Escaping The Drift: How To Reclaim Your Life & Succeed with Jeff Fargo EP 55
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From the art of the deal to keeping it real. Live from the Simply Vegas studios, it's The Power Move with Jon Gafford. Back again, back again, back again. For another fantastic, fantastical, wonderful episode of The Power Move, I am your host, Jon Gafford.

John Gafford. Colt is off today. Connell is off today. If the only reason you listen to this show is for them, you might want to just go and skip to another episode because you're going to be a little lost today. I'm not alone in the studio today. I'm not alone. I'm sitting in the studio, blessed for all of me and for all of you guys today, is Jeff Fargo. And let me explain a little bit about who Jeff Fargo is. Jeff Fargo has become a little bit of a, call him a legend. Call

call him a stallion, a stud, whatever, I don't know, whatever you want to say it in the title industry of which I'm in, of which we own a business in the title industry. And Jeff is one of those guys who has made a name for himself and built an exceptional business in that space.

by not just being a great salesman himself by being able to sell the products that he sells, but also by teaching others how to do that as well. So welcome to The Power Move. Thank you, sir. How are you doing, buddy? My pleasure. I'm well. So good. So I always like to start this out, man, because anybody that's a good salesperson, and today what we're going to talk about is, of course, it's going to be sales. So if you're in sales and if you think, man, I'm not even in sales, it's not what I do, you're still going to want to listen because trust me,

Oh yeah. It's Friday. I mean, it's today. I don't know what day you'll hear this, but if you're going out tonight and you're, you're a single person and you're going to walk up to somebody of the opposite sex at a bar, you're in sales. Yeah. You're in sales, buddy. So you, you might want to listen to just get some tips on this. Everybody's in sales. So, so take a listen. So I always like to start this out, man, because I find that

highly successful people. There's things that have happened in their life and there's similarities, if you will, as you go through it. So I'd like to start out with, when you were young, man, talk about your background, where you grew up, your family, all that stuff. Where does it start for Jeff? Where does it start? Born in Manhattan, New York City. I was there until I was six. And then upstate New York, my family controlled 80% of all the commercial lakefront property on the north shore of Canandaigua Lake.

which is number two per linear foot in terms of expense behind Lake Tahoe nationwide. My grandfather did all of it, starting from nothing. And so growing up, we owned an amusement park, 24 unit college housing complex, a 32 pad trailer park, 500 seat banquet facility. Wow. Okay. Well, that brings me up. Well, that's right. That's the first set of questions. That's the first set of questions. Yeah.

I am a firm believer in tough times build great men, soft times build weak men. And quite frankly, it scares the living shit out of me. Every time I take my kids somewhere, they get to do some of the stuff that they get to do. I'm always looking at them like, am I ruining these children? So obviously, you grew up in a pretty decent household. Oh, yeah. So my first question is...

Were you, were there times in your life? Cause I'll be honest with you. Right. Right.

Because I'm kind of the same way. I didn't grow up hard. I mean, I grew up in a weird sort of a situation where my father was an attorney, wound up being a judge, but got divorced from my mom when I was very young. And some things you should never do, I think, one of which is play pool for money against a girl that has a dragon tattoo in her own pool stick. I think that's a bad idea. And I think also divorcing a Southern lawyer in his own hometown in a small town

South Southern town. That's a bad move. John Grissom novel. Yeah, exactly. So, so my mom didn't exactly get the best settlement. So, you know, it was weird because we were like the poorest people in the nicest neighborhood, if that makes sense. And it was, and it was a weird sort of thing, but there were times based in my life. Cause I didn't, I don't have that David Goggins story of grind. You know what I mean? And there was probably times in my life where I could say,

Maybe I was worthless. Maybe I didn't go so well. And to be honest, I would say that I probably started clicking on all cylinders. I mean, I had cool jobs that made a bunch of, you know, didn't make a bunch of money, but they were cool. But I would say I didn't really become what I would deem myself as successful.

until my mid-30s. So like, where were you with that? Like, where were you? I was, and I'm 52 now. I literally, the light went on for me. I was 45, 46. And my wife at the time became pregnant with our third child.

And she said, and she was a teacher here in Vegas, seventh grade at Del Webb. And she said, you know, our other two kids, I had to be home to, you know, raise them and be there. And I, or no, I'm sorry, I wasn't home. I was working. And so I want to be home with Jack, with our two-year-old son. And she said, can you step up financially? Yeah.

And I was at a local title company here. It was my third year at that company. And I said, yeah, I'll do it. And that was it. And it was the thought of fear, really. Fear of failure. Fear of making it go. Fear is a great freaking motivator, man. Fear is awesome. And so that's really what got me was I knew I had to make a certain amount of calls every single day to get in front of realtors. To get where it was. And there was times I'm in my driveway at my house.

And I couldn't go inside until I knew I had to make three or four more phone calls. And I did that. Wow. Yeah. That was the big one for me was another child coming.

And then there was. And that's my job is to, I feel I'm traditional that way. And, you know, she wants to stay home. Okay. Awesome. And let's do it. Let's roll. I've got this. Well, let's go back to the silver spoon. Oh, yeah. You know, apartment owning, amusement park having. Oh, yeah. I was a mess. I was a mess.

mess. So I'm going to guess I'm going to try a stereotype here based on that information. I'm going to go see student in high school because because you could get A's on all the tests, but you never did your homework. Great. Okay. Okay. That's me too. Same thing. All right. There it is.

