The Entrepreneurs Radio Show 072 Jeffrey Fox

THE ENTREPRENEUR’S RADIO SHOW
Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs that Grow Your Business
Copyright © 2012, 2013 The Entrepreneur’s Radio Show Page 1 of 25
EPISODE #72: JEFFREY J. FOX
In this episode, Travis introduces us to the successful entrepreneur, author, consultant, and overall
expert Jeffrey J. Fox. Jeffrey is the founder of Fox & Company, a consulting and management firm
whose aim is to help their clients increase their sales and improve their marketing in order to grow their
business. He also authored 11 bestselling business books that has helped thousands of entrepreneurs
worldwide with their business in their path to successful entrepreneurship.
Travis and Jeffrey shared valuable lessons that focus on how can products be valuable to consumers
and how to market them effectively. Jeffrey explains his concept of Dollarization, which is increasing
value to your product, making it more beneficial to the consumer and consequently, more appealing
than your competitors. He explains that showing that your product exists and increasing your product’s
economic value is the key in getting and keeping your customers. This podcast will surely benefit
entrepreneurs in their quest of establishing their brand and gaining success in their business.
Jeffrey J. Fox – using the four sustaining factors for growing
your business
Travis: Hey it's Travis Lane Jenkins, welcome to episode number 72 of the Entrepreneur's Radio
Show, conversations with self-made millionaires and high level entrepreneurs that grow your business.
This show is a production of Rock Star Entrepreneur Network.
I'm super excited today because I'm going to introduce you to a rock star entrepreneur by the name of
Jeffrey J. Fox. Now Jeffrey's written 11 bestselling books that have been translated into over 30
different languages. Many of his books focus on creating success for yourself, either personally or
through a business. Now in this interview we're going to talk about the 4 keys. Now I may not call this, I
forget exactly what he calls it, but I'm going to refer to it for now as the four keys, or the four elements
to a successful business. And those elements are marketing, innovation, culture and leadership. Jeffrey
is absolutely brilliant.
Now before we get started I want to remind you that you can download this podcast in iTunes and take
this interviews with you on the go if you're anything like me. The easiest way to do that is go to
rockstarentrepreneurnetwork.com and click on the iTunes button, it will take you directly to the podcast
section in iTunes where you can subscribe to the show. Again, this will make it easy for you to listen to
the podcast while you're on the move, listen to it through your phone, rather than having to listen to it
from your computer, if that's an option that you want to do. Also, one other thing, be sure and stay with

us until the very end if you can because I've got something that I want to share with you. So without
further ado, welcome to the show Jeffrey.
Jeffrey: Thank you.
Travis: I appreciate you taking the time out to come hang out with us.
Jeffrey: My pleasure.
Travis: Yeah. Hey, would you mind giving me the background or the story that led you to your success
today?
Jeffrey: Well, I always wanted to have my own business even as a young kid. And I used to read all
the biographies of successful people, Eddie Rickenbacker and all those people. And then after college I
went to graduate school and after graduate school I did my little stint in the military, and then went to
work for 3 very, very good companies, Heublein, makers of Smirnoff vodka, and other beverages and
foods. Then Pillsbury Company, and then Loctite Corporation which makes Super Glue among other
products that people might know.
Travis: Right.
Jeffrey: And when I started Fox & Company, all three companies became a client. So that was kind of
how it got started.
Travis: So, how do you make that transition from an employee to owning your own business? I guess
working at companies that have a system down and you can see from the interior perspective how they
do what they do. Is that what translated into you starting your own business and how long did it take for
you to find success doing it on your own that is?
Jeffrey: I think there are two reasons that people go into their own business. One is because they are
entrepreneurial, and the other is because there's economic stress. So for example, a lot of women are
going into starting their own business in the last 10 years have done so due to economic stress, and
they were forced to find something to do because they couldn't get a job or whatever. My inspiration
was really because I felt I also wanted to have my own business. And so I didn't really think about it a
lot, I decided to start it, and I contacted people. My present employer at that time, I was head of
marketing for Loctite Corporation Worldwide, I was a corporate officer, I was 35 give or take, and I
wanted to get my own business going. So that's how I starting Fox & Company which is a marketing,
consulting company that focuses on a few things. And I just offered people solutions and they bought
them. And so that's how the company's been successful.
Travis: And now, how long ago was that, when did you start Fox & Company?

Jeffrey: 1982.
Travis: Okay, so it's been a few years.
Jeffrey: Right, and we've been into this for 25, 30 years, whatever the math is, and our focus is on
helping customers grow their gross margin percentages and their top line revenues. And we do that
with a marketing methodology that I invented called Dollarization. And Dollarization is how pricers and
marketers and sales people could overcome the price objection and shorten the sales call, and they do
that by dollarizing the benefits of the products they offer to the customer. About 5% of all sales people,
maybe 1% or 2% of all companies actually dollarize their value proposition. Everybody says they add
value but very few companies actually dollarize it or know how to dollarize it. And after they dollarize it
they have to know how to use that in the marketing and selling process to get leads, to get
appointments, close the sale.
Travis: It sounds to me like what you're saying is it's a feature versus benefit tied with return on
investment.
Jeffrey: Right. What I say is customers do not buy products or services, features or benefits,
technology or patents. What they buy is the financial return they get from investing in that product or
service. So there's 3 problems that a product or service solves and one is they cut or eliminate current
cost, they help the customer avoid preventable future cost and they help the customer raise their gross
margin revenues. Those are the only 3 reasons companies buy products, and those 3 reasons can all,
they manifest themselves in a million different ways but those 3 things can always be dollarized. So if a
company makes a claim that says, "Our product last longer", the customer has no idea what that
means. So if they're working with us we help them say, well, "Last longer means it last 3 times as long
as the competing product." And that means that in a period of time, the competitive product would have
to be purchased 3 times and our client's product one time. So when you dollarize that out 3 times the
competitor's prize, one time our client's prize, and variably our client is the lowest, true cost.
Travis: Right.
Jeffrey: Yeah, that's an example, there's millions of them.
Travis: Yeah, and that's the path to increasing the bottom-line also because once you clearly state the
value proposition then of course you're not selling on price, right.
Jeffrey: Right. You still prize the value. All of my clients are the highest priced companies in their
industry. And if they start with me and they're not, they end up being the highest prized. Because prize
is just the component of cost. The highest price is often the lowest class to a customer. For example
you're putting in a gasket into an engine, well, the lowest price is no gasket. However, the engine will

