Entrepreneurs Over 40 Episode 9 with Jeffrey Nash

0:00:01.2 S1: Our guest today is a former marine where he was in charge of security for the presidential helicopters. After you left us marine, Cory went on to work in sales and also as a manager from his warehouse... Well, there he generated millions of dollars in revenue and perhaps more importantly, serve as a mentor to his co-workers who went on to... And then a baby Walker left Men's Warehouse and after almost 15 years started one company, it's out further or do let me present to you Jeffrey Nash, the inventor of the jump. Good morning. The pleasure for me, I will be talking to you. Pleasure is all mine. Eurasian the gaps from that intro though. And tell us what's going on in your life now.

0:00:43.6 S2: What's going on in my life? During the pandemic, I was stuck in the house for about 13 months, and I was just about ready to retire. However, after going through the pandemic and seeing what awaits me should I retire, I decided that I was gonna start an entire new career in renewable energy.

0:01:14.4 S1: Oh, wow. Can you talk about that a little bit?

0:01:16.8 S2: Yeah, during the period that I was on... During the pandemic, I kind of... Maybe the last five or six years, I've been very interested in renewable energy, solar power, to be specific, and I started to look at some of the companies that are in Nevada, and I did some research, a lot of research actually, and I was very interested in possibly hooking up with a company that had outstanding service, because it seemed to me as though if I was a customer that bought Solar paneling, I would wanna make sure that if something went wrong, I could pick up the phone, 247 and somebody would actually show up. So what I did was when things started to loosen up a little, I went to about four companies and interviewed, and out of the four, I decided to go with this one particular company named orange burst that has a service through Palmetto and just an outstanding company. And so I'm having a good time learning about solar energy and how it's going to help the future as far as power is concerned.

0:02:45.5 S1: Now, are you gonna be an employer and in sales for that company or... How is that going to work? Yes, I'm gonna be selling. So kind of an affiliate or a commission basis, I imagine... Yes, 100% commission. Yeah, what's gonna happen with the joy...

0:03:03.6 S2: Oh no, the Jay kind of runs on its own. Right now, we advertise on Google and from time to time, I'll get wholesale offers, but I'm very particular who I sell it to, I've had situations with the Jupiter, I said no to people because of their customer service is very important to me. That if a customer has a problem with our baby Walker, that somebody gets back to them almost immediately. That's

0:03:35.6 S1: A great business model. I know a little bit about your origin story, I came to invent the jumpy, but could you explain for our audience how you came up with the idea for it? Yeah.

0:03:45.7 S2: I was in Los Angeles and my granddad has had a soccer game, and while we're watching the game, I noticed that a mother was teaching her child to walk on the side of the field, and she bent over, and I had seen this thousands of times in my life, and I could see that she was having a hard time bending over and walking by, just looking at that, the design of the jumped just jumped in my head, even though I had seen it thousands of times, and it just wouldn't leave... It just wouldn't leave. So after I got back to Vegas, I had a seamstress, tailor, put together my vision of what a Jay should look like, and after about the fourth one that she did... That was it. That was the design I was looking for.

0:04:42.0 S1: So how did you get that first run of Jude's manufactured and how did you fund it?

0:04:47.5 S2: Well, I funded it with my own cash, I had about 50 grand, you're a better saver than I am. Well, during that time, there was a lot going on, as a matter of fact, it was during 2010, and the economy was falling out of the bottom, and I wanted to do something on my own, I didn't really wanna work for anybody anymore, so I met someone who knew someone that could get this, this baby Walker manufactured in China. So my first run was through this person, it didn't turn out that good because I ended up spending a lot more than I would have had I gone out and found my own manufacturer oversees... Hindsight being 2020. Yeah, is the... These are the pitfalls that one face is when you're just beginning something that you've never done before, and

0:05:50.8 S1: There's a lot of information online, but in 2010, so it sounds like you just went in and broke each portion of the problem down and tackled it. Yeah.

0:06:00.7 S2: You're starting out and in an arena that you know nothing about, so you have to rely on your vision, your perseverance, you try to stay open-minded, like a lot of people, I think have the wrong perspective when it comes to failure.

0:06:23.4 S1: I embraced adversity and I try to stay as optimistic as I can, I think that's where our public school system has kind of blends down a little bit, they talk... People that it's not okay to fail.

0:06:37.0 S2: Right, exactly. Listen, and every disadvantage is an advantage, and again, to stay positive is so important because you're gonna run into so many situations that could devastate you, there's a lot of people out here that pretend as though they are professionals or they're the best, especially when it comes to marketing and analytics, they all say, We can do this, we can do that. And initially, they took advantage of me initially, but it didn't take me long to say to anyone that would call me, telling me all that they could do... I would say to them that, Well, you know, here's the thing. I believe that you are as great as you are as you say you are, and because I do, this is what we will do for every job that you sell, I'll give you 10%, but I give you nothing upfront. Nobody wonder that. Yeah.

0:07:42.6 S1: Well, it's a really good... They could take it.

