Jeff Venn - Web Agency Owner, Musician, Surfer and Life Architect Talking with Jeff Venn, a free-thinker who is always dreaming big and chasing the magic.He loves to inspire people to achieve their goals and think for themselves. He is not afraid to challenge assumptions and the beliefs society has scripted for us as infallible truths – they’re not. At Create Studios, he has carved out his own unique culture and approach to work that isn’t some meaningless, stifling grind. They have fun together and do great work while always improving, learning, and growing. His goal in life is to inspire people to achieve their highest potential.
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This is the entrepreneurial journey podcast with ADA comply guys Tony Caggiano.
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Today's guest is not only an avid surfer, a talented musician, and the owner of successful web design and ad agency is also a self proclaimed life architect, and in his spare time he loves to help young entrepreneurs navigate the waters of entrepreneurship. So let's roll that intro and get to know our guest today, Mr. Jeff, then, and learn more about his entrepreneurial journey.
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The path to success can be a long and winding road, as entrepreneurs we all have reasons for taking control of our own destinies, but just because you're working for yourself, doesn't mean you have to work by yourself. The best way to grow as an entrepreneur is to surround yourself and learn from others who have a similar mindset on the entrepreneurial journey podcast we will meet many of these mindset masters and bring valuable lessons that you can use today to help you keep moving forward on your entrepreneurial journey. Welcome back to the entrepreneurial journey podcast. We have another awesome guest with us today, Mr. Jeff, then he's an incredible guy he's a life architect which we're gonna dive into a little bit and find out more about that, but he also owns create studios, it's a Web and Digital Marketing studio, he's also a mentor to entrepreneurs specifically young entrepreneur, so we're gonna be talking about all the great things that he's doing, but welcome Jeff, how you doing today, I am doing pretty good today. Glad to be on the show and it's fun. We both have podcasts, got to learn about your entrepreneurial journey and ADA compliance just recently so it's a pleasure to return the favor. Awesome, well I was, you know, just for our listeners, I was just on Jeff's podcast though, you know, once you're done listening to this one definitely hop on over to his will get the link as well so I get to listen to two great podcasts and one day. Tell us a little bit about yourself, Jeff, I know that you know the owner of this amazing web agency and you do a lot of other great things. Tell us, tell us a little bit about your what you do now and maybe how you got started on your entrepreneurial journey for sure so I've been on this since 2005 a hot minute doing the same thing the web design and the online marketing but if you're like me, you know, you go through middle school, high school get out perhaps get a college degree and just kind of do whatever's in front of you or whatever you've been, you know, raised to do and so I did that. I got the computer science degree I minored in graphic design my parents, they're both retired professors so no harm no foul and that went out easily got a job in it and I worked for this big bureaucratic agency here in town, it was a municipality, so electric water wastewater kind of thing. And it was a pretty incredible job, it actually had a pension, if you can believe those things are still around, so we're working at least 20 years at the 30 and get 80% of your salary for life in the bank. And so, you know I'm there in my early mid 20s enjoying it. It's about 200 people in IT department about 2000 people in the whole company and I just remember, I just had this moment when I was sitting in one of those picture one of those old city buildings the dark wood paneling, you know it's it's it's well maintained but it's just kind of got that bureaucratic feel and you know the 10 of us were there the leadership team and looked across the table, this guy named Richard was maybe eight or 10 years out of retirement awesome guy loved him to death but I just slipped across the table I was like man I have to sit here for, you know 25 more years, and Richard also make marginally more money, not that it's all about the money but it just seemed like you know for my creative spirit and I'm pretty much like a renaissance type of guy that was not for me. In addition, I don't know if you're like me, you don't like sitting and wasting time in traffic right. So, I lived out of the beach was 35 minutes commute to a parking garage. Come down a couple floors cross the street got 30 More storage so just to get in the building was like 45 or 50 minutes. Granted you can talk to people on the phone you can, you know, listen to stuff in the car but it was 45 minutes one way so here I was just chucking away an hour and a half a day and then lastly, you know the place where they're eight or nine hours a day, eight or nine hours of work doesn't get done right. Yeah, so here I was on this this route, it'd be beautiful spring weather I love to surf, been a lifelong surfer grew up right near the beach and still there in Jacksonville Beach so beautiful spring weather would come and they weren't really flexible with work from home or anything like that so it was time to get up and go and it was kind of depressing so I figured you know with my skills and with web design starting at the time in 2005 I could you know hatched a little plan and launch out on my own so that was the impetus there just that corporate grind corporate burnout and you know I was young enough and eager and enough didn't have the biggest nut to maintain monthly not that I just launched out did it. That's awesome, yeah it's it's so funny I didn't know this about you till just now that you know both of us got our start working, you know with municipals I actually worked for a small gas and electric company in there, they call it the telecom division but we were really, you know, putting fiber optics throughout the city and whatnot. That's how I got my start in it and then similar, it just wasn't for me, I wanted to branch out and do more for myself and have more flexibility so that's really cool I love your backstory.