leak like crazy, they'll lose customers that have millions of dollars of warranty claims, and they'll too fill
tarnish their brand. So those kinds of things are what dollarization helps the customer understand.
Travis: So it's total cost of lowering total cost of ownership, ultimately.
Jeffrey: Well, it's total cost of ownership depending on how customers define it. Total cost is usually
not the total economic benefit. Total cost is typically what they're talking about is how much money the
customer saves with the product. Like for example energy reduction. How much energy they've
reduced and they take that energy reduction from the purchase price and that's the total cost. However,
in reality the total cost is not just what energy consumption reduced today, but do you avoid any
preventable catastrophes in the future. And three, were you able to help your customer raise their
revenue? So all three of those have to go in to it that's why I call it total economical value and not total
cost of ownership. But it might be semantical but a lot of people, what they mean by total cost
ownership is not total economic value.
Travis: Well, I think one is linear and one is kind of compounding, right?
Jeffrey: Right. You have to show the customer the reason your product exist and it has to be shown in
a way that demonstrates economic value.
Travis: Well you know what's interesting Jeffrey is-- I want to draw some parallels but first I'm going to
ask you a question. How long in this Fox & Company marketing business before you realize the
importance of bottom-line growth because you're tuning in something that very few people talk about.
And it's something that's important to me. It took 15 years to figure this out, embarrassingly. And so
how long did it take for you to figure this out in your business?
Jeffrey: Well, it's hard to say exactly in terms of that context but when I worked for Hueblein which was
a consumer package goods company. Value there is created in different ways than say the total
economic value. It could be lifestyle, it could be roll-a-decks type feeling and high class, that kind of
thing. And we knew when you raised your price a certain percentage, how much of that money would
drop to the bottom-line. Price is the cutting lever for profitability. Most industrial companies, and I'm
useless in broad brush. If they raise their prices 1%, effective meant 1% across the entire company can
increase their net operating profits by approximately 11% to 12%. So that is an enormous impact on
profitability. So if you're making a $100 a profit and you raise your prices 1% will now make $111 to
$112 a profit. Conversely, if you cut your price 1%, you'll reduce your net operating profits by
approximately 8%. So instead of making $100 a profit you'll now make 92. I understood that math, and
always did the calculations where I work and also for all of my clients, showing them how impactful
raising price is. When I was at Loctite, I called it price to value, I didn't coin the term dollarization until I
started later in Fox & Company. But that's what it's all about, it's all about understanding what is your

value and how to price that value, and not price to say a gross margin target, or to recover
manufacturing cost and that kind of thing.
Travis: Well, you know, this is a huge leverage point for business owners and very few people
understand it. And so the most common way-- Number one, most people are focused on top line
growth rather than bottom-line, right.
Jeffrey: Right.
Travis: And there's a lot of ego tied up in that, and I can say that because I've done it and I've made
that mistake myself. And so, I want to grow the business and so the only way I could think of growing
the business, whether it be a cross-selling, up selling, or selling more people is basically mask the gas
pedal down and go faster, right.
Jeffrey: Right. You're leading up to an old cliché which is correct, the top line is vanity, the bottom line
is sanity.
Travis: Right.
Jeffrey: Let's talk to your listeners and viewers about a particular, actual case going on today in
industry and that's Amazon. Now Amazon has not made any money, Amazon is an amazing company,
a wonderful company, there's so many good things about it, it's incredible but it doesn't make any
money. So how long will the investors and shareholders put up with that? They're really betting on a
major promise, promise probably will come true because Amazon is creating market shares of
enormous numbers in many, many industries. But the reality of it is today they don't make money. So
unless you had lots and lots of financing which a small business guy doesn't have. That's a luxury that
only a very few companies can afford.
Travis: Right.
Jeffrey: Amazon being one. So the guy that owns the local grocery store or fence building business, or
whatever, he's got to make money on every sale. And so you hear people say, "Well that's a lost
leader." Well lost leaders are for losers. Lost leader is that kind of marketing strategy is a proxy for
selling and not understanding your value. You'll see this every day when you talk to people, when I do
it, we talk to our clients at Fox & Company, I ask the clients, "How do you make money?" And some of
them do not know how they make money. And so, if you don't know how you make money, how willing
to be able to market the position and price, and brand your products to make money. So it's really
important that people understand exactly what profit is and how you get there.

Travis: Right. Well, for me for the first 15 years of entrepreneurship I'd built a business to some really
huge levels. But the profitability was so thin that monthly it was, you know, like pendulum effect. We
teetered between making a lot of money and losing a lot of money, right.
Jeffrey: Right.
Travis: And ultimately, when a storm come along, things happen in a business, things happen in
personal life that make you take your eye off the ball. We ended up losing everything, I ended up losing
everything. And then I had the epiphany that we'd always position ourselves as an expert within the
industry and gave a higher level of service.
What happened is within the next 18 months I made it all back. Something that took me 15 years to
make, I made back in 18 months. And the shift was exactly what you were talking about. I increased my
prices by 30% to 40% which increased my margins by 800%.
Jeffrey: Right, that's right.
Travis: Yeah. This is another example of math like you're talking about. Most people don't understand
that if you have a 30% gross profit and you give a 10% discount, you're basically working for free.
Jeffrey: Right.
Travis: And you can add 10% to your price and increase your profits by a 100% at the same time.
Jeffrey: Right, There are some successful companies in the world that are discount-driven, high-
volume companies like say Wal-Mart.
Travis: Right.
Jeffrey: But in reality, Wal-Mart’s prices are not that much lower than there are in other places. They
just have gazillions of money invested in inventory, and in shop personnel, and real estate and so forth.
So they have humongous volumes and high turn-over of their product. So what they work on is things
called earns times turns. For example a bank may only have a 2% profit margin per transaction but they
do millions of transactions. So their earns are low but their turns are high so their overall profit is good.
It's the same with Wal-Mart, Wal-Mart probably turns over its inventory 12 or more times a year. And if
they have a 25% margin, that would be 25% times 12 which is 300%. That's a very good barometer of
profitability. However, most companies don't have that kind of luxury of huge investment or huge
shareholder patience, or this longevity of being such a superbly well-managed company over the years
that they've gotten to these volume levels.

