Interview with Jeff Barnes, CEO Angel Investors Network, Dreamer, Dad

How did Jeff Barnes become CEO of Angel Investors Network? Thru a series of unbelievable #HoShiMo’s: homelessness, baseball dream- ending injury, on a sinking submarine, death, divorce... but still, he rises. Listen in! #hoshimo #csuite #csuiteradio

Transcript:

Julie: Welcome to another episode of The Conversational. Today I am here. We are in the COVID crisis still, so I'm not actually physically here, sadly. We are doing this via Zoom. It seems to be the way. But I'm here with Jeff Barnes who is the CEO at Angel Investors Network.

Julie: Jeff has had a fascinating background. I know you're going to love this podcast. It was fascinating just to read his bio, much less hear his stories personally, but he's [00:00:30] always had a focus on three things really. Health, wealth and technology. Which is interesting because he started off in a very impoverished state with his family. He was a big lover of sports, wanted to play baseball, didn't work out, went into the Navy, was a nuclear trained mechanic and scuba diver for the US Navy on submarines.

Julie: He had lots of other fun adventures really relating to the water. I'll let him [00:01:00] explain. Then he had an honorable discharge, which of course was a major holy shit moment for him. #hoshimo, and got himself really into the technology and financial world and has been giving back ever since. He has done some amazing things, helped a myriad of companies, is an investor amongst other things. And it is my pleasure to welcome him here as a guest on The Conversational. So hello Jeff and welcome.

Jeff: [00:01:30] Thank you Julie. I really appreciate it and thanks for having me here.

Julie: It's my pleasure. You've got a fascinating background as I have promised the listeners. But as you know my favorite thing to do, I like to dig back into history and start from the very beginning. So tell us where were you born? And did you have brothers and sisters and what di your parents do?

Jeff: Sure. So I was born in Los Angeles. I have two younger siblings, a brother and a sister. [00:02:00] And my dad was self-employed hardwood floor installer and did some really high end, top end floor installs in places like Beverly Hills and downtown LA. And he did a lot of the really big work there. And then my mom had a number of different jobs and her passion life was really horses and using horses to help people with therapy and disabilities and things like that. So that's kind of where everything started.

Julie: That's amazing. Okay. I've done that myself. That's amazing. [00:02:30] What was the impetus for your mom to do that, to be kind of helping people with horse therapy?

Jeff: I don't know if it was like an FU to her parents, but she just wanted horses her entire life. And when I was, I think it was seven years old, she finally got her first horse. So that was our first family horse, and we got involved in that and I was in 4H and did all these different things with horses. Turns out I'm incredibly allergic to them. So it never really took for me, but [00:03:00] it was fun. It was fun having a horse. He actually passed away last year at the age of 35 years old.

Julie: Wow. That's crazy. Wow. Okay. Amazing. So horses were in there too. I didn't mention that in your bio. So you've got the water and the equine. Okay, got it. I won't mix the two yet. Okay. So anyway, so keep going on your youth, kind of living in southern California and your parents. Keep going.

Jeff: So when we're growing [00:03:30] up, my mother's side of the family, it was all educators, all worked in the public education system. My dad's side, my grandpa was a World War II vet turned police officer. My grandma on my dad's side was a Rosie the Riveter type. So she worked in factories during World War II and then went into banking. And both of them lived on farms growing up. My dad and my aunt actually lived on a farm for a while growing up. And so I've got a little bit of that blue collar, hardworking hands in the dirt kind of [00:04:00] mentality growing up.

Jeff: And when you come from that type of household, especially with my dad having a business that always seemed to be up and down, you just learned to be very resourceful as a kid and I joke now because I'm divorced, I've been dating and I just find it hilarious when I talk to these girls and like, "Oh my gosh, you actually know how to fix things." I'm like, "Well, doesn't every guy? Didn't every guy grow up the way I did?" You're learning how to fix brakes and take care of things and work on cars [00:04:30] on the weekends so they drive to get to work on the weekdays.

Jeff: That's kind of what my upbringing was and did that for as long as... We moved out of Colorado, or I'm sorry, out of California to Colorado in the middle of my sixth grade year during the 1994 Northridge earthquake. Right after that.

Julie: You were in California for the earthquake?

Jeff: Well actually, ironically enough, I was not because my dad with his business, he actually had a friend [00:05:00] who had moved to Colorado a while before, was building a beautiful house and so he didn't trust anybody besides my dad to install this hardware for us.

