Adam Torres and Rick Jeffries discuss leadership.
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Show Notes:
What does it take to become a good leader? In this episode, Adam Torres and Rick Jeffries, VP of IR for GCN / Founder of Ventures Marketing, explore being an entrepreneur and the importance of good leadership.
About Rick Jeffries
From Fortune 500 brands to startup entrepreneurs around the world, the firm he have co-founded, Global Good Networks has helped build awareness for great ideas and promote positivity worldwide.
Firms like Disney, Kia, US Cellular and Dish Networks and sustainable firms like Tom’s of Maine have utilized our web properties to help market their campaigns around the world through sponsored content deals and advertising.
About Ventures Marketing
A team of specialists that consistently delivers outstanding results combining creative ideas with our vast experience. They help build a sustainable, meaningful online business with your clients/customers by engaging them with your brand. They specialize in areas such as search engine optimization, social media marketing, email marketing and ad management. They pursue relationships based on transparency, persistence, mutual trust, and integrity with our employees, customers and other business partners.
Full Unedited Transcript
Hey, I’d like to welcome you to another episode of Mission Matters. My name is Adam Torres, and if you’d like to apply to be a guest on the show, just head on over to missionmatters. com and click on Be Our Guest to Apply. All right, so today I have Rick Jeffries on the line. He’s VP of IR for GCN, Global Capital Network, and he’s also founder of Ventures Marketing.
Rick, welcome to the show. Thank you so much, Adam, for having me. Very excited to be here. So fun to finally have you on the show. I think we, we initially met a while back at the Newport, I think it was Newport investor show, right? Or Uniport investment show, right? Back in March. . Yeah. At the Marriott Renaissance right there in Newport.
Yep. That’s where we met. , finally got you on the show, man. I’m excited. We’ve got a lot to talk about and I do want to kind of, I know we’ve had some conversations about leadership, management, what are the difference in the past and want to explore that and kind of bring that content to the audience as well.
So we’ll explore that also want to, of course, talk about some of the stuff you’re doing with one of my passions. You got some anime cards going out in sales. You do a bunch of the streaming space. the audience is in tune for a little bit of a mayhem . Today, , we’re gonna be all over the place, but we’ll start this episode the way that we start them all, Rick, with what we call our mission matters minute.
So and mission matters, Rick, our aim and our goal is to amplify stories for entrepreneurs, executives and experts. So that’s what we do. Rick, what mission matters to you? You know, , being a better leader I would say is the first thing that comes to mind now. I think you mentioned mayhem.
You know, I, I’d refer to myself as a mad hatter of sorts. I, there’s three main hats that I wear. They’re across the board from VP of investor relations for GCN, which is kind of your top notch, you know, fortune five level stuff., I also have an SEO agency that I’ve run for about five years.
14 years. And we have about 15 staff and then yes, the anime card. So I’m, I’m excited to dive into those things, the mission that matters the most to me right now is just being a better person, being a better leader. And no matter what business or application it’s in, it’s just about being a better person , and, and having more impact on not only my internal staff, but also on the world.
Yeah, it’s awesome. Love bringing mission based individuals on the line to share, you know, why they do what they do, how they’re doing it, and what we can all learn from that. So great to have you here. And I guess just to get us kicked off here, Rick , were you always an entrepreneur? Like you got entrepreneurial ventures, you got all kinds of things going on.
Was that always kind of in your blood? Like where’d that come from? Yeah, it started young originally from Southern California. And I’d say my first business I was 13. I printed up business cards over the summer. I think there was some object wasn’t a car yet, but some object that I wanted that was too expensive for, for me.
for my mom. And so I printed up business cards. I called the rented teen. This was right there in the Marina Hills community in Laguna Niguel. So , not too far from Newport. And I spent that entire summer doing whatever my neighbors needed, whether it was mowing the lawns. I think I did a little window cleaning for one of the neighbors, but I would say at that point the realization of, Things cost money.
You want nicer things. But even at that point in time , I was still thinking about how to give back. And my friends and I were also thinking about how to donate clothing through that. So there was always the entrepreneurial spirit, I would say. from day one , I’m sure we’ll move through the story, but the first actual company that we founded was Josh and I.
So the CEO and founder of Global Capital Network and I started a company called Global Good Group back in 2008. When I was still in high school. Oh, wow. Hold, he was at Santa Cla so I didn’t know you and Josh. So Josh, like you guys have known each other since, since high school. I’ve known him longer than probably anyone at that event.