Travis: Yeah. I agree with you. A lot of people misperceive what the larger corporations are doing as
the proper strategy for business, right.
Jeffrey: Right, correct. A lot of companies today spend too much time on "cutting cost" and not enough
time on investing in marketing innovation and selling. There are 4 sustaining factors for successful
enterprise and there are only 4. And they are marketing, innovation, a winning culture, and wise
leadership. Those are the 4 sustaining factors for a business. And marketing means the getting and
keeping of profitable customers. And innovation is anything that's new to the customer, whether it's the
way you decorate your window, a new dish in your restaurant, or whatever. Of course, a winning culture
means winning, there's no such thing as a good culture or a bad culture, there's a winning culture or
there's not a winning culture. And there are millions of great companies that work constantly on
improving, and creating, and maintaining their culture, like 1800flowers.com or other companies like
that, they've just totally into the culture. And then the third thing is wise leadership, and of course
leadership is one of those things like the San Francisco fog, you can see it, smell it, taste it but you
can't put in a bottle. And wise leadership is even more elusive.
Travis: Right.
Jeffrey: But wise leadership does the other three things, invest in marketing, innovation, and they
consider their culture to be an immune system. So they don't let in germs and if they have germs inside
they kill the germs and get rid of them. So that's what wise leadership does, I try to be succinct for your
audience.
Travis: Well, that's definitely a very brilliant and succinct way of describing it. How do you overcome
this problem with leaders because what does or does not get done in a business directly is a direct
correction of the leader?
Jeffrey: Right.
Travis: And so how could we help solve this problem for as many business owners as possible?
Jeffrey: Well you can only solve it with those business leaders who are willing to be open-minded and
objective, and put their egos by the door. Now, there are some brilliant, brilliant leaders who don't need
as much help or whatever as others. Maybe Steve Jobs was that kind of a guy, don't know. But
certainly most business leaders today are hardworking, humble men and women. They're really
listening, they're trying not to make mistakes, they're trying not to be Patton, shooting off guns in the
middle of the night. They're just want to get the job done. Those people are usually much more open to
not only bench-marking world-class companies but also talking to people who know about world-class
companies. So I thought when I started Fox & Company, when I see salespeople unprepared to make
a sales call, billboards couldn't understand it, 12 miles an hour, let alone 60. And conceive new

products and so forth. I just was convinced that companies were being passed at my door. And in fact,
only the good companies come to Fox & Company, the best companies. The poorly run, misled, ill-led
companies, they have no interest in Fox & Company, the great companies do.
Travis: Well, I think part of that is stage 1 of competence is they don't know what they don't know.
Jeffrey: Well, not only they don't know they had this ego that says they do know. And many times
these guys, gals who you'll see especially in the entrepreneurial phase of the business, the start-up
phase, they have a bandwidth of say $5 million that they can manage because they' want to control
every aspect, even turning the coffee pot on and off. Well, 5 million in 1 is not a possibility for some
people, and you can see that all the time. I had a client who was like that one time and he was in the
computer software business, and I was showing him and his team what the best positioning would be in
the advertising or product they're going to come out with. And he kept saying, "Well, let's change this ad
to look like this. Let's change the picture to look like that." Finally, I said, "Look, I'll tell you what. Why
don't you run the advertising and I'll write the software codes." He said, "But Jeffrey, you don't know
anything about software." I go, "That's right."
Travis: And you don't know anything about advertising.
Jeffrey: Yeah. Like in my book, How to Become a Great Boss, there's a chapter that says, "Don't hire a
dog and bark yourself." If you have a junkyard and you want a dog to prowl it, let the dog do the
prowling and the barking, not you.
Travis: I definitely know that there are, or know-it-all's out there. I believe that the majority of this
problem is ignorance. Not knowing how to be a good leader, not understanding what role they should
play. When I look at a business most often the owner is, if there's 5 players in the business. The
owners operating at a 110% and all of this people are operating it between 25% and 45%.
Jeffrey: Right, because he's not delegating.
Travis: Right, because he's busy pushing in the buttons rather than making sure that everything's
running right.
Jeffrey: Yeah, he's working in the business and not on the business. One of the things that I know is I
think ignorance is part of it, and that's certainly true when people make ill-informed buying decisions
because the sales person has not informed the customer. It's not that because they're dumb, it's
because they're just uneducated thing. But in some of these situation with managers, there's a
personality going into a two that they're born with a certain personality that makes them mistrusting or
suspicious, or above the person, that kind of thing. And you see great companies trying to break that

up. And when wise leadership does involve everybody from the shop room floor to the boardroom and
these decisions, and I think that's what's wise leadership is all about.
Travis: I agree. Ignorance is not knowing, stupidity is knowing but still disagreeing.
Jeffrey: Right. You know, I said to someone the other day, the person goes, "I hold a very strong belief
that," and he said, "Beliefs are beliefs, they're not facts. You're welcome to your own beliefs, but keep
in mind they are not facts.
Travis: Right. I think an exercise in growing as a business person is it’s okay to have conclusions but
be willing to listen to intelligent alternative perspectives or previews, and the chance that you'll grow
and learn something new. There's been people in my life that are committed to being right rather than
committed to finding out what's accurate. And for me when I find that I'm engaged in anything with
someone that's committed in being right, I completely lose the desire to be involved.
Jeffrey: Right. They want to be sure that their opinion is right, not that you did the right thing.
Travis: Right.
Jeffrey: I remember making a sales call with the president of a company on a motor car company up in
Detroit, and the buyer was ignorant. He was a good guy, smart, but was not educated to the CEO's
products, and so he had a point to view that was technically incorrect. But instead of asking questions
and helping the customer come to understand the facts of the product, my CEO client just started to
basically scold the guy, to berate him in a way that he didn't understand what was factually true.
Instead of realizing that this guy, he agreed to see us so therefore he must have a problem, he wants to
solve it. So in the way out in the parking lot the CEO says, "Yeah, see I was right", I go, "Yeah, dead
right." No business.
Travis: Right. Yeah, it sounds like we both had a share of experiences like that. I really love the way
that you've broken down the 4 categories that sustain a successful business, let's go deeper on the
marketing topic. What do you find that most people get wrong when it comes to marketing their
business properly in a way that attracts profitable business?
Jeffrey: Well, they forget that profitable revenues trump all kinds of sins. I have a softener and a friend
of mine who is starting a business years ago and he was talking about incorporating in Delaware, and
what kind of boardroom table we would have and everything. I said, "Hey, that's nothing. Get a
customer." The most important factor for success in a new business is having a customer. It's not the
people, the plan, the financing, the product, or anything else. The most important factor for success is
having a customer, and that's what marketing does. The long definition of marketing is the
identification, attraction, getting and keeping of profitable customers. The short definition is the getting