Jeff: So we went out there to Colorado, western Colorado in a little town called Carbondale to help this guy build his house and build his floors. So my dad and I were actually in Colorado when the earthquake happened and my mom and my brother and sister were back home. So here I am, we were on a track system in school, so I'm on winter break and expecting to go back in January, to go back to [00:05:30] school for January, February. And instead we get there, the house gets packed up and we turn around and we leave and go right back to Colorado

Julie: Obviously they were okay. Were they affected by the earthquake?

Jeff: Mentally more than anything else. My dad's business was struggling big time at that point and we lived in Palmdale, California, which at the time was a gang capital of southern California. It was just not a nice place. There were bullet holes in the cinder block wall behind [00:06:00] our house that my brother and I would climb over to go to school.

Jeff: So I think that was just the straw that broke the camel's back. And my mom and dad just agreed, "Hey, let's get the heck out of here. Colorado's gorgeous and we can start brand new up there." So they literally dropped everything. And when I say dropped everything, I mean didn't even try and sell the house, didn't try and take care of the business, like literally just left.

Jeff: It was quite a culture shock for me and I didn't understand all of it. Of course, when you're in sixth grade you just don't really [00:06:30] get all that stuff. So to me it was one of those like, "Well what the hell did we do this for? I love playing baseball, playing 10-11 months out of the year in southern California and here I come to Colorado, and you're lucky if you get three months in.

Julie: Right, and you're in a small town. You said how big was this town that you guys moved to?

Jeff: So it was about 6,000 people spread across hundreds of square miles. So it was very... Like my graduating class when I finally graduated high school, we had 82 people in my graduating class. [00:07:00] That's about how small the entire community was. And we were the one high school, the next high school was about 15-20 miles away down the road. So it wasn't exactly a very populated area, that's for sure.

Julie: I know you talked about your dad's business was struggling and obviously your mom and the work that she was doing, I'm sure that had a major shift when you guys all moved to Colorado too. How did things go? I know you'd mentioned at times [00:07:30] that you guys struggled. What was the story behind that?

Jeff: Yeah. So what happened was without going into too many details because you'll just bore people, but essentially my dad being self-employed had a business partner in southern California. And that guy got into drugs, embezzled from my dad's company, took all this money and essentially bankrupted the company. Well my dad trying to sort of save everything, [00:08:00] he went from 50 employees down to about two. Lost a lot of money in that regard and ended up just trying to make good with the employees. But unfortunately that didn't help out with... He didn't pay the payroll taxes and get that taken care of. To the best of my knowledge that's exactly what happened.

Jeff: And years later the IRS was coming and looking for him and knocking on the door wondering where this money is because all these back taxes are owed. And because the back taxes were owed and we didn't have money because the business was [00:08:30] hurting they literally left the house and there was a mortgage still that was outstanding. So not to throw my parents under the bus because I love them and they've obviously raised me to be who I am, but they've made some really poor decisions and had some really shitty situations happen. I don't know if I can say that word on the air here.

Julie: Yeah, I've got a holy shit moments. You're good to go.

Jeff: Some really crappy things that happened to them along the way. And they just didn't either have right advisors or the right people in their corner, the right people to talk to that would help them out. And so [00:09:00] they ended up finding themselves in massive debt. The IRS coming after them and trying to garnish wages and things like that. The business failed. So I'm sure my dad's ego and pride was hurt dramatically.

Jeff: And when we moved, we didn't have anything. So I ended up... We were staying at that house of somebody that my dad and I helped build. We stayed with them for a while, and they were very kind and gracious enough to let us sleep on the couch and stay at the house for a little while.

Jeff: And then after a while we moved into a travel trailer. So they had a travel trailer. My grandparents [00:09:30] would let us borrow theirs, so we were a family of five sleeping in two tiny little travel trailers out on a property in western Washington. And I was going through school with that. I did that while I was going to school and had to still wake up every morning in a travel trailer when you have about 10 gallons of hot water between three siblings and a couple of adults, it's not the easiest thing to do. Not to mention meal prep and all of that.

Julie: [00:10:00] How old were you? How old were you?

Jeff: 12 to 13 years old. W.

Julie: Wow.

Jeff: 12 to 13 years old.

Julie: Wow, wow.