Unless someone knew him when he was 17 or 18. That’s amazing. I didn’t know you guys went that far back. So when you guys I’ll used it were you guys were knuckleheads, come on. You guys are in high school. . We, we were, we were, , our first company before we made it global. Good group. We actually, it was C four C media.
C4C stood for Chains for Change. Wow. This was right around when Facebook was starting, and we didn’t know what we wanted to do, but all we knew is we wanted to create chains of people. You know, get to that point, blockchain, right? Like there was this, you know, chain reaction. We wanted to create a chain reaction for change, and we didn’t know what we were going to do.
It was initially beer money in college doing websites. But then that obviously evolved into now where Josh, you know, 14, 15 years later is doing very top tier investor relations , I getting to co pilot GCN with him and then having my own successful SEO agency as well. But it all started with wanting to do good and have impact.
And I think just being young , and wanting to do something different kind of sets you aside, but then. , how you, how you take that opportunity and then, and extend that and pay it forward, I think , is how , your character is shaped. That’s interesting. So you’ve been on that journey for a bit then of entrepreneurship and just figuring out what was next.
If you could go back, like, and think about like, and not necessarily that experience, but just in general, and this is one of my like Pay it forward questions. I’d like to work in every once in a while, especially for the new entrepreneurs, those that are kind of just getting started. , what kind of things would you tell yourself if you go back and get into that and saying, give yourself some, some advice on what’s ahead.
Fortunately and unfortunately, my advice to myself this is the worst that can happen. So it’s all uphill from here, whether that’s mind manipulation or not. I always try to look at everything in the worst case scenario, which I know may seem negative initially.
But the thought process is, if you look at the absolute worst. You can only build up from there. And so from a mentality perspective as an entrepreneur , whether it was our first client dispute it happens right over 15 years, , that you’re not always going to see eye to eye. And to think so basically not realistic. And so as you encounter these obstacles I think it’s really important that you say, okay, this is where we are, but I’m going to look at every option that’s upward and onward. Instead of looking back in the rear view mirror as an entrepreneur, unfortunately, you can’t control the past.
One of my favorite sayings, it’s, derived from the serenity prayer is, , focus on the things that you can change, ignore the things that you cannot change. And have the wisdom or knowledge to know the difference between those two things. And , that for me , I would say is for any, anybody getting into business , it’s very important to realize that you cannot change or control anything and do not let those things affect your sleep or your health mental or physical but the things that you can change.
Spend your time on those things. Mm hmm. And so now as you mentioned, you had, you’ve had an SEO firm for a while and now I would say , part of your entrepreneurial bent is that, is looking at new opportunities. And when we talked originally, I’m like, what? Anime, anime cards?
Like, , how does this play into, fast forwarding a bit, obviously, to present day. , how did you get into that? Like selling cards and streaming, super interesting. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. So I can tell you exactly. You know, unfortunately, a little, I guess it would be 35 months ago. Literally yesterday was 33 months , of not drinking alcohol.
It’s a choice that I made personally three summers back. I had two of my close friends, , all in our thirties pass away suddenly due to just unexpected circumstances. And I was just in a really, really bad place and ultimately funny enough, , like a lot of people that are stressed , I turned to drinking a little bit and but came, come that August, right around my birthday, my , 31st birthday there was a Pokemon store that opened near the alcohol store.
It was simply out of convenience and then I built a very good relationship with the owner of that card store. And I basically took all of this money that was going into something that was not good for me into something that debatably is also not good for me. Some people would say spending all of your money on Pokemon.
All I knew at that time was I was feeling better. I was happier. My mind was clear and I wasn’t drinking. And and then it never stopped, and then one day I looked around, right around let’s say ironically November of that year I turned around and I said, I have a lot of Pokemon cards, I should probably sell these.
And that was I guess Christmas season, November going into December almost three years ago now. So and I never stopped selling. As far as Pokemon goes, I did Pokemon for about six months. I was then introduced through a mutual friend to Chumlee who is debatably, probably one of the, I will say he is my goat greatest of all time in the card industry.
I mean what he did for the game and, and that episode of Palm Stars where the guy walked in with however much, you know, half a million dollars worth of Charizards, that is the moment that people started going and scavenging their basements and their. Addicts to try to find collectibles from the past.