and keeping of profitable customers. Anything that you do to get and keep a customer is a marketing
event. Anything that's not a marketing event, hopefully it's either manufacturing, or production, or doing
something to service the customer. Or it's administration, and overhead, and a waste of money, non-
value added. So marketing is the getting and keeping of customers. And too many small companies
don't understand that. They don't understand that, they think I'll build this product and it'll sell. I mean
even in Silicon Valley, the innovative capital of the world. The formula for success out there is 98%
marketing and 2% technology. The only product that ever sold itself was probably Penicillin during
World War II.
Travis: Right.
Jeffrey: If you're a small business person, you've got to identify your customer, make sure your product
is fulfilling a need that customer wants, price it to the value the customer will get, and relentlessly,
determinately, never stop, be a fierce competitor. Which doesn't mean you're a wild animal, it means
you're just relentless about letting customers know why they should do business with you.
Travis: Right. Well, I feel like there is 3 categories of potential buyers out there. I think there's a value
buyers, someone that will buy a higher priced item if it reduced the potential for risk, and speaks to
them on other levels of quality, assurance, piece of mind, even brand awareness, things like that. Then
there is a price a buyer that is financially-driven, they need to make this purchase and really don't have
much funds to make the purchase with. So they're driven by price. And then I think there's the middle,
and good educational marketing can separate the people in the middle to either go up or down. Do you
agree with that assessment?
Jeffrey: Well, I think yes. Let me say the different ways. So maybe your listeners, your audience will
get both our perspectives. My experience is for a lot of different industries, about approximately 7% to
10%, but usually 7% of a target audience is a price-only buyer. It doesn't matter what your price is,
what your values are, they're going to buy the lowest price regardless. That's a segment you cannot
build a business on. They're fickle, they're not loyal, and they’re nothing. So those groups have to be
avoided at all cost, and that's the price only buyer, about 7%. And then you have the early adopters, the
people willing to buy at a higher value. These are people who are smart, they're experienced, they're
sophisticated in this particular category, particular chance, bought stuff before and they know from good
and bad experience what the values really are. And they're able to determine by themselves like testing
or, trying, or testimonials, or whatever what your value is and then make a judgment as to your price.
That's a very good target audience. And that's the target audience a lot of new, high tech products
appeal to because there are certain groups out there that just have to have the newest gimmick no
matter what. But they are pretty careful buyers and they make wise choices. The other category, the
other 73% if you will are people who have problems and need help solving them. And the target
audience and the marketer or the seller has to be able to, with careful needs analysis, market research

if you will, talking to customers, whatever, has to be able to intuit what those problems are and then
help the customer come to understand that their product or service is a value solution. So there are
ways to segment your customers but people who, you know-- I remember being in wine business
where the only people who got rich printing wine list with the printers because the restaurant kept
buying the lowest price wine list all the time, which was crazy. But there are customers like that.
Travis: What do you mean, there are--
Jeffrey: There are customers that doesn't matter what the value of your product is.
Travis: Oh yeah.
Jeffrey: What it is, or their always going to buy the lowest priced regardless. That's a segment you
must avoid.
Travis: Yeah, it will bring you as much pain and agony as you can possibly stand.
Jeffrey: Right. They're the ones that'll sue you, they're the ones that'll talk bad about you, they're the
ones that won't return, they are fickle for the next low priced products they'll find, ditch, forget them.
Travis: Right. So walk me down the path of innovation because I like some of the examples that you
talked about there and I think this is a category that a lot of people, beyond marketing, and the fact that
most people don't view marketing-- Most people believe that marketing is something you do every once
in a while when it actually should be an ongoing event that you should be doing. Walk me down the
path of innovation because I think that's a category that very few people talk about or even think about.
Jeffrey: That's right. And innovation of course is one of the sustaining factors, and innovation is not just
new products which is great, and new technology which is great. But it's new markets, it's new
customers, it's new ways of doing things, it's new ways of saying, telling your story. It's new ways of
putting new dishes on your restaurant menu, new ways to merchandise your store, new ways of getting
your employees to participate in training and so forth.
So, innovation is anything that helps fulfill internal, external need that's new from the prior state. And so
innovation does not have to be some cataclysmic Google-type thing, innovation can be something as
simple as an eye hospital in Mumbai, India where they were taking 10 minutes or more to do cataract
operations, and they needed to speed it up. So what they did was they put 2 hospital beds in the
operating theater instead of one, so when the surgeon was done with one cataract operation, he could
turn and start another. That's innovation. It seems so simple but two beds versus one in the operating
theater doubled their productivity, increased their throughput, created much more revenue streams and