Jeff: So right about the time when you're trying to make all these lifelong friends and deal with all that. And for me it was just a reality. And I think I attribute that to my upbringing. My dad, my grandpa, grandpa's on both sides, my mom's stepfather was a Nazi internment camp survivor and-

Julie: Oh my gosh.

Jeff: So [00:10:30] I got to learn all these different traits, not by them telling me much about them until I was much older, but just by the way they act and the way they carry themselves, and if you've got a sliver in your finger, you didn't cry about it and whine about it. You pulled the sliver out and you moved on. Same types of thing. That's just the mentality I grew up with. So this lifestyle to me, at the time it sucked there's no doubt about it. But it was just, we'll figure it out, we'll make it through this. And my dad, my mom, they never broke down. They never turned to alcoholism [00:11:00] or anything like that. They stuck it out and they figured it out and eventually we got back on our feet, but it wasn't until after living in a motel, and it turns out the motel was owned by one of my friends' dads in school. So it was no secret where I lived, and we'd shop at the Goodwill and we would go to the church to get food because we couldn't afford enough food for the family for a while.

Jeff: And so that was the lifestyle for a while. And I lived in this new culture shock world, turned into a very big introvert, [00:11:30] didn't really want to disclose or talk to anybody about my life and what was going on. And I was telling somebody the other day, when my parents finally got back on their feet, business got going, everything was copacetic. It wasn't great, but it was manageable. I literally lived a hundred feet away from the high school, okay? So for my entire high school up until towards the end of my senior year, I lived 100 feet from high school and I never once brought a single friend over to my house because I was just embarrassed by how we lived. And it [00:12:00] wasn't even bad. And looking back on it now, I know it was not bad where we lived at that point, but I think I had just carried all of this stuff from earlier on that I just didn't feel comfortable inviting other people, my peers into my life.

Julie: Yeah. Well it totally makes sense, right? Those were the formative years and peer pressure and the hormone, there's so many things that go on, so it's totally acceptable. And wow, what a childhood. And so it totally makes sense, look fast forward and thinking [00:12:30] about what you do to try to help others. And your scrappy attitude has transformed into a scrappy business to help others learn how to be scrappy, right? So that all makes a ton of sense to me. But what I find ironic is, I have to believe that your parents, with the struggles that they had financially and with the IRS coming from them, there was probably some baggage about trusting people and money, all of those kinds of things. Your dad having been [00:13:00] taken advantage of by his partner. I'm sure there were a lot of pent-up issues that they had that transferred to you.

Jeff: Absolutely. I remember dinner table conversations about the rich people being evil and you never trust an attorney. And that was something that I carried for a long time. And I still am proud of my blue collar roots and the fact that I can fix pretty much anything on this planet, and I do believe that. But it [00:13:30] took me a long time to realize that that wasn't the reality, that was just their reality. It was their paradigm.

Julie: Right.

Jeff: I had to growing up figure out what I wanted in life, what was going to be my viewpoint, what's going to be my legacy, and how am I going to leave my kids, and I didn't want them to have this sour taste in their mouth. I know I'm fast forwarding way beyond it, but I didn't want my life to be one of resentment and frustration and anguish about something that I didn't fully understand.

Julie: Right. No, [00:14:00] and it's amazing that, this is why I love doing this podcast because people listen to stories like this and then see what you've done. Nobody's had a perfect life. Everybody's had these major [inaudible 00:14:14] that have happened to them and yours is truly amazing. What a story. I want to talk about though, you'd mentioned early on, and you have it in your bio about your love of baseball and playing. So given that you were introverted in high school and didn't have [00:14:30] people over, did you involve yourself in sports and is that where your love of baseball came? I know it happened in California before you came, but did you continue to play it throughout these moves?

Jeff: Oh, absolutely. So I was playing baseball from the moment I could walk, and my parents have old footage of me hitting the whiffle ball over the house and stuff like that from when I was like three years old. So baseball was going to be my life and that was it. There was no plan B, there was nothing else. It was just going to be baseball. [00:15:00] So when I got to Colorado, I was pretty good. And because I had so much practice and training compared to everybody else that lived in Colorado, I excelled really well. But the problem was I also got into football and was not great at football by any stretch, but I got better and better. And so in high school I was first starting team and all that, which is kind of funny to say when you're in a school of 400 people. But I played a lot [crosstalk 00:15:25].

Julie: You get a lot of playing time though. That's good.