Did they have enough juice to get you into college? Football got me into college. Division III school, St. John Fisher College in Rochester, New York, got me in. Football got me into there. That's what happened. So I'm guessing also, I'm going to guess, you're playing football for them. Yeah. And this may be, I'm going to go either way. Did you join a fraternity? No, no fraternity. You did not. Small school. Small school. But partied?

I had a good time. Yeah. Actually stayed a fifth year, took a second major, convinced my mom to pay for it. You were Tommy boy. Yeah. You were Tommy boy. Convinced my mom to pay for a fifth year of school because there was a recession happening. All right. Is what I said to my mother. She was like, okay, fine. She didn't care. And so, yeah, stayed a fifth year in school just to party. That was it. That was it.

That was it. That was me in school. So did you graduate? Oh, yeah. Did you finish? You did? You have a degree. I have a degree. Double major. Political science, communication, journalism. Well, let's back up. Let's back up. I'm going to back up another step then. Please do. So again, I like to say that success excludes. What was the, as a kid, what was the, I always ask everybody this. What was the first hustle for money?

I worked with my dad. My dad's always been in sales, was in New York City, and he sold life insurance. And so we went to gun shows and flea markets every weekend, and we'd sell knives. And he was knife man, and I was, you guessed it, knife boy. You were knife boy. And we had showcases on eight-foot banquet tables, and people would come by, and on the back of every single knife and a little sticky note was a number. Whatever I got above that number, I put in my pocket. I

I was 10 years old. So dad was letting you work on the arbitrage at 10 years old. Exactly right. I love that. One of the best salesmen I've ever been with is my dad. I love that. He's amazing. I love that. Yeah. And I, to this day I have his, it's 60 years old, a Louis Vuitton men's attache case. That's a glorified laptop carrier for me. That was his first big purchase.

from his first big deal he did at MetLife in Manhattan. Oh, my God. He went to Louis Vuitton and bought this bag. And five years ago, I went back to upstate New York. He said, you're a better salesperson than I ever will be. Take this. And what a great compliment. It's amazing. It's always great when the old man kind of... Oh, validation. Yeah. Validation. You know, my dad, before he passed, said something to me that I thought was great, which was, he said...

You're going to, you know, I know you'll be more successful for me because you're willing to take risks that I never was. I just, I just, I just, my dad was always super conservative. He always, you know, he was, you know, like I said, he was an attorney and a judge, but he always owned like weird things. Like, you know, it's like shrimp boats, like straight for a scum. Yeah. I was going to say they had shrimp and boat. I mean, he didn't go shrimping on them, but they own shrimp and boats. Right. And just rant like tree farms.

Like he would own, yeah, right? Just stuff like this where they grow pine trees and every winter they would sell the pine straw that fell down to the landscapers. And then once every 10 or 15 years they'd cut the trees for pulpwood. You know what I mean? It was just nothing flashy that was going to get rich quick, but it was just always kind of a slow grind stuff. Yeah.

So in college, did you play football the whole time? I played my first two years and then blew my shoulders out and said, I'm done. That's it. Done. That's it. I'm out. And then just became a social butterfly and started bartending. So, okay. So you're bartending. So you're bartending. Bartending at the Paddams, the college bar in East Rochester, New York. The one. Everybody from St. John Fisher went to. That's it.

That's what you see because I see a lot of similarities here. And I always like pointing out similarities. So one of my first jobs, like I was working like crappy jobs. And then I bust my first table when I was probably 15 and I was done. Because it had nothing to do with whatever they were paying me an hour, whatever the $5, $4 an hour I was being paid. It was that tip out at the end of the night. And then I was finished. So it went from...

you know, being busboy to being waiter to be learning how to bartend at 18. And I was actually the bar manager of a bar when I was 18, because in Florida you could do that. And then I actually owned part of a bar when I was 20. Awesome. So I spent a lot of great years in hospitality. So that kind of became my life. And it's hard. And if you're one of the people that's listening to this, man, if you are somebody that is in hospitality, all right, and I give this same advice all the time.

It is very easy. And I saw people over the years, you know, I own nightclubs and I went up owning restaurants, owning bars and stuff. And I saw people, you know, get stuck in that puddle, man, get stuck in that rut of go in, make your money, get off, go to whatever bar is still open after you get off, drink the night's winnings and then, and then get up and rinse and repeat. Yeah.

If you are in the bar business, or even the restaurant business, you better be in it to do one of a couple things. Number one, start saving your money to get into management. And the only reason you get into management is to learn how to own the place.

That's the only reason. And there better be a path for you to get to A to Z because if not, a lot of people get sucked into that. You have to evolve. I was washing pots and pans at Caruso's Lakeshore House, my family's banquet facility restaurant at eight years old, nine years old. I ride my bike down there because my mom ran the place. Only child of divorced parents. So did it to be near her and got paid, you know, slave labor wages, but didn't care.

you know, whatever. And just, and just did that and was fine with that. Yeah. And, but it was, I saw the bigger picture because even though I was doing that, I saw how my mom would run it. And I saw her on Excel back in the eighties. Yeah. You know, it was bananas. It was, it was, what was it called then?

- Lotus 1-2-3. - Lotus. - Lotus 1-2-3. - It was Lotus 1-2-3. - And she was, I was amazed by that, that I saw the back end business part of it, but then also the front end grind of what you're doing. But also completely took advantage of that and had no hustle. I went more 'cause I'm a mama's boy and I went to go see her. Like I said before, the switch didn't get flipped to me until I had skin in the game being a dad.

