← Travis Makes Money
Travis Makes Money
INTERVIEW | Make Money by Solving Problems and Building Recurring Revenue with Reed Nyffeler
00:27:04
Loading summary
Transcript57 lines
- [00:00]
Windows 11 Advertiser
Study and play come together on a Windows 11 PC. And for a limited time, college students get the best of both worlds. Get the unreal college deal. Everything you need to study and play with select Windows 11 PCs. Eligible students get a year of Microsoft 365 Premium and a year of Xbox game Pass ultimate with a custom color Xbox wireless controller. Learn more@windows.com studentoffer while supplies last ends June 30th terms at aka mscollegepc.
- [00:30]
Travis
You're listening to the Travis Makes Money podcast presented by gohighlevel.com for a free 30 day trial of the best all in one digital marketing software tool on the planet, just go to gohighlevel.com travis what is going on everybody? Welcome back to the Travis Makes Money podcast where it's a mission to help you make more money. Today on the show I have a new friend, Reed Niffler. And Reid is a lifelong entrepreneur with a passion for developing the next generation of leaders, finding solutions and implementing growth strategies. He's the CEO and founder of Signal, a fast growing industry leading security services franchiser with the mission to provide peace of mind to pursue passion in life. He also founded FilterGo, a national H Vac filter replacement service designed to simplify air care for businesses and frame brand, a franchise development company that helps franchise brands scale more effectively. He's also the author of transform through purpose your path to living and authentic and intentional well life. Reed, what's up man? Welcome to the show.
- [01:28]
Reed Niffler
Thank you for having me, Travis. Excited to help your people make more money.
- [01:32]
Travis
So clearly, clearly an entrepreneur at heart. Did you always have that? Take me back to the first time that you ever made a dollar that you were like stoked about.
- [01:44]
Reed Niffler
Yeah, so I was in college and I, I went to the dorms and I saw the loft that you know, they rented for 140 bucks and I thought I can build something for less. And I think that's where I really began the entrepreneurial journey. And I said all right, I'm gonna go to the Menards or Home Depot and bought these poles and put em between the concrete floor and ceiling, put a chain around the top and then connect a bolt on the side and made a little a frame for that, the loft. And it cost me $38.40 to build and I sold it for $120 cash. And I was targeting, you know, the dads of the females that had cash in their pocket and had too much junk to put in those places. And so I sold enough to make $5,000 in the first three weeks. And I thought, okay, I understand. I'm solving someone else's problem for cash, and I can do it quickly.
- [02:29]
Travis
Three weeks. Yep.
- [02:31]
Reed Niffler
You want your loft installed right when you move in. And so I was all. All on top of that, and it took me about 20 minutes to do the install. And really, as an entrepreneur, I saw what's a problem that I can make money solving and do it quickly.
- [02:43]
Travis
Real quick, Reed, can you. I do not think I'm fully understanding what. What you mean by loft. Can you explain what you mean by loft?
- [02:50]
Reed Niffler
Yeah. So you get into a dorm room, and the do are probably 14 by 14. And you had two roommates in there. Right. And so they. They came with a single bed. And so then basically I lofted that. I put it up. What would have considered a bunk bed is what most people would have done. But instead, I eliminated the front two legs and used pressure between the floor and the ceiling so that you could fit a couch underneath it or a desk underneath it, any number of things. And so the university was offering a bunk bed, basically. Gotcha. They were renting that, and so I was building it. And so basically, I saw the right audience. A freshman college, freshman girl moving in with too much stuff, wanted, you know, to put all their decor up, and they just need their bed up above. Above a place they could walk underneath or whatever.
- [03:34]
Travis
So, dude, I love that so much. Did you come from, like, a construction background or did you just figure.
- [03:38]
Reed Niffler
Yeah, I did have a construction background growing up, but at the same time, as I think fundamentally back to the entrepreneurial spirit, I was a problem solver. Right. And so. And, you know, if you can build something that works better for less, you're gonna have a pretty good business. Yeah, I think the key to that is it costs the client less. But I made a lot more money. Right, Right. And I think that's the key, is you find something that is less for the consumer, but you don't want to sacrifice margin because we're here to make money as a business owner.
- [04:04]
Travis
That's the beautiful part of entrepreneurship right there, man, is that it's not about. It's not. I see too many people playing this, like, zero sum game in entrepreneurship where it's like, in order for me to win, they must lose. You know what I mean? It's like, that's not. That's not how a scalable business operates. Like, you. Your. Your whole goal is to bring value to the end user. And if there's value to capture, then there's also Profit to capture if you can figure out a new way to do it. So that's, that's, I mean that's one of the coolest first businesses that I've heard here on the show.
- [04:33]
Reed Niffler
Yeah. And I think critical thing, and this is part of the entrepreneurial journey. I, I think the first thing to value is your time and I would put a dollar value to it. Right? I mean for example, The Marketplace puts $20 to your time, right? Let's say that's the number. So if you're doing things that only make, and here's an easy way to look at it entrepreneurially, in order to be worth 20 to an employer, you need to make $60. Right. You need to triple the value. Cause they got their overhead expense, they gotta make some profit on top of that. So, so if you wanna make $20, you should create value of $60 for an employer. Well then if you're owning your own business, don't do $20 tasks, do $60 tasks, then you're making 60 bucks an hour. So right when I started my business Signal, I valued my time at a hundred dollars an hour. And here's the way I looked at that. If I could not acquire a client within that number of hours, so let's say it's a thousand dollar client, I would spend 10 hours on it because I knew I'd make a thousand dollars on that client.
- [05:27]
Travis
Basically. Yeah.