happier customers. So innovation is just a matter of creativity, bull work, whatever. People recognize
innovation when they see it.
Travis: So it can happen on many levels, it can happen at the service level on the supply side, it can
happen in the way that you walk a, let's say a prospect down a path to give them a wow experience
before they meet you. Could that be part of innovation as well?
Jeffrey: Yes. Innovation takes all kinds of formats. I think for example, and I know this seems a little bit
immodest but I think dollarization is an innovative marketing approach where you actually name a way
to describe what people have already known, and that is that people really, truly want to make sure
they're getting their money's worth. And dollarization is a quantifiable way to do that. That's innovative.
Travis: Right.
Jeffrey: I think certain television approaches in art, commercial innovative; it's crystal clear that cable
television channels versus the traditional network channels are much more innovative, much more
creative, much more interesting and entertaining. That's a type of innovation.
Travis: Right. I think--
Jeffrey: That's innovation.
Travis: Say that again.
Jeffrey: Skype is an innovation.
Travis: Right.
Jeffrey: It's melding two existing technologies, you know. The audio and the visual.
Travis: I think innovation is really what sets one business apart from the others in my opinion.
Jeffrey: Oh yeah.
Travis: I own multiple businesses and we walk our prospects down a path that make it crystal clear that
we're different than everyone else. We send them nice things in the mail before we see them. We do
follow-up calls before we meet them, we do follow-up calls after a rep has been to their home. We do
several things that make them think to themselves, how come the other guys don't do this, right.
Jeffrey: Now that's very interesting that you call it difference because in fact, a selling point of
difference is the way to sell. Another selling strategy is to emphasize your points of difference. Now,
points of difference does not mean your product is better or worse, it's simply different. For example,

blueberry pie is different than pecan pie or apple pie. Now some people like blueberry pie and don't like
apple pie. So the seller of the blueberry pie will say to the customer, "Would you like to know our points
of difference?" A guy says, "Yeah", he said, "Well, this is made from fresh spring blueberries." Well,
that's a point of difference. It doesn't need to be better, it just means it's different. And doing things that
are different are a point of difference. Specific illustration, and I say this stark lines a lot of times.
Sometimes doing the completely the opposite of what the competitor is doing will create a new
business or a new industry. Here's an illustration. Dunkin' Donuts, sells coffee for a dollar a cup, you're
in and out of there in two minutes, perfect right. Along comes Starbucks and the coffee cost $4 and you
sit around for half hour drinking it. Two totally different approaches to the same basic customer need,
and both are very successful models, one is the opposite of the other. That happens a lot, that's
innovative.
Travis: And extremely profitable.
Jeffrey: Right. And innovation leads to profitability. It's not so much the quality of the innovation is the
quality of the commercialization and the execution of that new idea. Whether it's a new product, a new
technology, a new service, a new way to answer the phone, a new way to send a message.
Travis: Right. So the client, the prospect, when they're going through their experiences, they have
conversations with themselves. And it's clear to them that you stand out in comparison to others, and
it's also clear to them that you're not going to be the cheapest option. And so there becomes a self-
selective type process to the whole thing, is it positions you or your business to deliver a higher price.
Now of course you need to, especially in this day and age, you need to deliver on that above and
beyond because it's very easy for negative things to spread socially, but it sets the stage for
expectations in sales before the delivery price in my opinion.
Jeffrey: Right, exactly.
Travis: Okay.
Jeffrey: Setting expectations is very important with customers, they all come in with some level of
knowledge, whether it's incomplete, perfectly correct, or not totally correct, but they always have some
expectation.
Travis: Right.
Jeffrey: That's why I interviewed George Steinbrenner from one of my books and he's a terrific guy, he
was the guy that own the Yankees of course, and I said to him, "Mr. Steinbrenner, what is one question
you think is very, very important in business?," and he says, "I always ask people what you want." So
funny, he's so funny.

Travis: Well, that's basic but makes sense, right.
Jeffrey: Right, because it gets to the matter, what do you want? And a lot of times people who are
selling really don't even know how to answer that question, whether they're selling a new product or
they're asking for a charitable donation, or a contract for a ball player, or whatever, you know.
Travis: Right. Well, you know, when I walk into a place of business, let's take the example of the coffee
shop. I'm okay with paying 4 bucks at Starbucks. Their seating is nice, their place is nice, and
everything is nice. Now, if I walked into a place of business and it wasn't tidy, and it didn't have all the
nice accoutrements, I'd probably walk out if they told me $4.
Jeffrey: That's right, on the other hand you could be in the army in a dump in Thailand and you're fine.
But quality is a very interesting concept, which is really what you're talking about.
Travis : Right.
Jeffrey: Because the ambiance is part of the quality, the food, the service, and so forth. But quality is
that something that's defined by the customer, not by the marketer, and most marketers and
manufacturers do not understand that. They think the quality is defined by them but it's not, it's defined
by the customer. And let me give your audience an illustration. If the Queen of England, we're having a
state dinner at Buckingham Palace, she might have gold utensils, and that would be perfectly apt
quality. The next day the Queen of England might be having a picnic out on the grounds and they use
plastic utensils. Again, plastic is perfectly correct or a quality for that type of application. Some people
can go to McDonald's for lunch and are perfectly happy, and that night they go to Lutes or some fancy
restaurant that cost 50 times more and they're still perfectly happy. So quality is a function of the
customer's perception and not the marketer's.
Travis: And I think it's relative to context.
Jeffrey: Correct. You talk about a restaurant, you have 50 different levels of quality than you would
have for example of a manufactured product, or you would have with a guard service, or you would
have with the school bus driver. They have their own envelope of quality but always determined in
terms of good, better, and different by the customer and not the marketer. The marketer has to know
what the customer wants.
Travis: Right. And so there's got to be congruence in the context. The fact that it's out on the grounds
and your example is acceptable that it's plastic.
Jeffrey: Yeah, right. You could--
Travis: You know, the fact-- What's that?