Yeah. Then it was like, you have another human being. But you got a lot of life here. A lot. Oh, I have stories. So let's not get to that. So you graduate from school and then you go into what I call the drift.

This is your drifting. You're going to a period of drift. And I think a lot of people that even listen to stuff or watching this come down social media or whatever they're doing, I mean, a lot of you are probably at a place where you feel like you're not where you're supposed to be. Correct. You're just kind of existing. You're drifting. Yeah. And so tell me about your period of drift. My drift was I moved from upstate New York to Manhattan, lived on the Upper East Side of Manhattan and sold copiers for Canon, for Canon copiers for two years, door-to-door in the garment district.

and I was knocking on doors. They thought I was immigration because I'm going to have a briefcase with a suit and it's these sweatshops. Oh, right. And it's, it's real, man. Like the steel door would open. They'd look at me and slam the door. I'm like, I just want to sell you a fax machine, man. I don't know what you got going on in there. So let's talk about a tough sale. You first step one, run off half of their workforce accidentally. Yeah. And now I'm going to hear to sell you. Yeah. I just want it. I just want to say a copier. I

know i've season tickets to the yankees you want to come to the yankee game with me let's go and and so i did that for about two years and so going back to my mom took over from my uncle and grandfather everything and um and i started with college housing she put me in the brentwood apartments is where i started at 22. yeah um 24 unit college housing complex and she said you're managing this yeah and she's great she goes it's yours we'll go over p l's monthly the only advice i'm going to tell you is don't diddle the tenants that's it

So that went out the window in about 30 seconds. Actually, no. Didn't? Didn't. Good for you. I was good. I was good. I have ridiculous willpower. I don't know how. Were you married at this point or were you just single? Single and I was 22 years old and 23 and running a, you know, and it was 50% occupied after my first year, 100% occupied, cash cow rolling. See, I had a friend of mine whose dad owned a place in Orlando called Collegiate Village Inn. It was exactly the same thing.

He did not take that advice. Yeah, that's the thing is that with college housing, it's lucrative, but yeah, you can't cross that line. Well, he got what I like to call the Peter Pan syndrome. Oh, yeah. Where he's like 20. It was like Matthew McConaughey in Days of Confusion. Like, yeah, this is just a crop of freshman chicks. All right, all right, all right. Exactly.

That's the route he went. So how long did you do that? How long did you stay there? 13 years. 13 years. So 13 years. Yeah. So what point? So now you're, now you're mid thirties, early thirties. Early thirties. Yeah. What point did you meet your wife? So I'm guessing that was part of it. So then I was, I was dating a girl at that time.

in canada new york who i knew i'd never marry she was awesome and she said one day i'm moving to st george utah i said where the hell is st george utah and she said two hours outside of vegas i go i love vegas yeah and adhd i'm like let's go take a look i'm bored yeah i was at a point in my life where my phone calls got returned um i had a big rolodex i had people in albany and you know i the minority leader of the assembly was one of my best friends so i i knew people and

and I was bored. Yeah. A massive fish in a small pond, and so went to... How much were you making financially at this point? Maybe $150 a year. Okay. You know. So not chicken feed? No, not bad. And this is...

This is 2005 money. - Okay. - So. - Yeah, pretty good. - So not bad. - Pretty good. - Was happy, was content, but didn't know the world that much 'cause I was always in either a little bit of New York City, mostly just Western New York. - Yeah. - Going to Buffalo Bills games in the middle of winter. - Yeah. - Seeing people play flag football with their shirts off in December. - Yeah. - Like what the hell's going on with you people? - It's so funny, man. - Those mafia. - At one point, you know, I worked for a corporation I had moved around a lot and one of the places, I spent a lot of time in the Midwest and I realized

what a hard place that is to kind of move or even escape because like most people live in those parts of the world. Like you grow up, you know, you buy a house,

seven blocks away from mom and dad. You marry the girl you went to high school with. You're still hanging out with the same people. And it just, it just, yeah, it's, it's rinse and repeat, man. It just never changes. So getting out of that draft beer, primary buffets. Yeah. That's going to join. You're going to join the moose lodge. Yeah. Elks club. I was an Elks cause they had great, they had great spaghetti. Uh, there, there's spaghetti dinners that are great. Um,

And yeah, so I was just like, okay, let's go check out St. George. Went there, interviewed with Caldwell Banker Commercial. And they, like on the spot, were like, get over here. We think you're great. Went back and talked to my mom, helped her. We sold off, I think it was probably $5 to $6 million. Ended up selling off, gave, said the money went to her. Take it. See, I like that because you say it's like it was so easy. And people are probably listening to this right now like, okay, let me get this straight.

This dude cast $150,000 job into the wind on a whim to go see what else was out there. And I think that in itself, man, takes a certain kind of moxie. And again, it's about risk analysis and risk reward. So when you're making that decision, I think that decision is very interesting. I mean, take me back to like walk me through making that decision.

It was really, it can't be as easy as you said. Well, to me it was more about is the squeeze worth the juice. Yeah. And I was just at a point where I love Canada, New York. I go back and was every year and bring and bring some of my kids with me. Um, cause I found my dad's still there. I have friends there forever who I love and adore, but I, I was bored there. Yeah. And so I really thought about, is this where I'm going to spend the rest of my life? And for me, the economics of it was I could move to St. George, um,

This is back before the bubble burst. This is 05. Oh, right. You're like, the market's screaming. The market's rolling right now. I'm going to freaking kill it. Everybody's going to be a millionaire. These guys are already saying, hey, we have plazas that we oversee. You can do tenant rep deals and done. We'll give you a book of business because of your hustle and who you are. Yeah. Which we can get into that in a second, how I did...

okay doing that. I cold called all of downtown, all of St. George proper, every single business there as a commercial broker. Just went and knocked on doors to introduce myself. No one had done that before. I got business from it. But we'll get to that in a second. So for me, it was more about, okay, I could make the same, even more money with half the taxes and it doesn't snow that much in St. George. Because in upstate New York, it's brutal.

