of the formulations. It’s kind of like her baby that she’s grown over the years and puts so much time and effort.

And people, when people see the company, kind of like, they know, “Oh, that’s Trina Felber.” When they get a phone call from Trina and it’s a customer, she’ll record and stuff with their permission and you can hear them in the background, they’re so excited, like telling their husband, like, “Trina is calling right now, blah, blah, blah. I’m so excited to talk to her and stuff.” And so, it’s cool to see to have that and see people being able to change their health and improve their lives and everything overall.

Brad Weimert: So, let me ask you about that one because in the supplement space, food space, health space in general, at least today and over the course of the last call it five, ten years, it is very easy to buy somebody else’s product, put your label on it, and push it. I mean, there is infrastructure to do it, right?

Josh Felber: Yep.

Brad Weimert: So, why was the choice for you, as an entrepreneur, as somebody that’s gone through the pain of building multiple things and selling them and the marketing side of things, why did you guys elect to formulate all the products yourself?

Josh Felber: Yeah, good question. One of the big things was, I mean, it was kind of initially that’s what we did. It grew out of the house. So, we had our daughter at the time, and our nanny was helping make the products when Trina would go home from work. She was a registered nurse and a nurse anesthetist. We’d pack boxes and ship the stuff and do that kind of a thing. And so, it was initially just done because that’s how we were doing it. And then as we grew, it was like, well, okay, we can either pay 30% markup and have somebody else do it, and then you have to pay all this money up front to have inventory, all these kind of things. Or you can kind of control everything from the manufacturing to the distribution to the support to the marketing, which is what we elected to do, and build out a whole team to do this.

Brad Weimert: So, you had started it that way. And so, that was really the only thing that you knew. You were like, “This is how we do it. This is how I’m going to figure it out.” And then once you hit a certain point, it didn’t make sense to go backwards. Is that an accurate summary?

Josh Felber: Yeah, because it was hard to think like, well, okay, I can unload all of this, but then 30% of your top line is gone because you’re paying that to somebody else to handle it all. And then it’s like, well, then they start to either ship it or ship it to me. And I was like, “Why not just keep controlling it?” Then we have all it cost control over all of our margins. We can make sure our suppliers are sending us the right type of products if we have to move quick. And our best thing was like, we make small batches of high-quality products and ship them right to your door.

And so, it’s kind of like, was it the last crumb or wherever the cookie place is, and they baked cookies once a week and they– I don’t know if you’ve ever had them, but I’ll ship you a box there. Dude, they’re so amazing. And they ship you a dozen cookies that are probably as big as your hand of all different flavors, fresh baked, and they’re phenomenal. When people get them, they’re like, “Holy cow, this is so good.” And so, it’s kind of like that. It was the fresh made. It was shipped right to your door. You know it’s made with the best ingredients and it’s going to improve your health. And so, that was kind of like our whole focus with it. And it just really took off. And then you had copycats that would come out and things like that, like you said, other people that could slap labels on and stuff like that. But a lot of those places don’t last long or their products aren’t the same quality level and things like that. And so, that’s what kind of made us stand out.

Brad Weimert: Yeah, I mean, fundamentally, I believe that if your only differentiator is your marketing, you don’t have a very stable company. But, that said, would you have done the same thing again today? If you were to launch an organic, food/supplement company for a specific vertical, do you think it’s the right path to try to build the whole thing yourself now? Or would you start with something that’s already formulated and then build into the bigger thing?

Josh Felber: Yeah, I mean, I think now, because now you have the ability to speed the market, I think, is huge a lot of times. And if you can get speed the market, have a good quality product, and maybe that is using a third party instead of internally or whatever, then it makes sense for sure. And then, as you grow, you can pivot and make adjustments as needed with that. But I think, one, it reduces your overhead. You don’t have 30-plus people working for you and have to worry about labor hours and people calling off and all this kind of stuff. That’s somebody else’s problem for that 30%. So, it removes a lot of headaches for sure. And yeah, I think, going for round two with it again, in that same type of space or whatever, would be something that you could start and start with a third-party fulfillment, third-party manufacturing. Especially if you can get the ingredients and the products made now, I think better to your specifications than 8 or 10 years ago.

Brad Weimert: Yeah, that makes sense. It’s an ever-changing game. What the b and how you go about it today more than ever.

Josh Felber: Oh, for sure, for sure. And especially now with the internet and the multiple opportunities with marketing and influencers and advertising pieces that were not there 10 years ago. It was Google and SEO on Google, basically.