Jeff: Oh absolutely. Yeah. Iron man was the typical thing out there for sure. [00:15:30] So my sophomore year, I got onto this all-star baseball team and we were going to travel to Australia and we were going to play in this three day, nine game tournament, which is a lot, especially when you're talking about opposite hemispheres and you're practicing in the snow in Colorado and then you have to go play in the heat in Australia. So I ended up ruining my shoulder. I started out as a pitcher. It turns out [00:16:00] our catcher quit, couldn't do it. So I ended up taking over the catcher responsibilities and my arm just got shot. It just got totally ruined. So when I was 16 years old, I ended up dislocating my arm, didn't know it at the time.

Jeff: Something happened, just that repetitive throwing and it just hurt really bad. So I had to take it easy they said, hey, you probably injured your rotator cuff. We don't know, just take it easy. So I did up until the fall, and now it's football season. Well the first day that we could put our pads on, I [00:16:30] go up against our All State running back and I go to tackle him and I just pop my shoulder right out. I just felt it just popped completely out, had to pop it back in. And I knew right then and there that I... Because I couldn't lift my arm up halfway above my chest or anything like that. So I then ended up going and seeing a doctor, and sure enough they're like, yeah, your arm's done. You're not going to throw a baseball again and you'll be lucky if you can lift weights and like that. We've got to do surgery.

Jeff: I had torn my bicep tendon, I tore my upper and my lower rotator cuff. [00:17:00] And even after surgery and lots of PT, even to this day, and this is over 20 years later, it's still nothing close to what it was. So in a very short period of time, I went from only wanting to play baseball for the rest of my life, to never being able to.

Julie: And you were 16? You were sophomore, junior? Was this your-

Jeff: Yeah sophomore, junior year. And then in my senior year, and of course I was an idiot and I thought I could just power through and muscle through it. And so I ended up reinjuring it a couple times and never [00:17:30] quite as severe but bad enough to where I knew I was never going to be able to do that, play baseball again. So I needed something else to do.

Julie: So then what was plan B?

Jeff: There wasn't one unfortunately. So that was the interesting thing. So I didn't know what I wanted to do in life, but I knew that I didn't have money. My grades were good but not great, so I could get scholarships, but it wasn't really likely that I'd get the scholarships to the places I wanted to go. And I didn't know enough about what I wanted in life [00:18:00] to even consider college as an option. And I just really didn't know. So one day, beginning of my senior year, this guy walks in and says, "Hey, I'm a recruiter for the Navy. You want some pizza?" "Sure." And that's how that whole journey began. And I said, yeah, this sounds really cool. You're going to pay me to go there, you're going to pay me to sign up, you're going to pay for my schooling. Cool. And I get to travel the world? Sounds great. Sign me up.

Julie: Were your [00:18:30] grandparents alive? Because didn't you say your grandfather was in...

Jeff: Yeah. Yeah. Both. So my mom's stepdad had just passed away. My mom's dad who was also a World War II vet had just passed away, but my dad's dad was still alive. So yeah, he got to see me in uniform and everything like that. So that was [crosstalk 00:18:48].

Julie: I bet that was... Yeah, I'm sure that there was a little bit of that... Look, you've got a legacy of it and some pride's there as well, so that makes sense.

Jeff: Absolutely. He's one of my idols. I have his name tattooed on my leg, so yeah [crosstalk 00:19:01]

Julie: Really? Oh, that's amazing.

Jeff: [crosstalk 00:19:02] [00:19:00] Part of my life.

Julie: That's amazing. So was he in the Navy as well?

Jeff: He was actually in the Army, so we always gave each other a good ribbing back and forth. When I would talk about difference. But he would say, you know, I always love those Navy guys. They always have the best ice cream.

Julie: What was it? There was the movie, I'm a big movie buff, with Jack Nicholson and Tom Cruise.

Jeff: A Few Good Men?

Julie: Yeah, right. He's like, oh yeah, we love those Navy guys. They always give... [00:19:30] He was a Marine, right? They always pick us up and give us a ride whenever we need to go someplace or something. Yeah. You guys always get a lot of the crap, right? It's all rolls down. Yeah. Anyway, but I love the following the family tradition a little bit and taking advantage of the fact that you could do something you'd be proud of and get an education and be paid. So what did you... We read a little in your bio, right? The nuclear scientist and submarining. Did you know immediately? Did you start right on that track? Was it like subs, that's my [00:20:00] thing. Or how did you [crosstalk 00:20:02].