I've told all my friends, even my dad, if you die in the winter, I will send Kentucky Derby-style roses to your funeral. But I'm not coming. I'm not coming back. Love you. Not coming back. When I left Detroit, I told... Was it Detroit? I think it was Detroit. I told people when I left Detroit, because when I was in corporate restaurants, I would...

you know, be in a place for a certain amount of time. And, and, uh, and I'd say it wasn't when I'd leave. I'd be like, Oh, you don't see you guys later. I'll see you. I'll come visit. You'll see me when I left Detroit. I'm like, you guys will never see me again. Like I won't book. I will not book a flight that flies over this place. I am out and you'll never see me again. If you live in Detroit now, I'm sorry if I offended you, if you live in Detroit, I didn't mean to, but there you go. Um, but yeah, but, but yeah, that was it really. It's just, it was, but, but it wasn't. Okay. So,

But you didn't, there wasn't really a burn the bridges type moment. Like you could have always gone back. Mom would have welcomed you back and found something. Yeah. And I had built such a great and luckily earned it a name for myself in my little town of Canandaigua. It was front page news when I left.

The Daily Messenger interviewed me, and my picture was there on his front page news that Jeff Fargo is leaving Canandaigua, New York. Oh, boy. Yeah, it was crazy. My grandfather— Is there a Jeff Fargo day? No. Nor should there be. Nor should there be. But my grandfather, Lester Boyce, he started from nothing and had an amusement park that there were generations of kids that grew up there.

Roseland Park. See, that's the guy I want to talk to. I don't want to talk to him. No, I'm just kidding. No, no, please. Him and my dad have been my biggest mentors. And my grandfather passed away. I was 28. But there's so much I learned from him that I carry through today, like trusting people, doing deals on a handshake. I still do that. I still take people for their word and trust them. I get burned.

But okay, that's somebody else's, that's how they want to do it. And God bless you. So I learned a lot that way. If I told, if I said right now, the amount of money that I have out on a handshake on a deal right now,

I don't think anybody would ever listen to this again because it's one of the deals I have out on a handshake is a lot. But I trust the guy. There you go. And you know what? Go with your gut. That's it. And that's something, if you're listening right now, I don't care if you are 19 years old or 99 years old, go with your gut. Always. Your instincts are good. Don't overthink it. Surround yourself with good people to advise you, but...

your gut's always going to almost every single time be great. Yeah. You're fine. Always. So that's what happened. That's what got me to St. George. So now you're working at Coldwell Banker now. Coldwell Banker Commercial. So this is interesting. So you started out as a commercial real estate agent. Yep. Did a couple of resi deals, but 90% was doing commercial deals. All commercial. There. And did okay, not great, because I was still being subsidized by my mom who was sending me money to cover my nut.

Makes it easier. Makes it a lot easier. So no fire, no drive. Broke up with a girl that I moved out with six months later after moving out there because I found that coming to Vegas with some guys that weren't members of the LDS culture. Was more fun. And one of the guys had an Amex black card. So we're at the Wind Tower Suites going to Trist's.

getting the grotto over on the side. - I love trust. - Getting the grotto place over on the left-hand side on the water. - I know what you're talking about. - And doing that, and a boy from Canandaigua, New York, and doing that all of a sudden, you're like, "Whoa!" - Bright lights, big city, buddy. - What's going on with this? And next thing you know, a 5'10" leggy blonde takes me to dance on the dance floor, and we're doing shots of Cuervo on the dance floor, and I thought I was a king, and then she says, "You wanna go up to my room?" I go, "Yeah." She goes, "Okay, it'll be $2,000."

And I thought, welcome to Vegas. I'm like, wow, you're going to pay me $2,000 to go upstairs with you. That's she's like, no, Mike. Oh, okay. So that was like, I see what's going on here. City mouse sounds like, okay. So that woke me up to Vegas really quick. Yeah.

I see what's happening here. Yeah. I had about a year of that and got bored of that and then ended up actually converting, and I was Mormon. They got me. Whoa. Yeah. Really? I went to one of the guys in my office, and I said, how come you guys are happy all the time? What is it? And they said, oh, let's talk. I go, listen, don't give me the Book of Mormon. I have ADHD. There's not enough pictures in there. Hit me with the highlights. They got me with Mormonism for Dummies. It's a book.

There's a book called Mormonism for Dummies. Yep. Got me. So you get, yeah. So are you still in the LDS church? No, no. I left 2020. 2020. Yeah. I bounced January of 2020 when COVID was just rolling out. Yeah. And so became a member of the church. Then met my wife online on an LDS website. My now ex-wife, but that's how we met. Oh, wow. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. And she's great. And we have, um, she, um, she, I have a bonus daughter. Um, she had a, she had a daughter from, from before she was a widow and had a daughter from before I was six years old and Izzy's now 19 and goes to UNLV and is awesome. Um, we go for petties. That's her currency. That's our current thing. We go for pedicures. And, um, and then we had, um, Alexandria, Alex is going to be 13, um, in July. And then, uh, Jack is six. Nice. Yeah. Well, the question, did you ever do exceptionally well as a real, as a realtor?