And for me , I had the opportunity to work with Chumlee a little bit and I actually helped moderate his first three streams on whatnot. And after that third stream, seeing him blow away. Every record of of concurrent viewers on the site, seeing the amount of energy and everything. I said, you know what, I should let this guy stay number one at what he’s great at.
And at the time I had started, you know, you got to also have more than one thing. , and Pokemon was my primary, but my secondary was a new game called My Hero Academia. And so. I immediately said, I’m going to go all in on this and now flash, flash forward a year and a half or two years, and I’m now proud to say that myself and my community are the number one sellers in the world of that card game.
And so I, I think it worked out well, but in a nutshell, it was it was a personal situation that turned into a business opportunity. And when it came, I struck and and that’s what I do in my nights. I sell a lot of cardboard. In fact, I can tell you, it was 189 pounds of cardboard that I distributed out to my sellers last Friday.
We had the product come in Thursday and it measured exactly 189 pounds. And it went back out the next morning. So we’re really proud of that. And this week, you shipped a person, a lot of hard board. You shipped a person in cardboard. Yeah. It’s a lot. It’s a lot. It actually came on a private budget truck.
It wasn’t even FedEx or UPS. They actually rented a private delivery truck. It’s not at the level where I need a forklift that maybe next summer. Oh my gosh. We can get some video footage for But it’s amazing. It’s such a blessing though. The industry is so satisfying and you’re in the business of selling happiness and when we talk about things that matter there are a few complaints you know, every once in a while.
And obviously it’s not my fault but the mail messes up, right? Things happen, but for the most part. It’s one of the most satisfying and I would say gratifying businesses that I run because most people are so ecstatic. Occasionally you’ll get emails saying, Thank you so much for sending this card.
I know it was a cheap card, but this is the one my son’s been looking for for a year and no one else. I mean, and just those, those moments are heartfelt and just, Make it all worth it. Make it matter, huh? Yeah. So this, and because you’re such a dynamic entrepreneur, I mean, multiple things that you’re, whether it’s GCN, whether it’s your, your marketing company, whether it’s cards.
I mean, I feel like obviously people are needed in everything. So people, leadership management. So I know that’s something that you and I’ve talked about in the past, like, like, where do you stand on this? Like difference between like good leadership, like what does that mean for you? Good leadership.
Yeah. Leadership versus management. That’s a great question. I think I’m always developing as a leader. , I’ve put the people in place. I brought on a fact, a fractional COO about a year and a half ago. And so from that perspective, Oh my goodness. Like, Oh my gosh, He was actually the COO of a large company that was a client of mine, and when he moved on from that opportunity, I was able to have a conversation with him, and I said, Hey, I don’t know if I need you full time, but I just know I have this need, and I struggle with delegation, being very honest, being open with him, and being able to just say, hey, these are the things that I’m not great at, to hear him say, Oh, great.
Cause I don’t like any of the other stuff that you are good at. And these are the things that I love processes you know, diving into certain numbers , and backend stuff that, that isn’t necessarily my forte. So that felt really, really good, , but from a management perspective. I never wanted to be an overbearing manager or helicopter manager or whatever you may call it and so I found a lot of pride and just leadership.
You know when we started out just being a better person every day especially when I have investor relations calls inbound and outbound on a daily basis I may be on the phone with a fortune 500 company and I treat that person the same way that I treat someone that may have lost a 5 card in the mail and to be able to have that across all three different businesses.
And then not only that, but then to instill that into your staff and colleagues so that your business has , that same, I don’t want to say family feeling, but when our clients hire us, they should feel like family. It’s very professional. It’s not a personal relationship, but it is a situation in which we’re helping them raise money, whether it’s global capital network.
And we’re, this is a very intimate part of their business where they need to get to that next level. And they are entrusting us with that, with that CEO. It’s getting them ranked higher on Google, getting them to that next level. And when people are buying cards, maybe a little bit different, but they’re trying to get to that next level.
Right. And so we’re entrusted with really almost like a Sherpa would help someone up a mountain. You can have all the money in the world to get to Everest, but you still need to work with someone that knows the terrain. And that’s the pride that I’m trying to take as a leader. Unfortunately, about 30 days ago, I got a call from the wife of one of my employees saying that he was in the hospital.
