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

The Home Service Expert Podcast

In this episode of The Home Service Expert Podcast, Jason Feifer—former Editor-in-Chief of Entrepreneur Magazine—shares powerful insights on

Key takeaways

• Your title or position is rented—what matters is building something you actually own.
• Being singular means owning a specific problem-solving identity that people associate with you.

Main topics

• Singular vs. interchangeable identity in business
• Building personal authority through ideas and language

Notable quotes

"You're either singular or interchangeable. If you're interchangeable, your value is low because you're a commodity."

"The title you rent won't save you. The only safe ground is something you own."

Conclusion

Jason Feifer's message is clear: true security and success come not from titles or external

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (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? Speaker 2 (0:11) 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. Cause 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. He 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 and editor or reporter or whatever would make me stand out. But what I've 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. So what is it? Speaker 2 (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, Tommy, 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. So Speaker 1 (2:37) walk me through 20 years ago, when did you find the job at Entrepreneur Magazine and what rose you to the top? Speaker 2 (2:45) I found the job at Entrepreneur Magazine 11 years ago. I joined Entrepreneur in 2015. I became Editor-in-Chief in 2016. Speaker 1 (2:53) Wow. Speaker 2 (2:53) 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 in a couple of ways. 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, right? 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. And for me, what was accessible to me was running a magazine. I'd been given the job. I can run the magazine. I can make decisions about this magazine. I could do that over and over and over again, put out a good magazine. What was available to me, what was available to me was re-imagining myself as a, and I hate this term, thought leader. And to do that, I had to think about how do I talk? How do I present myself in the world? What are my ideas? Who are my ideas for? How do I present them in a way in which I build authority around myself? And then once I do that and people start to come to me because they trust me, what else can I do? Can I start starting businesses with them? Can I start joining their advisory boards? Can I start to establish myself not just as a thinker, but as a doer? These things were all available to me because I had some kind of authority and I leveraged it. I always advise people to push themselves beyond accessible and to available because that is where you're going to find massive growth opportunities. That has basically, Tommy, been the project of the last 10 years for me. I'll add one other thing, which is that when I became editor-in-chief and people started treating me differently, I realized very quickly they're treating me that way because of a title that I rent. I don't own this. I don't own Entrepreneur Magazine and I don't own the title of editor-in-chief of Entrepreneur Magazine. I rent it. Somebody had it before me. Somebody will have it after me. And so I cannot rest on a thing that I rent because that will be pulled away from me and I'll walk away with absolutely nothing. So this is the moment for me and this is the moment for you, whoever you are listening, in whatever you are renting, this is the moment to build something that is yours, a foundation that you stand on, that you own. I think a lot about that. Speaker 1 (6:11) So authority is talking on stages, doing podcasts. It's growing your social media. It's basically getting yourself out there to give you exposure because opportunities come to you is what you said. So what kind of opportunities, what are you looking at? What fascinates you about entrepreneurship? What are you doing today with that? Speaker 2 (6:35) Well, I mean, what fascinates me about entrepreneurship is people creating something out of nothing. I mean, it's as simple as that. What I love is how much entrepreneurship is about creation and building, but also it's about human psychology. And that is my original entry point to this. I did not go to business school. I did not really know that much about business, honestly, before I became the editor-in-chief of Entrepreneur. I'd worked at Fast Company, and so I was immersed there. It was the click moment for me was when I realized that all these people that I'm meeting and everything that they're building is not really just about business tactics. That's fine. You can learn business tactics. But the more important people, what do people truly succeed on? Understanding other people. That's it. Understanding other people. Because business is just about problem solving. And that means that you have to deeply understand the people. that you are reaching and the problems that they have. And then next, you have to understand how to articulate those problems back to them. And then you have to understand the multiple layers of problems that they have. Or Donald Miller from Building a Story Brand will tell you about the internal problem and the external problem. You need to understand both in order for people to even trust you to deliver the solution to the external problem. This is a human endeavor. And I love how, look, the world that I come from of writing and ideas is really about understanding people and then just informing people. What I love about this entrepreneurship is that it's about understanding people and building lasting things that solve real problems, that create real wealth. That is awesome. And I found that it is more accessible. than I originally thought. I thought to get into entrepreneurship, you need to study business. You need to really understand everything that you're doing. You do not, man. You just need to understand people and you need to understand yourself well enough to take one step at a time and figure it out along the way. I mean, so many people who just build because they have this instinct, because they have this curiosity, because they have this ability to constantly learn as they go. That is very exciting to me. And I think that it's available to anyone. And I love being able to share that. Speaker 1 (8:47) You know, I made a post a while back that I said, you know, a lot of people are pushing entrepreneurship and it's the best thing you could ever do. But it's not for everybody. And I just listened. Kevin O'Leary was at one of my events and he's like, you're going to get your teeth kicked in. You're