Or as an agent? I always did okay. I was doing stuff as a realtor. I did stuff in Canandaigua. I did stuff in St. George. It was out of the box. Yeah. But I was way ahead of everybody else.

in terms of knocking on doors and farming and consistently staying in front of people. That's something that if the systems were in place, like there weren't CRMs back then. There was nothing, you know. You're talking about 05, 06 that time. Oh, yeah. I remember coming to Vegas. I moved to Vegas. I already had a real estate license. And-

I had gotten a license after I was on The Apprentice, and then we sold out of my tech firm. And then I was basically sitting at home, and the girl that won my season at The Apprentice was like, oh, get a real estate license. It'll be fun. That's how I got in the business. And we were doing condo conversions for SunVest all over the place, if you remember them. And of course, moved here and met a girl. But anyway, when I first moved out here, coming out of the tech world that I was in into Vegas here, like-

I built a website just out of flash. It was a recruiting website. It was a recruiting flash. And I was like the first person to know how to use email spiders and stuff. And I just, I crawled the, what was Ben the GLVR cause they didn't realize that if you put everybody's email address there, you could just crawl and grab them all. Yeah. Grabbed them, grabbed them all down, had an email server. And I was the first person like hammering everybody. So I moved out here, uh, started a team and just cause I was good at that stuff.

I hired like 25 people in like two days. And I had no lead source. I had nothing. I didn't matter. And it just figured it out. And I'm proud to say that that business is still alive today and it's still here. So what's funny, but yeah, that's funny that we did that. But yeah, having those advantage of doing those things.

So at what point did you find title insurance as being the niche, man? I ended up getting auto real estate when the bubble burst. So 08, 09. What'd you do during that time? I went back into food and beverage. And my wife and I at the time opened up Fargo's Drive-Thru in Santa Clara, Utah, right next door to St. George. And I think it was 2010, I won like eight awards there.

for um saint george magazine uh you know it's like best of las vegas yeah kind of thing and so i was best chef i have no culinary training it's all marketing it's all semantics yeah it's just i mean i put a ballot on every single tray or every every order that went out and highlighted every single category that we qualified for right best milkshake best lunch and then i did it in one just one of them

Just asking for the votes. And it was hysterical. And the thing with the restaurant business is it becomes your mistress. For anyone that's been in it, you know. And so it's also, so you're there all the time. Yep. You never see your family. And it's feast or famine every single day. The widow maker. Yep. It's the widow maker. And so it became great, then not so great. But also, I have a background in digital strategy and digital marketing. I was doing stuff on America Online back when we owned the college housing complex. And I had...

tenants of mine doing testimonials on their America Online pages saying, hey, I stay at the Brentwood Apartments. If you're going to Phoenix Community College, call Jeff Fargo. Here's his phone number. I was getting business that way. Yeah, it was before anybody even thought to do that. They knew it. And so I did that and grew a sizable Facebook business page. This was before you could do Facebook ads, before like...

you know, anybody organically could, smaller people. I wasn't Ford Motor Company. Yeah, you could actually compete. So they wouldn't talk to me. But I could, if we were having a slow day, push something out and go, print this out, bring it in, and get a free small milkshake with any purchase. Next thing you know, 20 people would walk in the door. I was like, holy crap. Works for me. Pretty cool. And so-

I've always been in that space and always been, and that's evergreen. Yeah. Um, and I went from that to doing stuff on my space to Facebook and now I'm, you know, YouTube and a massive on Google. Um, I do Google reviews and over 8.5 million views, um, on my reviews on Google. Um, I play very well in the Google ecosystem. All right.

And so that's really what now, that's the water I'm currently playing in is that. But Telonestro was. You skipped a step. I'm sorry. You skipped a step. Right. So the restaurant business were like, we can't do this anymore. The company that I hired to do our website, Innovation Simple, Gavin Levitt, the guy that, Gaden Levitt, the guy that owns it, said, hey, I need a business development guy. You're really good. Like, I see what you're doing at Fargo's. Why don't you come work for me?

went to work for him for about two years, did some stuff in St. George, but then about a year in, he said, Hey, why don't you go check out Vegas? Vegas is booming. Why don't you go look? So I ended up, I became Cato Kaelin for about a year. I live in a casita in Roma Hills, uh,

That's where I live. There you go. I was seated in Roma Hills. What street? I was there for, I don't remember anymore. I don't. I'd have to look it up because I was there for a year and I'd stay here for the week and then go back to St. George on the weekends to be with my family. And I worked for, I worked, and I was, this is back when the Chamber of Commerce here was above the Apple store in Town Square. And I became the guy that I'd sit in there like,

common area on my laptop whenever they bring in new members oh this is jeff fargo he can help you with your facebook page your website seo and all that and it was like shooting fish in a barrel

And did very well at that. And then got poached by Greenspun Media Group. They brought me in to do ad sales for them. I was account exec for them. And that's when I got that job. We moved here. That was a little over 10 years ago. Then moved the family here. Was at Greenspun for about three and a half years. Was great with the digital sales, the online web-based stuff. But print, I was terrible. I was terrible at print ad sales.

and found out very quickly. - Is it because you didn't believe in it? - I just, yeah, I'm just not a fan of it. - It just antiquated and doesn't work. - For me, the ROI wasn't there and it was a hard sell. I was there with some great people. My boss was amazing, good company. Brian Greenspan's great, but it was like, I just can't do this. And so got out and that was it. - See, okay, well, that's a good, that's a great lesson for those of you listening at home right now. If you do not 100% believe in what you're selling, you are never going to be good at selling it, ever.