He’d been in and out for about six months and But this time he was coming home and I said, well, that’s great. And she said, well, not so much. I said, well, why not? And she said, he’s coming home, but he’s coming home to hospice. And , at 33 years old and doing everything and having all the fun in the world there was a moment in that conversation in which she expressed to me how much it would mean if I called him and I’m thinking, okay, and there’s a lot of feelings that went towards that, but I’ll put it this way.
, that call was about two weeks ago and him and I have been talking every two to three days, not just one call, not just a goodbye call, but, but understanding that being there for your people. No matter what that means. And I didn’t ever expect it to mean this, but it has developed within me as an entrepreneur, an aspect of leadership of you have to lead to the end.
You have to stay and you have to lead you have to make sure that your people ,, that they matter, that they know that they matter. and sorry, that’s quite morbid example, but , So outside of that example in the last 30 days with GCN. I, I’ve also had to develop a sales team.
Things are growing so quickly. And, and I brought three very unique people all amazing people. You probably met one of them, Alexa who is doing the interviews at the event on the website. The red carpet there. , and really working with them to develop what I would say is a five star sales team.
You know, we really, and , we don’t even focus on sales. We’re helping people raise money. If we don’t do our job, we don’t have a good reputation. So as much as it is sales, it’s very much relationship building. And just leadership over the last 30 days , , and really understanding how much , it matters to people that they matter to you.
And then being able to exemplify that through your service or products , is something that I am trying to do on a daily basis. Yeah. And so what do you like? Like, how are you upscaling? do you read books? Do you like talk to other leaders? I’m always curious on how other people are getting their information.
Obviously you’re listening to podcasts like this, but other than listening to me, not me, but the guests, I won’t put myself out there as the trainer. That’s for dang sure. Other than that, like, what, what are you doing to like upscale? Like, , how do you like go about it? Yeah. Well, number one, I do want to give you credit because I do listen to your podcast and specifically the one that you sent me before this to kind of look at as an example gave me a really good reference point.
Dave Meltzer, something else. Incredible. He does this by the way. Oh my goodness. I always, I always plug this. People probably think he’s, I’m on his payroll. I’m not. But just so you know, I just do it because this guy inspires me so much, but he, do you know, every Friday he does a This call, he’s been doing it for like 20 years and it’s free.
It’s completely free if you go on his website and he literally teaches every Friday and he’s doing it for 20 years. He does not need to do that. And like all the stuff he gives away, even gives away his book for free. Like all this stuff is free. It just blows my mind. But that’s why I was like, like, I, I always give him a plug whenever anybody brings him up.
I’m like, yeah, go to his website, sign up for that call. It’s absolutely unbelievable. That’s one of the things I do to upskill as a leader, but go ahead. No, I mean, literally it’s, I mean , it’s listening to podcasts like this. Not just any podcast. I mean, there’s a lot of stuff on audible. There’s a lot of stuff on Apple podcasts, but finding the ones that really speak to you , and plugging you here.
Your series speaks to me. The people that you choose and curate for your show is no easy task. I being in the content world as well you don’t just slapstick anyone in the world , on your podcast. You curate like an author would a book. You know, each chapter of the story that you’re telling, , mission matters.
And so , it is things like this. I do have a circle of leaders. I think the biggest thing for me is never being the smartest person in the room or at least not feeling that way. So surrounding myself by people that have expertise in, in areas that I’m not strong in. But being also very honest with myself about what are the areas that I need help with.
Bravado and ego are two things that don’t help they are realities, but putting all that aside and really understanding what I’m not great at, and then surrounding myself by people that are great in those areas, and not only that they’re great, but that they’re passionate about it because, you know, I don’t like dragging anyone into a situation that they may not be A, comfortable with, or B, it’s not really what they want to be doing.
I’m a big advocate for, for Putting people in the right places and giving them tasks that they enjoy doing, including myself, unfortunately, for me, I get to do all the tasks. So most of them I enjoy, but I have the additional responsibility of doing all the tasks, regardless of whether I like them, but my employees should be able to be assigned things that they enjoy to do.
And so, but definitely having that circle , and researching and podcasts. I do do a lot of audio books. I need to actually go dig up I’ve read most of the books from all the sharks and not just the sharks, but the dragons. So, you know, Theo Paphitis Peter Jones, who now is well known on Shark Tank because he’s been on the U.
