The One Thing Nobody Can Take From Your Home Service Business | Jason Feifer

Tommy Mello (0:00)

In the beginning, two decades ago, you were frustrated, small town newspaper reporter.

And tell me a little bit about your life. What got you into where you're at today? What are you excited about?

Jason Feifer (0:12)

Yeah, man, I graduated college, and I became a small town newspaper reporter. North Central, Massachusetts, shout out to anybody who lives in Gardner, Mass. Because I worked at the Gardner News.

And I just had these big ambitions for myself, like everyone does, and I felt frustrated that I was where I was, that I was working at this tiny little paper, that I wasn't getting noticed. I expected, Tommy, I'm sure so many people do, I expected to just be noticed, that if I did good work, people would see it and they would reward me. And it doesn't work that way. What I have found now over a course of a career is that there are two ways to be in the world. You can be interchangeable or you can be singular. And if you're interchangeable, then you have the same skill sets as so many other people, your value is low because you're a commodity. If you're singular, you're seen as the single person who can solve that problem, who can do that thing. Your value is high because there's a scarcity for you. Back then, I thought just being a good writer, an editor or reporter or whatever would make me stand out. But what I have since learned is that it doesn't. Your expertise, your skills alone do not make you stand out. And so back then, I was frustrated because I didn't understand what did make me stand out. I think I've spent my career trying to figure that out.

Tommy Mello (1:29)

So what is it?

Jason Feifer (1:32)

It's a couple of things. Number one, it is what problem do you own?

What do people turn to you specifically to solve so that they understand that you equals solution for them? And then number two, it's your ideas.

It's not just your expertise, it's your ideas. I have spent so long trying to think about and refining how I articulate my ideas. Even, let's just say, this thing that I just said to you a second ago about being singular versus interchangeable. There's another way of saying that, which is just, hey, hey Tommy, you know, look, you got to stand out. If you don't stand out, then people won't. But nobody remembers that. It sounds pat, it sounds generic. You need ownable language. You need to take your ideas and turn them into things that you can repeat, that sound really catchy, that people start to associate with you. So when I say over and over again, you got to be, you're either singular or you're interchangeable, people start to view their problem through my language. And once they do that, then I am the owner of the solution. And then they turn to me. And that again, makes me singular.

Tommy Mello (2:37)

So walk me through 20 years ago, when did you find the job at Entrepreneur Magazine and what rose you to the top?

Jason Feifer (2:46)

I found the job at Entrepreneur Magazine 11 years ago. I joined Entrepreneur in 2015 I became Editor-in-Chief in 2016 Wow. And at the time, I was just looking for another job. Honestly, I did not think of myself as an entrepreneur. I did not think that I belonged at Entrepreneur Magazine. It was just an opportunity that was available to me. And I took it because it sounded interesting. And then I became Editor-in-Chief. And when I became Editor-in-Chief, people started to treat me differently.

And in a couple of ways, they would, they do things like we're doing right now, which is that they would have me on their podcasts, and they would introduce me as some kind of authority, and they would expect me to have lots of things to say. And I didn't. I didn't have lots of things to say.

And it made me really nervous. What am I doing here? I'm just a guy who tells stories. And though I realized that if I could figure out how to embody the thing that people thought that I was, there was going to be a massive opportunity there. And to do that, I had to start rethinking exactly who I am.

You have to go through this process of, I think, not just looking at what you do or what is accessible to you.

Think about your job, whatever it is that you're doing right now. You have a lot of things that are accessible to you. The easy options. I know easily how to do that. I know easily how to do that. But then there's another layer outside of that, which I call available. There's accessible, and then there's available. And available is everything that you could do, but nobody's asking you to do.