Brad Weimert: So, that’s been a fun one and a good one that you guys grew together. I mean, I have a bunch of questions here, but well, I guess the first is, you had referred to it in the past as your wife’s company and throughout the years that I’ve known you, you’ve had companies and you’ve been doing things and you’ve always referred to it as your wife’s company, but you’ve also been involved. And so, I never really know, and it’s curious to me how people work on businesses together. And sometimes it’s their companies together, or sometimes it’s an individual’s company. Sometimes, they have nothing to do with their spouse’s company. What was the structure for you? And why did you choose to do it that way?

Josh Felber: Yeah, I mean, at the time, when it was started, I mean, I still had other businesses and things going. And so, I was kind of funny. It was really like a rolling joke, I was like, “Once we had a million, I’ll come over and help you full time.” And I was like, “Once we hit 2 million.” So, finally, when it did, she was like, “Look, I got to have your help.” So, I came over and basically did all the stuff that she wasn’t good at that, like marketing and growth and driving revenue. And she was more of a visionary in the product creation. And the education, she’s big with education because since she’s a nurse and nurse anesthetist, she wants to make sure everybody and all the products heal you in some way, whether it’s externally, internally, whatever that might be.

And so, it was more just like, hey, this is her business. That’s what she started, like, giving her 100% credit. I still give her 100% credit on the whole thing. I just kind of helped out. Even though we’re both in it together and we’re both there together, we’re both driving with the same purpose and things like that, but when it comes all down to any, she was the mind behind it, the visionary behind it, and gets 100% credit and stuff. And I just kind of helped boost it along, along the way.

Brad Weimert: I love that. So, through the journey of all these businesses, you launched the podcast and you did it nine years ago, so 2015?

Josh Felber: ’15, yep, yep.

Brad Weimert: So, 2015, you launched a podcast. And relative to today, that’s like forever ago. And it was very early in podcasts. Not anywhere near the beginning, but as people think about it today, because I remember in ’15, people were talking about the podcast space getting crowded, and they were like, it’s not even worth doing it now.

Josh Felber: Oh, yeah.

Brad Weimert: Why bother at this point? Actually, I remember, Jordan Harbinger, I was at an event with him and he did a talk, and I think it was probably in ‘16, but he did a talk about why you shouldn’t start a podcast and why it’s too late.

Josh Felber: I remember that.

Brad Weimert: And it’s like, so you started one back then. Why did you do it at that point? And how did it work into the rest of the businesses that you had, if at all?

Josh Felber: Yeah. So, funny story was, I never was like, “Oh, I want to be on camera and do all that kind of thing.” But we were at an event in Mexico, my wife and my kids and everything with Grant Cardone and his wife, Elena, and their kids. And it was like his first, I guess, he calls it as Original 10X event, even though it wasn’t called 10X event back then. And so, we were there with him and he kept, he was like, “Man, I’m launching this new network.” This was in, let’s see, 2014, I think it was, the summer of 2014. And he’s like, “I’m launching this new network next year. And we’re putting podcasts on it. I think with your entrepreneur experience, you should be on it, with it, and blah, blah, blah. And my team will help you do it all.” I was like, “Man, I don’t know.”

And so, probably, three or four months of him nudging me, after that, I was like, “All right, let’s do it.” And so, initially, I came up with the name, the idea, and kind of the entrepreneurial kind of the focus with it. And they helped me launch it everything. And we were driving so many views and everything of the show and stuff that they changed their structure and we’re trying to monetize it through the hosts. And so, I was like, “Well, let me move it off of here and see if I still get the same amount of views and stuff.” So, I did, and I still did. I still got the same amount of views and growth and everything else.

So, from there then, I just tried to figure it out on my own and tried to figure out a whole podcast process. And I was doing it all myself from editing videos to cooking gas to research and just everything. And so, finally, one day, this is probably like a year and a half in, I was like, “Oh, my gosh, I got to figure out a better way to do this.” And so, I sat down. I think it with– by the way, with Ari, and we put together kind of a whole podcast system and process for me. And so, then I was able to take that and utilize some automation stuff to move files around and things like that and automatically transcribe stuff, so I didn’t have to manually do it. And so, that was kind of my first intake into being able to automatically get a lot of stuff done.