not going to relationships. I mean, if you build a Speaker 2 (9:04) business and it's not given to you. Speaker 1 (9:08) it's a lot of hard work. It's most likely going to fail based on statistics. I mean, what is your thought when someone says, I'm interested in going into business? Speaker 2 (9:19) My thought is, tell me why. You're right that this is not something that's for everyone. And anyone who's out there trying to push it on you is doing it for their own selfish purposes because they got something to sell you. I don't believe that. I mean, look, for all that I just said there a minute ago, What I was speaking to was what I assume is an audience listening to this of people who are doing it or who are enthusiastic about it. And I love cheerleading those people, but I would never walk up to somebody who doesn't feel this in their bones, who doesn't look at their own life and say, you know what? I literally can't do anything else. And then tell them that they should go be an entrepreneur because they'll fail. They'll fail. This is too hard. I think when I came up as a reporter, what people would always say is you only do journalism if you literally can't do anything else. And I think the same is true about entrepreneurship. You only do entrepreneurship if you literally can't do anything else. All my friends who are successful entrepreneurs say to me the same thing, which is they say, I would make a terrible employee. They don't want to work for anyone. They're not going to follow anyone else's systems or rules. They can only build. So do you want to go into business? Well, tell me why. Tell me why. Tell me why this is the better path for you versus anything else. And if the answer is because it's a better way to make money, then you got to step back and reconsider that. Because yes, it can be. But the vast majority of businesses, they're not making massive amounts of money and nor do they need to. You could build a lifestyle business and it's perfectly fantastic for you. But you need to understand that this is often a harder and more unpredictable way to make money. But if it is the thing that... you cannot turn away from, if it is the thing that you require of yourself, then it's the only way. I Speaker 1 (11:11) agree with you a hundred percent. Let's just dive in real quick to Biltford tomorrow. You got four. Sure. You got a framework of a panic adaption, the new normal and wouldn't go back. Can we just walk through that? Yeah. Yeah, sure. Speaker 2 (11:24) You know, it's funny. I'm going to tell you about it and then I'm going to undercut it. So what you're talking about here is Speaker 2 (11:32) I wrote this book, came out in 2022. It's called Build for Tomorrow, An Action Plan for Embracing Change, Adapting Fast, and Future-Proofing Your Career. I think that's what the book title says. It's hard to remember. But basically, it is what I learned from interviewing and studying world Speaker 1 (11:51) -class leaders and entrepreneurs about adaptability. Speaker 2 (11:54) Because we are in a moment of constant change, and you have to be always thinking not about what have I done that worked, but rather what can I do now that will work next? And you have to be constantly abandoning what came before to the benefit of what the world, your business, your career, your family, whatever needs from you now. And I wanted to put that into a book and I did it with this structure. that I had observed about how everyone, individuals and companies go through change, which is that change happens in four ways. Panic, adaptation, new normal, wouldn't go back. First, you panic, freak out because everything's changing. You don't know what to do. And that's very natural. Our brains, the decades of psychological research have confirmed this. Our brains experience what's called loss aversion theory. Loss aversion theory holds that we protect against loss more than we seek gain over and over again. The studies on this are wild. We will... constantly try to protect against loss more than seek gain, even if the gain is significantly better. So it's natural that we panic. We want to know what's going to come next. And so we start to extrapolate loss. Well, I've lost this. That means I'm going to lose that other thing. I'm going to lose that other thing. So that's panic. Everything's falling away around us. Then we get to new normal or adaptation. Then we get to adaptation and we start to look around. We say, well, what can I change? What new things do I have access to? How do I start to rethink? You start to realize that if you're going through change, everyone's going through change too, which means that all of your clients have new problems now. All of your customers have new problems. All your employees. Everybody's got new problems, not just you. And they're looking for somebody to step up and help. And if you can do that, well, then suddenly you are in need. And that can bring you to new normal, where suddenly you have built a new foundation. And eventually... it will work so well that you will reach wouldn't go back, which is when you look back and you say, you know what? I value this change so much that I wouldn't go back to a time before I had it. And the reason that I lay this out is because I want people to understand that wouldn't go back is the natural endpoint for these changes, which means that it is available to you. And the question really is, how fast do you want to get there? Do you want to spend a lot of time in panic? Or do you want to try to move along to adaptation to new normal faster so that you can get to wouldn't go back? It's there. That's the end point. I'm telling you, it's there. And so how fast do you want to get there? Now, that's the book. That's how I structured the book. I believe in that. But I will tell you something. Let's rewind for a second, Tommy, which is about when I talk about ideas and how you have to be known for your ideas. Ideas make you singular. I found that frameworks are an incredibly powerful way to... communicate your ideas. But there's a problem, which is that frameworks also need to be really actionable. And I wrote this book and I created this structure. And then people would ask me in interviews, so like, okay, so then how do I get from panic to adaptation? Okay. And then what exactly do I do at the adaptation stage? And I realized that it was just, it was too mushy. It was a little hard to work it that way. And so it wasn't a really wonderful framework. So I've actually moved away from it. even though it was the center of my book. And when I get on a stage in front of Clorox or Pfizer or whatever, I don't use it anymore because I found that it wasn't as actionable a framework as others are. So now I'm constructing new ones so that you can say, first you do this, then you do that, then you do that. For anybody