If you are like, for example, I think this is a problem that a lot of realtors are having right now is because they're having this crisis of confidence because they don't understand how to present the current market conditions to people is a good time to buy a house. And I think the answer, the answer to that question is, and I'm going to answer that question, which is it's not always a good time to buy a house.

And it's the truth. What you have to do is you have to find out your client's wants and needs. You have to understand that if they're going to hold the house for longer than seven years, if they're like, I need a house for two years, it might not be the best idea. But if they're going to be there for seven, interest rates come, interest rates go. They're buying the house. If you rent, you're still buying a house. You're just buying the landlord's house. And it may make sense, but it's a case-by-case informational basis. But I think too many people

in whatever they do, get this blanket opinion and don't look for individual situations. So

I love that you said that you couldn't sell the print because you didn't believe in it. Couldn't do it. It's the same with anything. You're never going to be good at selling shit you don't believe in. They fired me. Best thing that ever happened to me was being fired from Greenspun, and they should have. And so got out of that. I worked for about three months for a commercial real estate software company. They were still scaling up, and so that didn't work. And then I was on unemployment for about four months. Ended up watching all of Sons of Anarchy.

and got addicted to the Ellen DeGeneres show. I got a question. What was the, because I've never done this and I'm curious. What was the psyche like before?

What did it do to your self-esteem? What did it do to your psyche? What did it do to you as a person? It was a gut punch. To do that. It really realigned my ego. Yeah. Being in sales, we all have that bravado. Sure. We all have that presence that we walk into a room with the smartest guy in the room. Of course. That always happens. And when that happens to you where you're not the smartest guy in the room because we're firing you, it's very humbling. And you tend to take a step back and audit what you bring to the world. Yeah.

What is it that you do? And you kind of do a SWOT analysis to say, all right, what strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, what is it that I'm bringing to the world that I can help make money off of what I can do? And, but also what can't I do? What do, it's okay to say no. Uh, any of my clients here, I tell all of them, those powerful word you have in your lexicon is no. Hmm.

you know, just because we live in Las Vegas, prostitution is not legal. Don't say yes to everybody because they're going to pay you. You just don't do that. Don't do that. You don't want to be that person, regardless of your real estate or not. You're in sales. You don't want to do that. And so that was a big one for me. Started taking indoor cycling classes. Did it put you in like a depression? Did you go into quicksand? Yeah, I mean, a little bit.

But what I did was is one day went with my wife at the time, took our daughter to the Henderson Multigenerational Center to do a pottery class right next door was a guy doing indoor cycling. I was at the time and then I was 75 pounds heavier than I am now.

Started taking classes there. And he was the sales manager for one of the biggest title companies in the country and was here in town. And after about three months, four months, he said, hey, why don't you come be a rep for me and do title and escrow? And I said, I know nothing about title and escrow. Nothing. And he said, neither did I 13 years ago. And now here I am. We'll train you. You know marketing. You know real estate. And I like you as a person. So he brought me in. And-

That's how it started. And they gave me a long leash to run on. I started doing Periscope videos. And this was seven years ago. So I was going into some of the biggest agents here in town. Kids are like, what the hell is a Periscope? Oh, yeah. They have no idea. Owned by Twitter. Shelf life of 24 hours. Come and go. Yeah. But it's the original Facebook Live. Yeah. Let's just say that. Yeah, there you go. And I ended up getting into... I met with Florence Shapiro and Ivan Shira. And I said, hey, I know that you already have escrow and title relationships, but I'm

I have a marketing tool that you're not using and you guys are really good at what you do. Can I just come to some open houses and just start doing some Periscope videos? I'm like, yes, absolutely. Next thing you know,

it ramps up and they start seeing what I'm doing. Other agents are seeing what I'm doing. So that's it. That's an interesting thing you just said. So if, if, you know, again, you know, there's, there's always, I look for the little lessons in the stories, man. I look for the little lessons. And I think that that's a great lesson, which was for those of you that don't live in Las Vegas, he's, he threw some names out, which was Florence Shapiro and I have a chair. And, and,

Florence has passed away since Ivan is now the sole master of that craft or of that of that business But you're talking about Ivan is the biggest luxury agent in Vegas. I mean he's a monster. Yeah business. Yeah, um, you know we Monster business and I was a wonderful human. He's one of my friends and the here a brand new guy in the business and if you're in sales and

Take that story to heart because what he did was he, he had enough belief in what he could offer this person that he didn't, it didn't matter. This was the number, these were the number one people didn't matter. And,

He had enough belief in what he had to go right to the top because here you are going from nobody knows who the hell you are to now you're in these videos with the top two people in our industry at that time in Vegas. And how much easier was it to climb down than it was to climb up? Oh, yeah.

- Infinitely easier. - Infinitely easier. - I always try to go to the top decision makers. I'm a confident guy. - Yeah. - And I'm not gonna waste anybody's time. I'm very tactical with my time. I tell everyone, defend your calendar. Always defend your calendar. It's okay to not take a meeting with somebody.

Vegas is the biggest waste of time ever with events and everything else that goes on here. Pick and choose. I normally don't take meetings unless there's an agenda. Right. You need to be strategic with what you're doing. And so that was my approach when I'm going to all these top producing agents and brokers in town to say, hey, I have the full faith and backing of a $8 billion company. It's what I'm working for. But I'm not going to walk in with bagels and a lunch and learn. And here's sandwiches. And a desktop calendar. Here's our app.