Jeff: No, actually while I was in high-

Julie: ...or how did you [crosstalk 00:00:20:00].

Jeff: No, actually, so while I was in high school, I would go in the auto shop and learn how to fix everything under the sun if it had four wheels or even two wheels. And then, I worked in an auto shop throughout high school, so like I said, I knew how to fix stuff. I looked at my prospects in life and I said, "I cannot be a mechanic for the rest of my life. God help me. I've got to get out of this town. It's the tiny little town in the middle of nowhere. I've got to leave. I can't just be a townie and hanging out and being [00:20:30] a mechanic for the rest of my life. That's not what I want for myself."

Jeff: When the guy came up and said, "You can join the Navy, and here's the SEALs training program and the BUD/S, and you can do all that stuff," I was hooked. I was going to be a warrior, right? That's what I wanted to do. It turns out you have to be able to do a lot of pull ups and push ups, which is really hard to do.

Julie: With a bad shoulder, right? Yeah.

Jeff: So, that was a little bit challenging. I never really quite passed those tests. But then I took a test, the ASVAB, and I would screw it up if I tried to tell you what [00:21:00] that acronym stands for, but they tested my aptitude, and they said, "Okay, cool. You pass, you can be part of our nuclear power program." I said, "What's that?" They're like, "Oh, you're going to learn about nuclear power and how to run a ship that's powered by a nuclear reactor." I was like, "Well, don't know anything about that, but cool, let's check it out."

Jeff: So, I show up, and in boot camp they say, "Okay, you can, as a nuke," that's what we were referred to, "As a nuke, you have one of three tracks. You can be an electrician, an electronics technician or a mechanic." And I said, "Oh, please don't [00:21:30] make me a mechanic." And sure enough, they're like, "Oh, well you scored off the charts on this one. So, guess what you get to be? You're going to be a mechanic in the Navy." I will not lie, I was devastated. I did not want to be... I wanted to learn a new skill. I did not want to be a mechanic, and I was pretty bummed out about that. But looking back, probably the best thing that could've happened.

Julie: Right? That's what these things... I love that, right? These things that you see as negatives and obstacles are the things that make you what you are. So yeah, it makes total sense. So, off you are, [00:22:00] being a Naval nuclear mechanic? Is that how-

Jeff: Yeah, exactly. So, a nuclear trained mechanic essentially, and they put you through all this training, so a year and a half of school. You do almost the equivalent of three to four years of schooling in a technical vocation because you're working 80 hours a week and nonstop and all of that. You learn nuclear power and reactor theory and principles and all that. And of course, you learn how to be a mechanic and then you start to apply that in the job. So, it's almost like a schooling and apprenticeship [00:22:30] all rolled into one, and then they send you out to the fleet.

Jeff: And so I ended up, because of the fleet dynamics at the time, they're always asking for volunteers for submarines. And I said, "Well, cool, if you're going to pay me a little bit more," which a little bit more like a hundred bucks more a month, something like that, "And I could get to go travel on a submarine, cool. That sounds awesome. Sign me up because I don't want to be on a floating city." That was the other alternative, was an aircraft carrier-

Julie: A floating tube instead, got it. Sounds much better.

Jeff: Yeah, a sinking tub [00:23:00] actually. Yeah, exactly.

Julie: Oh, wow. Yeah, right.

Jeff: So yeah, I don't know. They might have needed to check me a little bit at the door for that one. But yeah, I signed up for subs and joined the boat. 9/11 happened while I was still in school, and we went into class in the morning, everything was fine and we left. They put us on lockdown for a few hours. We left that afternoon, and the Marines are there, the tanks are there, everything's going on because we were at a nuclear power site. So, we were considered a high value target in [00:23:30] that realm. So, 9/11 happens. I finally graduate. They send me out to the fleet. I go to San Diego, and then the boat's already on deployment, so they flew me out to Bahrain a few months later, a couple months later, and I ended up in Bahrain in 2002 and joined the boat there and did a couple of deployments on board the USS Jefferson City after that.

Jeff: I can go into all of the stories you could possibly think of it and the "holy shit" moments that happen on board a nuclear powered submarine in a time [00:24:00] of war. It's a lot of fun.