S. side of it. Deborah Meaden, I’ve read her books. So, Dragons Den and Shark Tank guys are amazing, whether it be the U. S. version or the Canada version or the U. K. I’ve read almost all of those books from all of those authors. Damon John, Robert Herjavec so those would be ones that I would say would be great for entrepreneurs as well.
Yeah, that’s cool. That’s interesting. And I do a bunch of audiobooks too. Like that’s my, nowadays , that’s all if I’m lucky I can get to is, is audiobooks really. But, there’s just so many ways to get info now. I always tell people they’re like, Oh, I don’t have time.
I’m like, yeah, you got time for an audiobook. You’re somewhere at some point to listen to something. Shut off the music for a little while. Do whatever you gotta do, but , like get it done. Get the learning done , yeah, or get out of the house, right? Or get out of the office for 10, 15 minutes and you don’t have to listen to the whole thing in one sitting.
Have some, have some conversations. Go to an event like the one that like GCN event, like speaking of that, like what do you, what do you guys got planned for the rest of the year? We’re in, we’re in May, so as we’re recording this, we’re in May. Yeah, no, absolutely. Perfect timing. Actually. We actually have our next event coming up for global capital network June 27th you know, global capital network.
com. If I can plug that, just the word global, the word capital and the word network. com. That’s Josh and I and Josh being the CEO founder myself, just I call myself the co pilot. So whatever’s needed, I’m there. You know, but But we’re having our next event. It’ll be right there at the Marriott Renaissance, right across from John Wayne.
Same place as last time in Newport Beach. And we’re expected to have about 500 attendees in person. And last time we had about 200 online, so we’re expecting a little bit more than that this time, so. Total attendees around 700, 750 with about 500 of those being in person. We’re expecting again, another 150 to 175 plus accredited investors to come out and then more presenters and great people to have booths like yourself.
I, and I hope you enjoyed the last one and definitely hope to see you at the next one. Yeah, it was a lot of fun. For anybody listening, I highly recommend going in and checking it out. There was many, many quality people I met. Just a, I mean, a really, really good crew and a good, good environment, good ambiance.
I think it was a really top notch all the way around. And if somebody wants to continue the conversation, I know we didn’t go too far into the SEO or marketing side of things, but if somebody wants to continue that conversation or to connect with you and your team how do they do that? Yeah so the best way VenturesMarketing org is the plug for the SEO.
We’ve been doing it for a long time. If you do happen to be listening and your business needs to rank higher on Google, Ventures V E N T U R E. marketing. org, venturesmarketing. org for that. With the anime stuff I’d like to tell them to call you to call me cause you and I still have to have a separate conversation about how we’re going to dive into that.
So we’ll, we’ll put that one on here, but if they are interested experience, Rick is my username, or, it’s not really a stage name cause most streamers use. Alternate names, but mine’s real. It’s just the word experience and the word Rick. So if anyone wants to dabble in kind of my more personal story or the anime cards, it’s experienced Rick on all platforms Instagram, primarily whatnot is where I do all of my live stream selling.
We were about to hit 15, 000 followers on that live streaming app. And then as far as you know, GCN. The best thing to do is just to go to the website, Global Capital Network, and all of the services and offerings are there and if they do need to contact me directly for that, just rick at globalcapitalnetwork.
com but yeah, no, I’m sorry that there’s three different plugs there, but yeah, we’ve got a lot going on. I love it. It’s good. I love, and a serious entrepreneur, definitely making things happen. And I’ve been doing it since you were in for a long time. So, and I love it. I love to follow people’s journey.
I think it gives a lot of people that are listening to this and that have, everybody has different journeys and different, and different interests, so I don’t think that everybody that’s an entrepreneur needs to be put in this one box or this one thing, I think it’s interesting That you have some of your personal interests that are also business opportunities, like anime cards or like you’re like other things you’ve done.
Like, I think that’s cool. It makes you dynamic. And I think it gives other people permission to have interest in hobbies and things that sometimes can get big out of nowhere too. So it’s fun. So, and for everybody listening, if this is your first time with Mission Matters, Just to let you know, this is a daily show each and every day.
We are bringing you new content, new entrepreneurs, new stories, new ideas. If you haven’t done it yet, hit that subscribe button because we definitely love to have you back here. So you can get some more of this content from these amazing guests. And Rick, thanks again so much. Glad we could finally catch up and do this.
Appreciate it. Honored, honored Adam, and keep doing the great work that you’re doing it’s much needed and much appreciated. And thank you so much for having me.