You know, no, it's not going to do that. We have all that stuff. It's great. But no, I want to do something that's ground and pound right now. I'm going to help you with your business. I'm going to listen to you also. I mean, sales 101 is find the pain, sell the pain. That's it. So what struggle are you dealing with? I always say a challenge. I don't say problems. Problems are insurmountable. Challenges can be overcome. What challenges are you facing right now in your business? And I listened. And if, if I can help,

I will help and I will even maintain a relationship with you weekly, monthly, whatever to be your accountability partner to help you become better and evolve at your business. That's what I do. And I'll never judge you. I'll never lie to you. And also whatever we talk about stays in complete confidence. I tell everyone I'm from New York. I have a big trunk and a shovel and all the freaking bodies are buried, man. I know. But when you work with me, I don't share with anybody else. I don't have to.

So essentially, it's funny. For the agents, I mean, we're kind of going fast forward a little bit, but that's okay. So for you, for those of you who aren't in the industry, aren't in the real estate industry, you don't know what we're talking about. So title insurance and escrow is a part of the process, and it is a very lucrative part of the process. And-

in title companies hire reps to go out and solicit business from really the realtors because trying to go consumer direct, it's, it's a, it's a product that doesn't make sense to market consumer direct because it's free. It's purchased so infrequently.

It's just every time you buy a house, which is what every on average seven years for Apple. So it just doesn't, it just doesn't make sense. Like if you go to somebody right now and ask them, what was the name of the title company close up? They probably don't know. Right. So you market to the source of the deal, which in most cases is the agent. Right. So rather than, you know, you know, an amateur would walk in and try to expound all of the brilliance of, of their product of what it does. And for example, I'll give you a better example.

I just went to it right before I met with you, somebody from my neighborhood. I don't list property anymore unless it's in my neighborhood. It's the only place I list homes personally just because I want to protect the value of my house by not having some numb nuts that doesn't know what they're doing to give a house away in my neighborhood. Exactly right. So I got a call right before I came here and I stopped into a house and walked around and looked at the house and it's a total flip, gut redo, and it's good. And the guy wants a lot for foot with it. I mean, he wants to crush a record in there per foot. At the end of it, I said...

you know i can come back later i just want to see the house today i said i can come back at some point and do a whole dog and pony show but we all do the same i said amen i'm not going to show you everybody's going to say the same thing yeah right and he was like

"Nope, and I appreciate you valuing my time. "I'm good, I got everything I need to see "just from talking to you." So that's the idea, but the idea was rather than pitch the bullshit, it's let me cut to the chase of how I can really help you. - Exactly right. - And I like to say, you know, nobody wants to see the sausage get made, they just want it on their plate. That's all they care about. - Exactly, yeah.

You kind of made a name for yourself by doing that, by assisting other, by going right to them and saying, look, I'm going to facilitate myself as, as a coach. Yeah. Not even as forget I'm a title rep. Yeah. I care. That's how you pay me. Yeah. I'm more interested in helping you make money. Exactly. Right. And I think again, you know, the problem isn't people need title insurance. The problem is they need more business. Yeah. And if you can help them do for themselves, because obviously with Respo, we're, we're

All of our title companies are very risk compliant. Absolutely. We don't do that in my business. But if you can help them help themselves, I think it's a better move. Yeah. And luckily what I did worked. Facebook ran their algorithms and saw what I was doing on Periscope. And I was the first one in the real estate vertical to get Facebook Live. And so what I did was took the entire realtor roster from here, Galvar roster, dumped it into a target audience, all the email addresses. Mm-hmm.

and did a video campaign of me saying, hi, I'm Jeff Fargo with blah, blah title. And if you're seeing this, I can help you get in front of the exact people that need to work with you. Click below for more information. How much do you miss the targeted audience in Facebook? I could do lines of credit. People had opened. I could get someone that like went to Stanford for their master's, owned a parrot, drove a Buick. Like, oh, that when they pulled, they pulled that down. Oh,

That was the hardest part of me died. A little part of me died when that happened. And even, and that's, you know, I try to combat it a little bit with geofencing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like, you know,

But those are the true good old days of Facebook ads, and people didn't get it, so there was scarcity, so I was the only one doing it. Okay, don't kid yourself. It's still happening. Oh, I agree. The average Joe just doesn't have the money to make that happen. And they don't know how to do retargeting campaigns and all that. Yeah, but that...

You and I, even being good at this, we don't have that, but that still happens. And so that was, to me, that was huge. It was good enough for me that I was recognized my third year, a DPK award at first American title, recognized top 1% in the nation from what I did because my year over year increase in revenue was like 108% or 110% increase in revenue. And it was all digital strategy. Yeah.