0:07:45.1 S2: Yeah, exactly, if you can do everything that you say you can do, then this shouldn't be a problem, but see, a lot of companies wanna... They wanna hook you into a six-month contract and try to 800 for a month. And who knows what they're doing. What's been some of your biggest challenges? It sounds like one of them at least. Designing on a rockers. My biggest challenge would have to be with Amazon again, you have a situation with Amazon where when we started, we were the only baby walker, like a job on Amazon, and within three years, Amazon got in with narco or products that were very, very similar. And when I call or an email, Amazon, I would get dates. So that can be discouraging. So my solution to that was to take our product off of the main and only sell it on our website, the Jap dot com. I've heard of other people talk about Amazon and nobody's perfect. And listen, I understand we even had a situation where a bar wanted to put in a big order, and of course, we were excited to get the purchase of water from Babies R Us at the time, but when I read the contract, there were numerous protections for Babies R Us.

0:09:25.7 S2: But none for me. So I called the purchasing agent and I said, Listen, I don't see any protections for us, so we're not gonna do business with you. And she says, What do you mean? Everybody wants to do business with us. That may be the case, but we're not. And fortunately for me, I did that because had I not, I would have gone out of business because babies are us, three years later went out of business and they would have taken your product with them and use it to liquidate... Well, exactly, I wouldn't have gotten any money out of the deal, I would have lost a lot of money.

0:10:08.0 S1: Oh yeah, and I've heard similar stories with a rather large retailers to sell or manatees to become your biggest customer, and that they drive all of these concessions, if you bend over back, meet the concessions and you're unable to service other customers, and it's kind of a race to the bottom with them.

0:10:26.3 S2: Exactly. So my whole thing is that... Listen, I'm very proud of the fact that we've been in business for 12 years. I even ran into someone while I was selling men's clothing for a company after the Men's Warehouse, I was sitting her husband in a suit, and I noticed she had a baby with her, and while the husband was in the dressing room, I said to her, Have you ever heard of the jury? And she just stared at me. Never really said anything. Okay, so the husband comes out of the dressing room, I'm marking his suit up and she had gone outside and came back in her hands... She had a jumpy. Wow. Yeah, so I'm very happy that people are getting to know about the Jay, it takes a while, like I say to people all the time, even when they introduce sliced bread, it took 10 years for it to catch on someone's

0:11:37.9 S1: Been your marketing strategy overall for the juve

0:11:41.2 S2: All... We advertise on Google every day, and we do a considerable amount of business because now it's becoming organic, where Patty down the street got the Japan, she says, Oh, she doesn't have to bend over... The baby loves it. Hey honey, why don't we get one

0:12:06.4 S1: Kind of organic marketing to just happen... Actually.

0:12:10.8 S2: Yes, I'm just happy that I got an opportunity to invent something that nobody else had thought about, it's been relatively successful because of my attitude, I don't worry about, Gee, we're gonna do 300000 in profit this year. I'm not interested. What I love is that we have a product, we continue to stay in business and we continue to sell them every day, and nobody knows what next week or next month or next year, bring... Did

0:12:48.2 S1: You ever consider going on Shark Tank?

0:12:51.0 S2: You know something shot tank called is chacha called us and every Monday, we would get on the phone with the producers and we would go over the script, and for me, it's like, again, I have to have full control because this is my bed. Let's say somebody on Shark Tank says, You know, I wanna buy in 20%. Okay, now that they have 20% in, now that the iron chatty get 100% of the same, I was very concerned about that. I can... Nathan, the fact that this is all scripted, they would say things like, Okay, so they would say this and you would say that... No, but I really wouldn't say that. For TV, you gotta say that. Yeah.

0:13:47.7 S1: I wonder what is that they did so much scripting or rehearsing on me.

0:13:52.1 S2: Well, you wouldn't know that unless you were inside it. So that didn't excite me. Again, I'm not that money motivated when it comes to this particular thing.

0:14:05.9 S1: It sounds like you're just sent for the long game and for helping people...

0:14:10.0 S2: Well, that is true. I never looked at this as, Okay, this is gonna be the thing, this is gonna be the power ball of my life or mega bucks of my life. No, I'm gonna take my time and I'm gonna cultivate this just the way I want... Nobody's gonna tell me what I need to do or when to do it, when it comes to the Japan, let's get ready to wrap this, what's the best business book or both that you would recommend for somebody that's looking to start their own product or has their own invention. Well, I don't know so much if there's a book that I read that helped me with this, and I've read many different books, what I found to be extremely helpful was things like meditating, listening to motivational speakers, because you need that motivation every day as you're going through the trials and tribulations of navigating through all the things that come your way when you're trying to set up a business, a lot depends on your attitude, if you got a good attitude, you can make it through and if not, if not, you're going to continually think about things that you shouldn't be thinking about, like failure.

0:15:43.3 S1: Is there an app or a tool that you recommend that you use in your business or that you've used...

0:15:49.3 S2: No. We got very familiar with AdWords and Analytics, Google, and that works for me. That's

0:15:56.9 S1: A wrap. I'd like to thank you, Joe, not only for being on the show, but also for help, helps you say to the tax parents and grandparents everywhere, one last question, where should people go to buy a job and help their children learn to walk safely?

0:16:11.5 S2: They can go to the... The Jay, J. J-U-P-P-Y dot com.

0:16:19.3 S1: Alright, well, thank you. Answer traits.

0:16:21.8 S2: Been my pleasure, sir. Have a wonderful weekend.