Julie: If you had to pick one, what was the biggest kind of "holy shit" moment during your sub years?

Jeff: Yeah. Submarines, since Desert Storm essentially, have not fired rockets. We haven't had to shoot off torpedoes and things like that. But we're always doing reconnaissance. We're the silent service. No one knows we exist. We disappear. We would have SEALs come down every now and then. We'd pick them up after they did an operation. We never knew what they did. But the one thing that you do [00:24:30] constantly, incessantly, in the military is you train over and over and over again because there's just a few things that could potentially go wrong that would scare the living bejesus out of any sub sailor: fire, flooding or a steam line rupture.

Jeff: Any one of those few things that happens, and people can die very quickly because there's nowhere for the smoke to go. The water's all coming inside, and steam will kill you within a few minutes because it pressurizes and overheats the space. So, these are the things we train for [00:25:00] and there's all different scenarios and whatnot. Well, one time we're doing one of these drills, and I was relatively new at the boat at this point. So, my job was to make sure somebody didn't touch a certain valve, because if you touch that valve at the wrong time, it could actually damage equipment, and we don't want to risk damaging equipment. You have to do it the right way. So, the drill starts, everything's going fine. I'm walking around, I'm looking at the depth gauges, I'm making sure no one's touching the valve and all that sort of stuff.

Jeff: And then all of a sudden, you hear the same order repeated [00:25:30] three times, and that's not normal. And then I'm looking at the depth gauge, and we're supposed to be going up because we're in the middle of this drill and we're supposed to be going up to the surface. And instead of going up, I can feel the angle of the boat. We're actually going down, and we're dropping down by about 20 to 30 feet every few seconds. And then it accelerates, and we're going down deeper and deeper and deeper and we're facing the wrong direction. We're not angled the right way. Just being even a new sailor, you can feel this stuff in the boat. And then all of a sudden, you hear something [00:26:00] that you know kind of scares you when you know what it means, which is, "Engineering watch supervisor, emergency restore the engine room."

Jeff: And whenever an order like that comes over the mic, over the PA system, you know that things have gotten fucked. Things are not going well because there is a certain depth at which a submarine will implode and it will crush and everybody will die instantly. And an emergency restore is not something you ever want to hear, because it means you're approaching that [00:26:30] or you're accelerating in the wrong direction. And so that one valve that I was told, "Don't let anybody touch," now I'm getting screamed at, "Open that fucking valve right now, Barnes." And here I am, after you hear the order and you hear it from the right guy, you're like, "Okay." And this is a 10-inch wheel, hand wheel, which is hard for people to understand if they've never seen it before, but we're talking hundreds of pounds of pressure of steam that I'm now releasing down the header to try and get the propulsion back up and running, [00:27:00] because we didn't have propulsion. We had lost propulsion completely, and we were going in the exact wrong direction.

Jeff: The nice thing about this, and of course you don't think about any of this stuff at the time, you don't even think about the fact that you could die in the next few seconds if something doesn't happen. You don't think about all the people around you. You just think about your job and what you need to do in that moment to get everything back up and running the right way. That is attributed to all of the training, time and time again. It's beat into your brain, so you don't even need to think about it, you don't need to [00:27:30] pull out a manual, you don't need to look at a standard operating procedure. You just do what you know needs to be done, and sure enough, everybody... It was kind of like ants just going to town on all the food at a picnic table. Everybody's just swarming around getting everything done.

Jeff: Before you know it, the engine room's back up and running. We're going in the right direction, we've leveled off, we're all safe. That's when everybody got to go, "Now, what the fuck did you guys mess up?" So, that would be, I'd say, the one big [00:28:00] " holy shit" moment there.

Julie: I guess so.

Jeff: There were a few others, but that was one.

Julie: That would constitute... That would do it for me. Yeah, okay. Look, we could probably have a whole podcast just on your Naval experience, but tell me how long were you in the Navy and when did you leave and why and what'd you do?

Jeff: Sure, so I was in from 2000 to '06. There's a couple of years of inactive. I left because I just got tired of the bureaucracy, the politics of it. I always prided myself on just getting the job done and being the best at [00:28:30] anything I could possibly be, and sometimes you have to play the game. And I was really terrible at playing the game, so I just got tired of all of it and left. And of course, there was a girl, too, as there always is.

Julie: Those darn girls, they're just evil, right?