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So tell us a little bit more about what is a life architect, You know, what is that with your journey. Yeah so I think a lot of times we don't think about how we want to run our days or our lives or we're like, locked into a schedule like I was in the corporate and I didn't have the flexibility I didn't have control over my time, you know, I was told when to wake up and pretty much like how to dress more or less and that wasn't, you know, life for me, I knew I could get out and do it on my own so I look at life as a wheel right in work or a job or a company is just part of that, you know you have your friends you have your family of spirituality, you have, you know, your physical fitness and health, you have your hobbies and when these things are imbalanced and when these things are architected well like life kind of flows and it feels good because one piece of the pie isn't getting all the attention. For example, if you're stuck in a toxic relationship that's gonna drain so much energy and we see so many people that you know are locked in these relationships that are improving and they're just miserable, or we can put so much effort into being an entrepreneur, even to a really demanding job at the detriment to say our health. So it's kind of cool to come back and look at this, this wheel of life and look at these levers and self assessing where you're at. So one of the main reasons I went on my own is I just have a high value of autonomy, right, if you give me a task and you have the resource I can get it done. You don't need to tell me how to do it, and if I have a problem like I'll come and tell you I can't do this or I need some help here and there so I was pretty confident I wanted that autonomy but by going out of my own and by architecting how many hours I work by, you know, slowly firing myself in the various roles which I can get into in a minute. You know, I was able to win back control my time and my freedom. So like I love to journal in the morning, like my mornings are free, I love to like workout in the middle of the day, I don't like to go to the grocery store when there's line so just all those things I've architected so I use the word, you know like our architect and, you know, encourage other people to do the same, be very intentional about all those aspects. Yeah, I absolutely love, you know, life architect and it just really encompasses everything that a lot of people really want but they don't know that they either don't either that they want it or they don't know how to get it, of really gaining more control of your time and your life and planning out your life how you want it to be like I remember when I was younger, you know, I knew that later on in life I wanted to have a family, I want to have kids and you know, have, have that family life, But I also in my 20s I wanted to experience new things and try out new things and really figure out where I wanted to go or or just try things before I knew I couldn't, you know, as a, as a family person or as a dad, there are limitations you know I can't go, you know, to, You know I travel with my friends as much as I could, you know before and whatnot because I have a responsibility as a dad and as a husband. But so, you know, kind of like what you did. I architected my life the way I wanted to and knew that in these years, I was gonna do what I wanted to, in this aspect and then later on I was gonna start the family and do what else I wanted so in a way I architected my life to do what I wanted to in different parts so I love how you coined the phrase life architecting, for sure, and it's all about to, after a certain feeling really because if we leave, live life. You know, when I get this then and when I get this then, you know I reached that point where there's just an endless amount of problems to solve externally right and there's an endless amount of goals and, um, you know, if, if I reach certain goals that are already achieved, like I should have got a default level of happiness but you know as soon as you achieve a goal that joy is in the journey and you're after the next one too, so I've been, I'm big on just architecting the days on in terms of how do I want to feel when I wake up, do I want to wake up an alarm clock, do I want to wake up super early and workout or not do I enjoy, like a slower morning and journaling and things like that because then the days feel a lot better and well go after goals, I just don't put life on hold until like when those certain things happen. It could be a negative thing something you want to get off your plate really bad or something really positive inside this car inside of this house right, you know, I'm not gonna, I'm not there. So, yeah like kind of architecting the days and, you know, driving the days of how you want it to feel because we go on vacation for a certain feeling we want to start the business because it's going to give us this like certain feeling of satisfaction