And then over the years, I started to add a team and then implemented the process with the team. And so, just like you, after it’s done recording, it goes to my team. They then take and do all the audio and the video stuff and create hundreds of pieces of content and articles and push it all over social media and do all this great stuff with it. But it wasn’t something that started out right away and a lot of it started out with me doing the heavy lifting of it all. Because you got to know what you got to know. And I was like, “Man, if this is what podcast is doing all the time, this really sucks.” I go, “I don’t like to do all this stuff.” I go, “I love interviewing the guests.” I love learning from them and understanding that part and researching and that part. But the rest of it, the editing and creating the images, that stuff is no fun.

Brad Weimert: Well, so here’s the thing. Today, the model is pretty clear, and today, people feel like they need to produce content to be seen. And pushing content out to the social platforms is lead gen, and it’s very clearly lead gen and exposure. But in 2015, if you told anybody in 2015, you said, “Hey, my primary source of lead gen is going to be putting clips of video on to social platforms,” they would have thought you were f*cking nuts.

Josh Felber: Oh, 100%.

Brad Weimert: So, what was the driver then? What pulled you into it? And why did you keep doing it over time? Was it just fun or did it work into another business or what was it for you?

Josh Felber: So, for me, it was fun, one, because of the guests I was able to connect with. I built some amazing relationships over the years. I mean, some of the original people I was able to get on the show was like Daymond John way back then when he did a book launch. And I think Daymond has been on four or five times every time he’s launched a new book. And a few years ago, during COVID, we were like, hey, we want to put our board of advisors together. So, we came up for our list of a board of advisors, and he was one of them on the list. And so, I reached out and he became one of our board of advisors for our company.

And not having that relationship four or five years before that probably would have never happened. But it was all through a podcast that I interviewed him for that helped him promote his book, and then him and Todd Herman and some of these other guests all wrote me like a testament, like, Josh is the go-to guy when you launch a book. Our books move off the shelves faster. I don’t remember the exact quotes, but some are on my website. But just something like that, so people always come back when they launch a book because they know people are going to see the show. They’re going to be able to promote their book and get more exposure to what they’re doing.

Brad Weimert: Yeah, that makes sense. So, what kept you going was conversations and relationships, it sounds like.

Josh Felber: Yeah, conversations, relationships, and I didn’t make any money from it. I didn’t monetize it until more recently over the last few years. A bunch of the big advertising groups kept reaching out, like, “Hey, we want to run pre- and mid-rolls and let’s test it and see.” And I mean, from what they tell me, it’s done great. I mean I get money from it now. And I mean, we’ve had everybody from like Rocket Mortgage to LinkedIn to Gusto payroll systems to– I mean, we’ve probably got 25 different companies that have advertised with us over the years now. And they do great that you’ve run a flight of three to four months and then, again, one more time, throughout the year or so.

Brad Weimert: Love it. Yeah, I have a million thoughts on that. Because for me, when I get into anything, I’m kind of looking at, what’s the best case? What’s the worst case? Like I said earlier, what are different ways that that goal can be accomplished? Yeah, and so, the relationships are the thing that will happen for sure when you’re spending a lot of dedicated time to produce content and do interviews with people. And for me, I think if you go into relationships all the time with the mentality of ROI, you’re often going to compromise the relationship. And in a podcast environment, it’s easier to go in with an ROR mentality, right? What’s the return on the relationship because you’re just digging it?

Josh Felber: Yeah. And I mean, I never even went into it like that. It was more, I wasn’t like, oh, what can I get out of it? Mine was like, “Man, how can I help this guest?” Like, if he was launching his book or whatever, how can I make sure he gets the best promotion? But through by asking him the best questions that people were going to be interested in, that’s always kind of been my approach with anybody I’ve interviewed. And you’ve been on the show and we’ve always tried to dive in and really understand that. And if I was sitting there listening to a show, what would I want to know about Brad or Daymond or who whatever that’s going to help me do something better in my life or inspiring me in some way? And that’s always been kind of my first thought and first approach with it.

And then, just everything down the path after that is just typical back and forth, like, if anything came from it, great. If not, no big deal. I’ve had guests that were amazing guests that never heard from again. And other ones, like I said, I’ve had on four and five times that build great relationships and now, company friends and advisors and stuff.

Brad Weimert: Yeah. Well, I’m with you and I think that was relevant then, but it’s still relevant today when people think about producing. And in fact, when we got on in the beginning here, your video is all grainy. You’re on the beach. And I was like, “Oh, sh*t.” And you’re like, look, I had to go to the beach to get out of the office, like we could record now or record later. And I was like, “Either way, let’s catch up and record something and get some time in, man.” If we have to reshoot later, we will reshoot later. But now, let’s not burn the opportunity to hang out.