And I was the only guy in town beating that drum. And I still, that's my jam. But it's much more than Facebook now. It's almost everything. At 52 years old, I'm on TikTok doing dance videos with my 12-year-old daughter, which are freaking hysterical. And I love it. But it's putting yourself out there. Now it's all video. Everything. With everything now is video, is evergreen content. And people are so afraid of judgment, especially realtors, that...

that they won't do videos. And I tell all of them. Which I find crazy. It's bananas. I find that to be crazy. I mean, obviously we're sitting in a studio in my real estate company, which is open for all of our agents to use, which is, but we build it for that reason. You know, we're very much on that same. You have to be putting out videos literally every day. Yeah. Everything from YouTube to short tail stuff on Instagram, TikTok, Snap, Facebook, Instagram,

everything you need to be omnipresent in front of your audience and always building your audience you know for people out of market i always use the the analogy about glenn lerner is the big uh personal injury attorney because you even know his jingle everyone knows his freaking jingle and i tell everybody you need to be the glenn lerner of your soi in your neighborhood that they when they wake up in the morning and they go to bed at night they are seeing you hearing you they get a voicemail drop from you a mailer an ad somewhere an email a text something

Every day they're getting that from you. Because even though you're going to buy or sell a house once every five to seven years, you're going to know someone that wants to move here. Or someone in your neighborhood wants to move. You go, you know what? I want to talk to, call John Gafford.

I don't know him that well. We bought a house from a couple years ago, but this son of a bitch is sending me something every day. Yeah. Well, don't, no, don't kid yourself. All the clients that we work with know who we are five years later. Oh, I know that. They all know who we are. But that's a lot of agents. That's the challenge they have. They don't do it. What's the figure? It's something egregious, like 85% of people

don't use the same agent twice. Yeah. It's like 85%. It's bananas. Which is 100% not based on the job that you did. Yeah. It's on the job that you stopped doing. Correct. Going forward. If you want to keep your clients, you can't stop

recruiting them after the sale you've got to continue that's what it begins you've earned the right yes you earn the right it's so much cheaper to keep a previous client than this again new one yeah and yet people people don't do that yeah they don't do that yeah all right so if you had to give any bit of advice to somebody getting if if they're let's i mean you've done a lot you took a lot of chance you did this but let's talk about if you had to give one solid piece of advice to anybody

Because there's going to be some job change, man. There's going to be some, the people are going to get laid off. And I'm telling you right now, if you have a job that is, if you have a job that is a line item on a P&L somewhere,

And as the market changes, there is somebody, let's just put them in, we'll just, we'll make this as ominous as we can. There's somebody in a dark room and they've got a red, they've got a red pen and they're looking down the P and L and they see, Hmm, what is this number? What does this person do? And then they're going to strike it. And there's a lot of people that are going to get redlined off of P and L's and a great place for you to land.

If you're, if you're moving out is in the sales industry, because again, if you're in the sales industry, you can pay for yourself. You can justify your own existence. So if I'm somebody that's thinking about getting the sales industry, what is, give me, give me a couple of things that I have got to know. If I'm thinking about making that jump, don't sell me. Don't expect to sell me earn that right.

You want me to talk about me. That's the best thing I could talk about is me. So have zero expectations to close anybody, especially in the beginning. Form the relationship. Pour a solid foundation where you're helping them. Help them out. There's people to this day, if I see on Facebook they're sick, I'll send them chicken noodle soup. Amazon Prime. Done. Two hours. It's there. With zero expectations. Help people.

But not just if you're selling widgets, they might not need your widget at that point in time. Yeah. Right. But they're super cool. And you have other things like you're both parents or you both like certain things. You'll play golf together. Build that foundation.

And be a good person. Just karma, karma, karma, karma. The way things are now, people can see someone, if you're coming sideways at them, especially here in Vegas, everyone's selling you something. Everybody's selling you something here in Vegas. So you've got the shield is already up. So you're not going to, stop beating your head against stuff like that. Be a good person and come from a position of empathy. Listen to them.

Put your phone down, talk to them, and see how you can help them. Yep. With zero expectations of benefiting yourself from that. Your benefit is help them. Acts of service is my biggest love language. Love it. Well, people can smell it on you. Oh, you get commission breath. They can smell it on you. Yeah, you get commission breath. And they're out. I'm out with anybody. And so that's the biggest one to me I tell everybody is give. Just give now.

And you always have something, your time, your talent, money, whatever, but give. Well, you know, it's one of my favorite new quotes, and I wish I could remember which one of my friends said it because it was one of them. They said that giving with expectation is not giving, it's trading. Exactly right.

And I thought that was, I thought that was good. - Exactly right. So just, we all have something and it could be just your attention because we're all fighting battles and wars on a daily basis. We're all waging those. And for you to come into someone's life, could be for just a few minutes of positivity and you're listening to them, give them a hug. You could turn them around. - Leave them better than you found them. - Exactly right. - That's how you do it. - So that's, to me, that's it.

All right, well, if they want to find more of you, Jeff, where do they find you on social? Where can they connect with you? Jeff.Fargo, Instagram, TikTok. Yeah, just Jeff.Fargo, and you can't miss this. See, that's another good tip. Beautiful giant head. Everything should be consistent across all your social platforms. Jeff.Fargo. That's it. That's it. I love that. All right, well, if you're listening to us on one of the –

what it is, one of the podcast apps, either Apple or Spotify, make sure you give us a five-star review because the more reviews I get, then the more people we can get in here to help you guys. And if you're watching us on the YouTube, make sure you give us a high review, like, comment, subscribe, and do all those things. But anyway, Jeff, thanks so much for stopping by, man. My pleasure. I loved the nuggets of wisdom. I love all of those things. And remember, guys, if you're going to move, keep moving forward. We'll see you next time.

Hey, it's John Gafford. If you want to catch up more and see what we're doing, you can always go to thejohngafford.com. We'll share any links that we have, things we talked about on the show, as well as links to the YouTube where you can watch us live. And if you want to catch up with me on Instagram, you can always follow me at thejohngafford. I'm here. Give me a shout.