Jeff: I wouldn't say evil, but you know what, they can definitely persuade you to do things you might not otherwise. So, I left the Navy. My girlfriend, she ended up becoming my wife-

Julie: How old were you, first, when you left? [crosstalk 00:28:59]

Jeff: [00:29:00] I was 24 when I left.

Julie: Okay, 24 when you left the Navy, okay.

Jeff: Yep, and joined a company, Hartford Steam Boiler Inspection and Insurance Company, which was an equipment and technology insurance company. So when I left, I didn't want to work in nuclear power. I didn't want to do shift work. I couldn't work in an office. I needed space to roam. I needed some variety in my life. And so, they gave me this job where I worked from my office and I traveled around and I looked at all these different businesses, essentially doing risk management consulting and looking at their equipment and their technologies. That evolved, [00:29:30] as a career should, and I ended up running the western United States and helping out with the largest territory.

Jeff: I had 25 guys working for me all doing that. And then, I ended up leading up an innovation technology division doing international projects around technology and innovation and how we can leverage technology to make our business better and help our customers and so on. So, that's a very short, truncated version of the 12-year career that I did over there.

Julie: Didn't you mention [00:30:00] that you were an innovation coach? Didn't we talk about that at some point?

Jeff: Yeah, mm-hmm (affirmative).

Julie: What is-

Julie: You were an innovation coach? Didn't we talk about that at some point? What does that mean? What's an innovation coach?

Jeff: That's a great question. So when you think about innovation in its traditional sense or you think about Silicon Valley, you don't necessarily think about big companies, right? Well the company that I worked for was the hundredth largest company in the world because we'd been acquired and the name of it was Munich Re, and they were always looking at the next technological innovation. What is going to come down the pipe that could either disrupt [00:30:30] our business, could really hurt us, or could be a benefit to us and our clients? Well, again, if you're a really big company, everybody has their day job, they're not really focusing on innovation in general. But they also know the industry incredibly well, they know what's working, what's not working. They're also the boots on the ground talking with the clients and they know what the clients need and what the clients are looking for, but they're not really sure how to take these ideas and turn them into an actionable business plan.

Jeff: So my job was to [00:31:00] not only go out there and find some of these technologies myself, but also work with groups within the organization, corporate innovation, to spur on new ideas. What are things that could potentially disrupt our business? How do we make sure that we are not the next Kodak that's being disrupted by the digital age of cameras? And things like that. How do we stay in front of that? So there's an entire methodology from going from idea to testing the idea and building out a concept, and testing the concept, [00:31:30] and then creating a use case, and testing like on and on and on, right? It's all of this reiterative process.

Jeff: So it's very much a lean startup mentality mixed in with corporate structure, corporate strategy and all of that. It just spans across multiple sectors, multiple divisions, and departments within a company because now you're not just an entrepreneur who's coming up with an idea for one little thing, but you're trying to come up with an idea that can also be globalized or brought forth into this giant company. There's a [00:32:00] lot of steps that go along with that. So that's what being an innovation coach was.

Julie: I mean, it's fascinating because you really, you think about your Naval training, which is constantly training and trying to find out what are the things that can go wrong? And training, training, training so that you're prepared. You're almost applying that a little bit to the business world, which is helping companies, and individuals in these companies, think through those things and prepare for them and look at the innovations that help to surmount those kinds of things. It's kind of interesting how you're perfectly trained for that.

Jeff: 100%. [00:32:30] Yeah.

Julie: In this time, so through all this, you're doing this really interesting work, but now you're married, right? You married this woman who caught your eye, right? And pulled you out of the Navy and then did you have kids?

Jeff: Yeah, we ended up having two kids, so I have a six year old and an eight year old right now, who are nonstop energy, energizer bunnies all the time. We ended up getting a divorce last year, so it didn't end up working out, but we were together for about 15 years. So it was a good run. There's no doubt about [00:33:00] it. We have these two amazing kids out of it, so no regrets there whatsoever.

Julie: So you ... but you obviously left there, when did you leave to go start up the Angel Investors Network?

Jeff: Yeah, so that actually happened, Angel Investors Network has been around since 1997. So as much as I'd love to say I'm the founder of it, I'm not. One of the things I've always done, and always liked doing was talking about innovation and technology and business and creating businesses and creating wealth through [00:33:30] that whole process, and always learning myself. One of the things I needed to learn how to do was become a better speaker. I'd go to speaker training after speaker training and I'd go to all these different events, and I ended up meeting the founder of Angel Investors Network, his name is Greg Writer.