Jeffrey: It's perfectly good quality for that application.
Travis: Yeah. You take it out of that situation and you bring them inside the residence and we're eating
on plastic, well, hmm.
Jeffrey: Yeah, right. That's not good.
Travis: The context is not right here, something's wrong.
Jeffrey: Right, exactly.
Travis: Okay, so excellent example. Let's go down a path of culture for a moment.
Jeffrey: Yup.
Travis: Tell me more about that.
Jeffrey: Well culture is again one of those kinds of slippery concepts, but in good companies you can
cut the culture with a knife. If you went in the Marine Corps, they have a culture, it is absolutely crystal
clear what that culture is. The same for example at Procter & Gamble, they have a culture. That culture
may or may not appeal to certain people, but it's a winning culture. If it's not for you that's okay, but that
culture is how that body of beliefs and dogma that they've come, they've grown up with, and how they
treat your customer, how they treat each other. That culture is extremely important. If it's a winning
culture, it is the CEO's job to be the custodian of that culture, to be the engineer of that culture, to net
let somebody come in that's anti-culture. That doesn't mean you shouldn't have the most diverse
people in the world. You can have the quirkiest guys in the company fine, but as long as they abide by
the culture. And so, all of us could think of companies that have very, very clear cultures. And those
companies tend to have longevity, and high profits, and so forth.
Travis: Right.
Jeffrey: For example the container store which I think started down your way, I'm not sure. That culture
there is amazing and it's all about training and training the retail clerks to be experts to help people
save space and time. And they train their people about 20 times more hours or days per year than
other retail outlets and therefore they have lower turnover and higher profits per employee, all these
kinds of things. But their culture is all about helping the customer save time and space.
Travis: Yeah, great point. And it takes me back to that example that we talked about earlier how most
business owners are focused on giving their 110% while everyone else is not. And the business owner
is the keeper of the gate. He needs to make sure that the phones are getting answered, he doesn't
need to be answering the phone, he needs to make sure they're getting answered properly. He needs

to make sure that the experience is being delivered consistently. All of those things that hold that
culture and that attitude in business together and make it consistent. That's what his energy and efforts
should be, correct?
Jeffrey: That's right.
Travis: Okay.
Jeffrey: I'll tell you one thing, this huge ROI in companies, and that is if people, whether they're CEO or
the bosses or any leadership role in a company, and leadership roles if you have someone reporting to
you. Or if you are someone that is looked up to by colleagues. Ten to fifteen minutes of training a day
on something is the highest internal ROI many of these companies can have. And so when you have
situation where the guy is making sure that someone answers the phone, the first thing is to teach the
person why we answer the phone, and then how to answer the phone. And all you have to do is teach a
smart person once. But a lot of people don't, they don't take the time to do that, you know. It's like a
mom telling the kid to make their bed. After a while she's so sick of it making it terribly she makes it for
them. But I think that internal training, what they say in the army, "tell, show, do, review." That's how
they teach you in the military to do things, and it's simple but smart people get it quick.
Travis: Right. It makes me think of the one of my favorite sayings that says the most common
misconception about communication is that it just occurred.
Jeffrey: There's more communication about miscommunication than anything else.
Travis: Right.
Jeffrey: Take your time, be simple, be straightforward, you know, be candid, be nice, be polite, and be
factual.
Travis: Right. Training, SOP (standard operation procedures), and the 15 minutes training, what it does
is it instills one specific way that we do things, and eliminates the majority of the confusion when you
apply these tactics that you're talking about, 15 minutes of training. And I would assume through SOP's,
right.
Jeffrey: Well, you know, that's very interesting. There are companies that deal with the reduction of
waste in businesses. And you've heard the expression lean systems and perhaps you've heard Six
Sigma and things like that.
Travis: Right.

Jeffrey: And one of the strong principles of lean which is the elimination of waste, these 8 different
kinds of waste in organizations. One of the principles is a concept called standard work, which is
exactly what you just said Travis. Standard work is when you find the right way to do some, whether it's
making a sandwich in a delicatessen or it's turning a lay on a manufacturing floor. Standard work is the
way to do things so that when there's a problem they are easily discovered. The root causes are quite
obvious but if you have 10 people making sandwiches 10 different ways, walking all over the kitchen,
you don't know how it's going to happen. What's right or wrong, or whether there's a problem or not. So
standard work is a very important criteria for waste reduction and for productivity.
Travis: Right. Because until there's consistency, you can't diagnose the problem.
Jeffrey: Right. You cannot diagnose the problem, exactly right. You have to see consistency so that
when something is not working you can immediately, visually find that root cause and solve them.
Travis: Right. We're kindred spirits aren't we Jeffrey, we could finish each other's sentences.
Jeffrey: I think your audience can see that and learn something because some of the notions we're
talking about are not, these are not-- And billboards on the side of the road, these are sophisticated
ideas that are simple to do.
Travis: Well you know, I've got to tell you, for me I'm passionate about helping as many entrepreneurs
as possible. And I'm frustrated that these metrics that menu that you are talking about are not
discussed. They're only the most important thing about your business. 90% of businesses go bankrupt,
and only 1% or 2% of businesses are truly, predictably successful, right.
Jeffrey: Right. Being in business is tough.
Travis: But there's a formula for it. Everything that we're talking about there's a formula for what you
and I are talking about. And what's frustrating is nobody is talking about these most important
ingredients. They're talking about everything but that, have you noticed that also?
Jeffrey: Yeah. There's a lot of extraneous stuff, I see it every single day. Here's a specific illustration,
social media, Facebook, Twitter, etc. Now, if people are careful, social media will become antisocial
media. Proponents of social media site, oh it keeps one person connected. Well, if you're a sales
person and you let social media, i.e. send to email, send to Twitter or whatever it is, or like us on
Facebook as a proxy for selling, you will become disconnected. So there are all kinds of things out
there that are almost a guise, a masquerade for not doing simple stuff. It is far more important to pick
up the phone and call a prospective customer than it is to send them an email blast. Or to hope and
pray that they're going to go on your Facebook page and like you on Facebook. That's a proxy, that's
not selling, you hear it in the jargon. And I have clients that talk in jargon, and they talk to each other,