so a lot of times, I think we can be good at goal setting, but also not, but not look at like, how we actually wanted to feel when we're running our business or to feel in the morning when I wake up in my morning routine so that was a important point I, I learned from someone. Love it. Absolutely love it. So tell us, tell us more about your business. So you've when you're not surfing, you're you're running this awesome web design and social media marketing company. Yeah for sure so create web studios, digital marketing agencies are really good at beautiful custom website design, and then of course once the website is done, there's, there's so many aspects to a website I mean just type in a company's name or if you're in leadership, a company like you know Jeff then and create studios all those digital assets come up, you know, LinkedIn, Facebook, Google Local all those different things so from building the website to, you know, claiming and optimizing all those digital properties to, you know, nurturing customers with email marketing with retargeting, right, because a lot of times people visit a site. Now come back. They're not gonna think about you, they're not going to type it in again you should have retargeting ads running so all those aspects of the online marketing we do. We're a boutique agency there's about 10 of us.
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And lastly we've done really well medical. So, Tony, you and I were talking about medical and your ADA compliance software. Yeah, strong for us, doctors offices, things such as that we've done quite a bit in the legal and finance industry so think lawyers. And then lastly just established businesses that don't have a robust marketing department that perhaps have been burned with digital in the past we really link up good with those business owners and leaders, entrepreneurs, and stay in long term relationships with them so that's what we do at a high level with the web and online marketing. That's awesome. I think a lot of people, you know, they, they don't associate their web design or their their website with their now online marketing and then the past couple years, it's really, you know what you're doing is putting the two together and saying, Okay, well we're gonna start with the web, you know, the, the web design, and the web landing pages and whatever else they need but also tied into their social media because somebody might find their website through their social media or vice versa. So really combining the two and working with the customer to doing all aspects of, you know their digital environment is really awesome and I think, not too many web designers quote unquote from the old days really do that much and they farm out their, their social media management thing so I think that's great that you encompass all that, yeah, we do all of it in house. One cool thing too these days is people forget like the website. So social media definitely has a place and there's certain types of businesses that actually you can you know fully engage with them, just on social but for a lot of businesses like the website super important. So the website might get traffic from your word of mouth might get traffic from the little link in the footer your email could get traffic from social media Google search, So a lot of times, businesses will neglect to invest more in their website or in those landing pages as you call them to their own detriment because that's kind of like the hub, and in these times with pandemic when things have gone even more virtual or what used to be a sale at a tradeshow or a conference it's super important to have the actual website and web pages up, and then after that, the second thing I've really learned and This even applies to our companies we market for ourselves, there's usually no one magic trick for marketing. I used to think, oh, we'll just show up for those Google text ads will show up for like web design Jacksonville or, you know, SEO company Jacksonville so the Google search ads or we'll start a Facebook campaign ads are really cheap you can buy a bunch of clicks for three or $400 And not only does, like just launch now and doing your first campaign fail but a lot of times it's the drops in the bucket that add up for example, we think we're in Jacksonville Florida advertising for web design Jacksonville would be a good keyword it's not, it's highly overpriced Web Designs commoditize is a is a, everybody from, you know, do it yourself or looking how to build a site on WordPress to a big agency could be the ass so it's so funny so I've learned that marketing is not a one trick pony, because you mentioned all the different places like the social media the Facebook, LinkedIn, your email list your network, it's all the drops in the bucket that add up. And what happens is when you stay out there on all that friends, you do get some breakthroughs you do in a while but one thing for me and I'm probably some listeners of your show have experienced