Jeff: He and I were talking, I said, "Listen, this is what I'm doing in the corporate world. I really enjoy it, but they're making me travel all the time, and I'm not really getting to participate on the upside of these companies that I bring to them. It's getting to be a bit of a [00:34:00] challenge for me." So he and I started talking, he goes, "Listen, I'm working on my own startup, and I'm looking for somebody to kind of take over this company. So let's talk." That's kind of how that happened. It started a couple of years ago and throughout several conversations decided to make the change and make the leap in October of '18, and that's when I officially took over the CEO role of Angel Investors Network, and I've been here ever since.

Julie: Been there ever since ... It's a little, I mean, if I understand what you guys do, and I'll let [00:34:30] you explain it a little bit more, but it's sort of a ... I mean, it's an amalgamation of all the things that you've done throughout the story that you've just told, right? I mean, you've kind of taken what you were doing for big companies, which is the innovation coaching, the kind of figuring out what the problems can be before they occur, which is based on a lot of what your training was in the Navy. But yet you're kind of back full circle to this sort of scrappiness that you learned as a child from kind of the struggles you guys had as a family.

Julie: Yet at the [00:35:00] core of what you're doing is financial, which was again kind of the opposite of what you were able to experience as a child. So it's, for me it's a fascinating ... this is why I love to do these things because our whole life kind of informs where we end up, I think, eventually. So what is it that you love most about what you're doing at Angel Investors Network?

Jeff: Yeah, so for me, it is, I almost get to feel like Simon Cowell on American idol, right?

Julie: Are [00:35:30] you yelling at people?

Jeff: There are those times. There are definitely ... Or at least shaking my head and pressing the buzzer, like, "No, you need to go back to the drawing board buddy." But I get to see people that come up with incredible ideas and where my genius lies is that I love the innovation, I love the technology. I've been a technophobe since day one that I can remember, right? I grew up in the era of dial up modems initially and before that rotary phones and seen the whole evolution to where we are today, and I love [00:36:00] it and I embrace all of it. But I also love business. I love the fact that businesses create jobs and have an economic impact that people can make money with them, and investing in businesses.

Jeff: So I sit in that little unique middle, which is where I understand the technologies and I understand the businesses that can apply the technology and how can it help. As a result, I get to kind of be the judge, and somebody comes to us and they say, "Hey, I have this great idea and I think it's going to be the next billion dollar idea," because everybody has a billion dollar idea now. We look at [00:36:30] those billion dollar ideas. I'm doing my air quotes. We say, "Why do you think it is? Prove to me." You'd only have to ask a few questions depending on the industry or what they're doing to figure out whether they actually have something or they know enough or not. The ones where they don't know enough, we say, "Okay, you need to go back. Here's some training we've developed. You can watch this or you can do it yourself, it's fine, and come back to us when you're actually ready."

Jeff: But then the ones that are ready, and they're just really good at the technology, or they're really good at the innovation, but they have no idea how [00:37:00] to get a business going. They have no idea how to raise capital. They don't know what the next step is they need to be looking at. They don't know how to do marketing. That's where we get to bring the business sense in, and we say, "Hey, let us help you out with this. Let us help you raise the capital. Let us help you put the business plan together, the marketing strategies, and let's really make this thing take off."

Jeff: When we do that and we're successful at that, that's where you get to see like the finalists in American idol. Everybody's crying because you see their whole journey and their story, and you see how they've succeeded and they persevered and they made it happen. You get so excited because now [00:37:30] you're like, "Cool, I was a part of that. I got to help out." Of course the really cool part is when you get to own a piece of it as they're growing too, right?

Julie: Yeah. Right. I love that. This is so great. I have loved hearing about your story. I mean so many, so many. Holy shit. I mean literally, I think you could have a movie made about you, but I love that it ends, that it's ... and again, this is the end, but that this part of your stories so far is ending with you being able to give that [00:38:00] back to others and help them. So it's, while you're doing well too, I get it, but it's a gift that you've been able to take some of these trials that you've had and turn it into something so amazing. So thank you for being on here and thank you for sharing your story. It has been a true pleasure.

Jeff: Julie. Thank you very much. I've loved every second of it. I really appreciate you guys having me here.

Julie: All right, thanks Jeff.