Josh Felber: And we’re on a good platform. So, it should be uploading from my side at high definition in 4K and your side should be as well. That’s the great thing about this platform because I’m right on my app.

Brad Weimert: It is. We’ll plug Riverside.fm for that one.

Josh Felber: There we go.

Brad Weimert: It records locally and then pushes it up later if we don’t have good bandwidth.

Josh Felber: 100%, yep.

Brad Weimert: And forgive us for the wind if it happens.

Josh Felber: Yeah. Well, when you’re at the beach like this, it’s an amazing time to hang out and chat and catch up.

Brad Weimert: For sure. Well, I’ll respect your time to continue doing that. Before I let you go, one of the things that is always curious to me are the horrific mistakes that have been made. And there’s usually a story in there, but it’s also tied into kind of just growth and what you learn from your experiences. What do you think the worst mistake you’ve made has been? And what have you gotten out of it?

Josh Felber: Man, good question. So, I mean, obviously, I mentioned the whole thing about the contracting earlier. There’s a more recent one. I can’t dive into super detail just yet. But when you’re making decisions on stuff, you got to look at everything from a technical aspect and also trust your gut. When you start to look past your gut, maybe because emotions or outside influences or spousal influences or whatever that might be to proceed, you’re 100% better off trusting that feeling, that gut, that intuition that you have, and deciding to either way or move forward or whatever that decision might be. Because you knowingly know what you’re feeling actually is right, even though you may be wanting to ignore it. And so, we can get into that story another time. Maybe in six or eight months, I can dive in and fill you in a little bit more detail, but I will leave it at that. And after some self-reflection and things like that, I know a lot more detail in how I kind of missed some of the things with it.

Brad Weimert: And so, kind of the message there is, if you see a flag or if you feel a flag, maybe listen to it, even if the proposition is exciting?

Josh Felber: Yeah. And even take that step and go down that path and look at it. And maybe it’s there for a reason.

Brad Weimert: Yeah. I think that’s true of hiring people. I think that’s true of partnerships. I think that’s true of big clients. I think that’s true of personal relationships, all sorts of stuff. Yeah, that’s great man. Somebody told me years ago, and it stuck with me. They said you should never marry somebody that you can’t see yourself divorcing.

Josh Felber: That’s interesting, yeah.

Brad Weimert: Well, it’s a confusing way to phrase it, but the sentiment is that if you don’t think that you can go through the worst experience together, you should never be together in the first place.

Josh Felber: Right.

Brad Weimert: And I love that sentiment. I love the idea of, if you don’t think that we can talk through this amicably, if we’re not in a business partnership, and in this context, where something bad happens and we can work through it, we probably shouldn’t sign the contracts in the first place.

Josh Felber: Agreed. Yeah, 100%. And yeah, I think that’s so important. And especially these days with the marketplace and the way of lot– I mean, we’re not the only ones, I mean, there’s a lot of other businesses and people that have gone through similar things in the last 24 months. And I think a lot of it has to do with a lot of the industry pressure and constraints on capital and things like that.

Brad Weimert: Yep, I don’t see it stopping either.

Josh Felber: Unfortunately, not for the short term.

Brad Weimert: Nope. I love it, man. Well, Josh, I appreciate you carving out time to hang out.

Josh Felber: Yeah, Brad.

Brad Weimert: Certainly will not be the last time. If people want to find out more about you, what you’re doing, where do you want to point them?

Josh Felber: Yeah, definitely, best place usually is in my social handles. It’s just my name Josh Felber, and the website Josh Felber. You can check out our race team if you love Formula 1 racing or Formula 4 racing or anything in between. You can check out our Formula 4 team that we have, racing all around the US this year at FLBR.com and FLBR Motorsport on all social platforms as well.

Brad Weimert: Awesome. Love it, man. And the podcast is Making Bank, right?

Josh Felber: Yeah, Making Bank. And yeah, that’s on my website. So, there’s links to it and all that. It’s everywhere. If you just Google Josh Felber, it comes up, Making Bank, everywhere. And yeah, you can find that.

Brad Weimert: Dig it. Until next time, man.

Josh Felber: Thanks, brother. Appreciate it, man.

Brad Weimert: Thank you.