this as you go out, you hire an agency or download this one campaign strategy you kind of do and it doesn't fully work, and that's because it's not a like a holistic view of all the levers kind of working together. You've probably seen that too, Tony. Oh absolutely, I mean, you know, when I first got started, you know, it was Facebook Facebook Facebook and you know I figured you know if I put an ad on Facebook, everybody would flock to it and you know and then I get to me, you know everybody and tell them all about it but it really it is like you said a holistic approach because there's so many different, you know, avenues for people to come and find you, you know there's Facebook there's Instagram and now Tik Tok and you know all of the other avenues on social media, you know, as well as just internet searches and SEO and things like that so you know the holistic approach of, you know, trying to, you know, if you want to do videos or lies which is, you know, a good way to reach out to people these days and really connect your company with you as a person and they get to know the person behind the company. So those are a lot of the different tactics that I've been learning over the past year, on how to increase my knowledge on, you know, getting my message out there for what I'm doing as well so it's great to, you know, know that you know from a professional like yourself that I'm doing things the right way.
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And that's how we connected to actually we've connected on social media and it led all the way back to, you know, your ADA compliant software. Many of our clients need it, technically, all of them needed it so yeah it's really cool how it works. Yes. Well, I appreciate your help and you know that's why we're also doing this to help each other, you know a lot of it goes back to relationship marketing which I've done for many many years I started out, you know, one on one in local and regional networking groups and getting to know people and instead of just, you know, meeting them and saying hey how are you I'm Tony here's my business card, you know, do you want to buy for me it's, it's more about building that relationship and finding out what you have in common with other people. And then if you find you have a synergy, you know like you and I, you know, we connected right away I knew that there was something that we can do to help each other. And when you find those relationships and you you nurture them, you can actually, you know, I love the synergy how one plus one equals three. A lot of times when you're working with other people, you can really expand your, your reach, dramatically through helping them, and in, in turn, they turn around and want to help you so it's a great way to meet people and expand your reach through really the cool thing is, we're both using the principles of online marketing here so as you connect with people they obviously like like your page or get on your email list or there's some like connection there on social if they visit your website, they can get, you know the ads from you, so it's really cool to using online to stay in front of you know, like your night Tony are going to talk every day but via social media and via consistent posting posting I can see the stuff you're doing I can see your entrepreneurial journey podcast go live and kind of stay in touch with it so it's really cool how, like the real world and online world, I mean really the online world right is just an expression and another tool to foster those relationships so yeah, I encourage businesses to stay out at Don't be silent online Tony and I have learned the power of publishing and connecting and it works. It totally does and you know the power of the internet, even with last year more and more people connecting via videos zoom calls and other such media, take advantage of that that's that's one of the things that I try to tell a lot of people that you know come into the entrepreneurial journey, if you're newer to starting your own business take advantage of the reach you have now used to be, you know my companies were very regional very localized in, you know I used to live in in New England up in the north, so that's where my customer base was but now, you know, I live in the Raleigh area and you live in Florida, there's no way that you and I would have connected the way we did, you know, prior to, you know all this online connection so if there's really a massive opportunity for people to take advantage of that if you're starting out or if you have a business that you're going to expand digitally into, you know, you know, expand your reach utilize the internet a lot. So yeah, sounds like you can find your tribe, right, because like you said, some years ago, you and I would have just statistically never ever done that. But now, we, the listeners, you and I can go out nationally, like he said and and find those, those people that are really fit based on our interests, our