"Well, we're going to do a deep data dive, or we got the dashboard and the paradigm shift and all that."
Who knows what the hell they're talking about?
Travis: Yeah.
Jeffrey: And they're talking to themselves and they use this language because obscurity is good. They
can hide behind it, you don't have to make a decision, you don't have to make a sales call. And it's the
smart companies that cut through that like a knife.
Travis: Right. And just a lot of people don't know that it just don't know that the majority of that is
nonsense. I'm somewhat anti-corporate and I've built my business to a corporate level. I've never saw
as much nonsense and ridiculousness go on as I have when I was in a corporate environment, that it
really made me just--
Jeffrey: It's amazing. I'm dealing with a major bank right now. And for two years I've been trying to get
the bank to release the insurance claim money on a building of ours that got crushed in a hurricane,
two years. Because the particular building that got crushed had to be demolished and taken away and
the town will not allow that to be rebuilt where it was. This is outside the guidelines of the bank. In other
words they're sending an inspector today for example to photograph the garage that is not there. Tell
me what that's all about.
Travis: Right.
Jeffrey: It's beyond insane, beyond insane! So they have all these policies and procedures. I travel a
lot so I like to eat in my hotel room. So I was at this hotel and I go down to the restaurant which is
maybe 10% full, and I said to the guy at the front there. I said, "Is this the same menu that you have in
the-- I can have this menu upstairs?" And he goes, "No, this is the menu. We only have it down here."
And I said, "Well, it's a better menu than the call-in menu from upstairs in my room. And he goes,
"Yeah, I know." I said, "Is it the same kitchen?," and he goes, "Yeah." I said, "It's the same waiters?",
and he goes, "Yeah". I said "Then let me order off this menu." He goes, "We can't, it's not policy", I said,
"But if I sit down here, A. you're going to make less money because the charges are higher for room
service, B. I'm going to take up a whole table and you're going to take down all the other 3 glasses and
all the extra-- It's ridiculous, who wrote the policy?" He said, "I don't know", I said, "Why did they write
the policy?" He says, "I don't know." I said, "If you'll own this hotel what would you do?" He said, "I'd
serve you room service." I said, "Then do it."
Travis: Right.
Jeffrey: That kind of thing though is insidious in companies everywhere. I won't mention the name of
the company but it's a large aerospace company. And if you walk down the hallway from their offices to

their cafeteria, let's say it's a 100-feet long. Walls on both sides behind glass window-like things are
written policies. There are thousands of them, thousands of policies. Who in the company would know
any of them?
Travis: Right.
Jeffrey: Let alone all of them. So it's insane, and you see it every day.
Travis: Well, and so you're hitting exactly at what bothers me. And I'm a champion of entrepreneurs
because we take capital and elevate it to a higher level purpose. And I believe governments do the
reverse of that. They take capital and lower it, and many corporations do that as well.
Jeffrey: That's right. One of the lessons I try show our clients, managers, is to invest their time as they
would invest their money. Now, if you had management time, you should invest that 60% of the time
with your superstars, 30% of your time with your high potential, and 10% of your time with the
blockings. You should not spend your time democratically with problematical people, you should try and
invest to help them out. If they can't make it they got to work someplace else. But you see companies
do the same thing. I had a client where they have 5 divisions. Three of the divisions are kind of
faltering, one's okay and one's a superstar division, and they're bleeding the superstar division to
bolster up the three very weak divisions. So now everybody's losing.
Travis: Right.
Jeffrey: It's insane.
Travis: Yeah. I know this chapter and verse. I'm with you. So it sounds like really the conversation and
culture bridged leadership as well, right.
Jeffrey: Right. Culture is the province of wise leaders. Culture is the company's immune system, it
keeps out diseases. It finds diseases in the company and antibodies attack that disease. CEO's have a
vibrant, dynamic, organic enterprise that they run that is constantly changing, people change where
they make new products, new customers, acquisitions, and so forth. And it is very important for wise
leadership to look over the culture, which is why in some companies as high up as you go that CEO's
and CO's are interviewing or at least after they're hired, But interviewing people at very low levels when
they come into the company. If you have a key position, you got to make sure that in addition to
competencies and skills, that the chemistry is right, that the culture is right, that you're not going to
bring in someone who is going to be anti-culture. They can be odd and weird, and they can be
iconoclast, and they can be questioning, and they can be doing lots of good things like that, but they
can't be counterculture.

Travis: I think culture; I think when business is crystal clear on their culture. People can clearly decided
whether they stand up for you or not. Harley-Davidson, they're crystal clear on what their culture is.
Jeffrey: Right, correct.
Travis: And so, people tattoo their name on their arm and there's-- IKEA, I don't shop there but they're
crystal clear on their culture.
Jeffrey: That's right, exactly. And a winning culture attracts certain people--
Travis: And repels others.
Jeffrey: Yeah. It may not attract you or me but it attracts the right person for that culture.
Travis: Right.
Jeffrey: The marketers and advertisers and planners, and so forth at Procter & Gamble are all terrific,
but they are very different than say people the people at Amazon for example, or Microsoft, or any
place. They have different cultures, they attract different kinds of people.
Travis: Yeah. I agree.
Jeffrey: Now, I hadn't been following Amazon, I'm a big fan of Amazon, I'm kind of surprised that
they're still not profitable.
Jeffrey: Right. Well you know, it keeps going into new markets and new things like that. I've always
been surprised at one thing about Amazon too. And that is that, why do they have to have such low
prices. They provide such convenience, a person doesn't have to drive to the store, doesn't have to
park in the store, doesn't have to look all around the store to find what they want, they can do it online.
That says to me why have lower prices?
Travis: Yeah, that's convenience play.
Jeffrey: Yeah. For example, sometimes when my new books come out people pre-order, and they pre-
order the books at the retail price and then Amazon gets them when it's published and they send them
at their price. They lose 4 or 5 bucks, the guys have already bought them.
Travis: Yeah.
Jeffrey: And that to me is a little strange, but he knows what he's doing obviously.
Travis: Yeah, I would imagine one day in the very near future they're going to flip that switch and
change that transition.