professions etc etc. Yeah, so let's let's shift gears a little bit more and talk about something that we both really enjoy doing is really giving back and helping others and you know I always knew that I wanted to at some point, you know, my, my big goal for my retirement quote unquote when I was in my 20s was I wanted to be a professional public speaker and help others you know with mindset and with business, you know, building businesses and things like that and it's kind of funny how with this with being online in the past couple years and starting the entrepreneurial journey I've basically been able to do that, and I didn't have to wait till I retired and I was older. So I, you know, and something that you and I both share is that you love giving back as well especially the younger entrepreneurs to really help them see the opportunities out there so tell us a little bit about what you're doing with that and how did you get started, interested in helping younger entrepreneurs. Sure, so a lot of times we'll start entrepreneurial journeys in our earlier ages in the 20s so we have Millennials now, they're like, at the time of this recording 24 Somewhere in the late 30s, and then Gen Z's coming up, so 23 and under, and man when I was young, just, just, I was so excited to land a few clients doing the web design hustle, you know, out of my own, I had a wife, a kid, you know, just trying to make it for the first year and I didn't do things like have signed contracts, I had these fancy little proposals but there was nowhere to sign. I didn't have like payment milestones.
20:18
I didn't realize the things in my business that were starting to eat me up like account management or I used to do everything right so I could have the website so there's some really simple things that you know only an entrepreneurial entrepreneur will now, especially as it concerns, finance and cash flow right because most entrepreneurs have this massive sense of creativity and possibility, and open mindedness and that doesn't result in these rigid fixed contracts are building these systems so as I've grown over the years I started this thing called converge, a couple years ago, converges, you know, community for younger entrepreneurs to come together right now we offer mentoring programs. So we did an awesome 90 Day mentoring program where, you know, Five or six of us gather together we set one wildly important goal over the next three months we go after a monthly milestone and we have weekly accountability stuff. I find it's been very helpful, because when I went out on my own in my late 20s You know a lot of people are like, Why are you leaving the stable job or I guess that's cool or hey you got a wife and a kid. Are you sure you like want to mix it up like this, a there wasn't a lot of encouragement can be very lonely being an entrepreneur but to just some like simple practical advice on like sign contracts and payment milestones and things like that would have gone a long way so I convergence that we converge.io Running mentoring programs, and helping entrepreneurs just you know get the reps on some of that basic stuff that while they're passionate and loving what they do and you're really creating product they can learn how to, you know, not leave one mousetrap like have a corporate world and create another right where you're trapped by your business and really just have a glorified job or nightmare that you created for yourself.
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Yeah, that's awesome. I love how you you've, you know, I just I just use my group to help others, but I love how you put it together in an actual program, you know that you get together with people and have it because, you know, I totally could have used that when I was younger because like you said I had all this creativity, I'm like, oh I can do this, I can do this, I can do this. I'm gonna conquer the world and I'm gonna go do it, but then when it came time to, you know, oh I need some kind of proposal or contract I just do it up in Word and just, here you go. This is it for sure and then a couple of those, you know over the years, I learned the hard way, they blew up, you know, and I didn't have a lawyer to help me, You know, put together a good contract that stuck and you know you don't get paid a lot of times, and there's just those, those stumbling blocks as a new entrepreneur that if you can learn from somebody who's been there already, like you're doing I think is really fabulous and can really help these younger entrepreneurs get to where they want to be a lot faster without having to make the same mistakes, for sure. So awesome. Well, I mean as we wrap up today just I want to take a little bit from something I learned from your podcast just a little while ago so I'm gonna, I'm gonna shoot some rapid fire round questions that is nothing too hard, so you don't have to worry. Some, some kind of civil just to get us, let us know a little bit more about you. So you ready, I'm ready.