Jeffrey: Well, at some point in time you have to start making money.
Travis: Right.
Jeffrey: The shares are really high because of the promise of all these great market shares and all
these great industries. So he's got to turn all that market share into-- In a lot of businesses there's the
poverty segment and there's the profit segment, and you, like for example in Teflon tape. You could
have 90% of the market, it's the poverty market, even 40-50 cents a tape, or you could have like
Loctite-type sealing Teflon that's in the profit segment and they've got 50% of that market and make all
the money. Even though their sales are dwarfed by Teflon tape.
Travis: Right. Apple being a good example of that.
Jeffrey: Apple makes money.
Travis: Yeah, they're one of the most what profitable companies in the world aren't they?
Jeffrey: They were.
Travis: And they've got incredible margins on everything they sell.
Jeffrey: Right. Because they combine innovation, marketing, and pricing the value. Let's give an
example for your audience of price to value. Some companies when they make something, they add up
the material, they add up the labor, they add up the direct supervisory labor, and that comes up to a
price, I mean the cost, let's say 5 bucks. And then they want to make a 40% margin so they add $2 to
that. So their selling price is $7. Now, if that were the case with micro care, when you get a disc with a
little piece of plastic and a little of this and a little of that, you'd be paying 35 cents instead of $35, that's
price value.
Travis: Right.
Jeffrey: The price for intellectual property that's on that disc, not to the plastic the disk is made of.
Travis: Exactly. Yeah, great point. Hey Jeff, we could go on forever, me and you again are kindred
spirits on this. Let's transition into the lightning round, are you ready?
Jeffrey: Okay.
Travis: You got your seat belt on?
Jeffrey: Yeah, sure.

Travis: So, let me ask you, what's one of your favorite pieces of favorite tools or pieces of technology
that you've recently discovered, if any, that you'd recommend to other business owners and why?
Jeffrey: A personal letter on company stationery with a stamp and a signed signature. That is such a
point of difference in today's world that it is old technology that is so new, it's so striking and so intrusive
that every single letter, business letter today is read by whoever gets it. The post office says that
they've gone from 225 billion pieces of mail to a 175 billion down, that's an amazing drop, but the
number of personal stationery-type letters has gone to practically zero. So if you want a hi-tech way to
reach a customer, write them a letter.
Travis: In number 10 white envelopes, personally hand addressed?
Jeffrey: I wouldn't hand address it, I would type it. You can do it on your computer, I mean, you can
print a letter on your stationery and sign it, and you can do the same with the-- But, no, a hand note is
different. A personal letter to a new customer for example, "Dear Mr. Smith, bop bop bop", that is a very
powerful, intrusive marketing device and it's so rare that it beats a hundred thousand social media
outreaches. On the other hand a handwritten note after a sales meeting. Dear Travis, Really
appreciated your time. We'll follow up with what I promised. Sincerely yours, Jeffrey Fox. That's also a
pointed difference, that's also remembered that's also kept. So if your audience wants to have a point of
difference to be unique and special, and use technology, then use the US Post Office. It is the best
intrusive technology today. One letter is worth a thousand--
Travis: Likes.
Jeffrey: Emails and so forth.
Travis: Right. I agree with you. They have a high hit ratio because they get through to the target.
Jeffrey: Totally, 100%.
Travis: What's a famous quote that would best summarize your belief or attitude in business?
Jeffrey: Well, I'm not sure if I heard from somebody else or I made it up myself but I definitely took all
credit for it and put it one of my books, How to Become CEO, and that is WACADAD, which is W-A-C-
A-D-A-D, it's an acronym for Words Are Cheap And Deeds Are Dear.
Travis: I like that; I think you did craft that because I've never heard it.
Jeffrey: Yeah, I think I did.
Travis: Let's give you credit on that one.

Jeffrey: Who knows, you know. I have an Eidetic memory sometimes and I do remember stuff, but
WACADAD, W-A-C-A-D-A-D, Words Are Cheap And Deeds Are Dear.
Travis: I like it. Okay, so, how do people connect with you?
Jeffrey: Well, my website is foxandcompany.com and we're in Chester, Connecticut. I run line and all
that kind of jazz. My books are available everywhere, they're supposed to be although the bookstore
industry seems to be in panic these days and they shouldn't be. But we're there--
Travis: Okay.
Jeffrey: Jeffrey Fox, Chester Connecticut.
Travis: Well, I almost let one question slip also, what book or program made an impact on you related
to business that you'd recommend?
Jeffrey: Well, other than my books, there's a great book called Obvious Adams, it was written by
Robert Updegraff in 1916. It was part of an article in the Saturday Evening Post. I first read it when I
was in high school, it's only about 20 pages long. It's a fabulous book, Obvious Adams is a book about
an advertising man, a marketing man who actually visits problems, he doesn't hunch them in his office.
He goes to see what's happening and he is observant, and objective and, he thinks plainly, and he
comes up with simple solutions. Obvious Adams, it's a great book. And I know it's going to be re-
published because someone contacted me and asked if I would write the Foreword.
Travis: Oh okay, so is it available now?
Jeffrey: Yes, I think so. I'm not a 100% sure, the family, the Updegraff family, before I wrote my books,
I was probably number one purchaser of the book because I would always buy it and give it to my
clients. And not exactly whether the family has sold the rights or what have you but I do think it's
available still. I'm not 100% sure but it is going to be re-released. And it's get-able, if people want to
really search-- I think I helped the Updegraff family get Amazon to sell it, so I'm not--
Travis: Excellent. I'm going to put that on my list.
Jeffrey: It's a great book. I actually had a list of books in my book How to Become CEO, books that
people should read now is one of them. And another one is Any Book by David Ogilvy who's now
deceased, the great advertising genius who started Ogilvy and Mather.
Travis: Yeah.

Jeffrey: Some of this books, Confession of an Advertising Man and stuff like that are just absolutely
priceless.
Travis: Yeah, Ogilvy on advertising and stuff like that.
Jeffrey: Yeah, correct. Excellent. Jeffrey, you're brilliant my friend, it's been an absolute pleasure
having you on the show, can you hangout for a couple of minutes?
Travis: Sure.
Jeffrey: Excellent.
Travis: Listen guys, I want to remind you that you can find all of the links to the books and resources
that we mentioned in the show. Just go to rockstarentrepreneurnetwork.com, it's a brand new site that
we're building out that's completely focused on giving you the resources to grow your business. Today I
want to close the show with a quote from Robert Collier, and the quote reads, "Success is the sum of
small efforts, repeated day in and day out." This is Travis Lane Jenkins signing off for now. Remember,
no matter where you're at in your journey as an entrepreneur, you're an inspiration to those around you
to go after their dreams to so I want to encourage you to keep it up. To your incredible success, do you
want to say good bye Jeff?
Jeffrey: Good bye everybody, thanks for listening to me.
Travis: Yeah, it's a lot of fun. We could do a whole another session Jeff.
Jeffrey: Anytime.
End of Interview

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