23:15
All right, we'll start off easy. What's your favorite food, pizza for breakfast, lunch and dinner, fast food pizza Gourmet Pizza cold pizza. Don't eat it that often but oh my god, that's good. If I could do what I wanted, I would, I hate to say this right but yeah I probably get sick of it by either McDonald's every day, eat pizza, they probably drink a lot of beer not just get drunk, but just because beer is a cheeseburger sound good or beer and pizza but don't give in to all those things and honestly probably get sick if I did that for two weeks, like you know what I mean not want it anymore. Well if you, if you think you're gonna find that I have a go watch Supersize Me, I've seen it.
23:58
That's good, that's good.
24:00
All right, I'm early bird or night owl.
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I count in the middle. One of my goals in life architecture is to never wake up with an alarm clock so I like count the times in the year when I have to wake up with an alarm clock is pretty cool so I'm kind of like 11 712 to eight kind of guy, but I just like to wake up when my body's ready to wake up. Good. And that's awesome that you can create a lifestyle that you can do that and have your own business and have that flexibility to make your own time, which I think goes back to the whole life architect thing so which is, which is awesome. All right, one last one thing you like to do, other than surfing, when you're not working for sure so I actually have it right here, I played music forever so this is a beautiful Martin guitar. I don't I don't play out as much as I used to, but um, I play at home so I keep the acoustic right no pedals no plugs nothing, and then also I've played piano forever and I got a very nice piano keyboard right and all I use is a piano sound so for purity sake, I'll pick this up, get a different part of the brain working and get that flow going so that's definitely something I enjoy doing that. That's awesome. That's another way I now know that you and I, you know have a similar mindset and connect because I've been playing guitar since I was in grammar school and, you know, while I am not, you know, amazing yet I still I play for myself at home and you'll probably see in some of my live videos I have my two acoustic guitars hanging up behind me and that's one of the ways that I just D digitize my brain sometimes because when I'm staring at a computer screen all day. I just need to get ideas out of my head instead of putting more in I will need to get things out, so I'll either meditate or I'll play the guitar just for myself just to get into that, that, that mindset of being able to take that creativity that have in my head and you know if I have a thought or whatever, I'll write it down or whatnot. So music is a big part of my life as well. So, for sure.
25:55
Cool. Um, so, you know, if people want to be able to reach out to you and find you where some of the best places that they can find Jeff then. Yeah, so two places I'd recommend one is check out our digital agency Web and Digital Agency that's it create web studios.com And then lastly for my personal site which links off to the converged mentoring stuff and of course create web studios, you can go to Jeff then comm JFV and calm and get in touch. Awesome, yeah that's it's a great, you know, personal site I love it I love how you put it together. You know your web design, you know, your agency does amazing work. So if you're looking for a very professional web design agency I would highly recommend you know, getting in touch with Jeff and his crew over at create web studios because you guys do a fabulous job so.
26:45
So, thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you, Jeff. Thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you, Jeff, again for your time, and we will definitely put the links to all of your, your connections in the show notes so that way people can reach out to you and connect with you real easy. Awesome, thanks for having me on. Yeah, thank you very much I appreciate I love, I love the collaboration that we've been doing so far and look forward to a lot more. Sure. We helped each other and, you know, help our mentees out as well.
27:18
Great. Thank you again everybody for joining us today on the entrepreneurial journeys podcast.
27:24
Thank you for listening to today's episode of the entrepreneurial journey podcast. Our show is sponsored by the ABA comply guy Accessibility Toolbar solutions for your business website, or sales funnel.
27:36
My mission is to help make the Internet accessible to people of all abilities by spreading awareness that ABA compliance is now required for your digital real estate. Our solution can help you become compliant but also allow 85 million people in the US alone, with different abilities to be able to use your site, who otherwise.
27:56
If you want more information about this for your business and to see how you can even get free money to pay for this upgrade, please visit our site at WWW dot ADA comply guide.com I look forward to having you join me and other entrepreneurs just like you again on our next episode for more valuable insights that will help you achieve your success on your entrepreneurial journey.