- [05:28]
Reed Niffler
But If I spent 40 hours on it, now I get the thousand dollar clients. I'm at 25 bucks an hour. So it's an easy way to quantify the value of your time and how to create efficiency around how you use your time.
- [05:38]
Travis
If you're an entrepreneur, it's also a way to increase your confidence while you're in those early stages and you aren't quite sure what you're doing. You're not, you don't not really well versed with your sales. Your marketing don't really know a hundred percent what the product is fully yet. And you're kind of figuring it out. And it's because I think people will sometimes look at it as like, you know, well, I talked to 12 people today and I, and I didn't sell one of them or whatever. And it's like, yeah, but like you said, if you can value the number of hours that you're doing at a certain dollar amount, then even if you worked for 10 hours today and made $0.
- [06:12]
Reed Niffler
Right.
- [06:12]
Travis
You know, the law of averages will always, will always win at the end. So you finish off the week and do that six more days and then it's 70 hours. Well, like day two, you're probably going to sell enough to have made up for the time that you didn't sell in day one. But if you look at it for the volume of hours versus like each individual conversation is like a loss, then that, that can kind of help carry you through the momentum or the negative momentum of the rejection that you'll inevitably face when you're first getting started with any.
- [06:41]
Reed Niffler
Well, and it's the, you know, you're attributing success to something like, well, I just got a $2,000 sale. Well, they didn't count the 19 hours you didn't sell. You just have that one you did sell. To your point, it's dollar cost averaging. And that's what I looked at it as. And, and then now that I've been at this for 20 years, I value my time at $100,000 an hour. So I'm trying to produce a hundred thousand dollars in value for every hour that I'm there. And that's through multiplication. And so as you get that principle down, you just keep building your hourly rate. And I mean, we're $300 million in business and in 48 states and nine countries. And so I've got to do that for the sake of the business. And if I can produce that, I got to make sure I'm worth it. Right. And we're solving global problems now, or I am solving global problems. And then you divide your work down to those who are solving the local problems.
- [07:22]
Travis
So tell me more about signal. Where did that idea come along in the timeline?
- [07:26]
Reed Niffler
Yeah, so you know, I was 30 years old, so 20 years ago. I knew that I wanted to multiply my effort.
- [07:32]
Travis
And this episode of the show is
- [07:33]
Whatnot Advertiser
brought to you by whatnot. You've seen the buzz, but let me give you the inside scoop. Live shopping on whatnot is exploding right now. I've watched the shows firsthan hand. I've seen whatnot climb to the top of the app store and I've actually looked at the seller earnings. We're talking small, medium and multimillion dollar businesses all seeing real growth over on whatnot. So if you're selling online or out of a storefront, full time, side hustle, whatever, you already know the challenge. You're hoping that people are just going to find you and walk in. Well, whatnot flips that on whatnot, you go live and sell directly to people in real time. They see what you got, ask questions, and then they buy. And then they keep coming back. It is the largest dedicated live shopping platform. Whether it's beauty, collectibles, electronics, lux fashion, even cookies, sellers are building real, thriving businesses. And anyone can sell. Whether your business is big, small or yet to exist, people selling on whatnot sell 10 times more than any other major marketplaces. And that's because you're not just listing products, you're building real connections with buyers. Whatnot buyers spend more than an hour a day in the app. They're not just browsing, they're engaged, buying, and they're coming back. You go live, you show off products in real time and turn what you love into real income. So download the Whatnot app today and get free shipping on your first order. Just search whatnot w h a t N o t whatnot in the App Store and start scoring amazing deals.
- [08:57]
Travis
This episode of the show is brought to you by Chime. Chime is changing the way that people bank. They offer the most rewarding fee free banking that's built for you, not the 1% plus. Chime is rated five stars by USA Today for customer service. You get real human beings 24. 7. You're not just switching banks, you're upgrading to America's number one choice for banking with a Chime checking account. Get 5% cash back on a Chime card in your category of choice like gas or groceries. Get savings that grow faster with their 3.75% APY, which is nine times higher than the national average. Plus you get premium travel perks like airport lounge access and 24. 7 travel concierge included with your Chime card. You can even get up to $500 of your pay when you say with my pay. Plus they also have Spotme which lets you overdraft up to $200 fe my younger self would have absolutely benefited from this and I know it will benefit you as well. Chime is not just smarter banking, it is the most rewarding way to bank. So join the millions who are already baking fee free today. Head to chime.com travis that's chime.com travis only takes a few minutes to sign up.
- [10:04]
Windows 11 Advertiser
Chime is a fintech, not a bank. Banking services for MyPay and ChimeCard provided by Chime's bank partners. Optional products and services may have fees or charges. Stated annual percentage yield on cash back for Chime prime only. No minimum balance required. Checking account ranking based on a J.D. power survey published October 20, 2025. For more information on APY rates, MyPay Spot Me and travel. Go to Chime.com disclosures, franchising was the
- [10:20]
Reed Niffler
way to do that. Right. So I go get independent owners that are going to go operate. But the industry was 250 billion. And I looked at, okay, where's the problem? Much like that loft business, right? And so typically in security, we're physical security. So we have people physically at sites and so then you're charging for an hour and you have somebody there physically for an hour. And so one of the early clients, I said, okay, it was a four hour dedicated account, which means somebody was standing there for four hours from 10pm to 2am and the client's like, ah, we have a problem at 9:30 in the afternoon or 9:30 and we have things happen at 2:30. And I asked him this question. I said, what do you want that person to do for those four hours they're there? I said, well I want them to do about a 15 minute patrol every two hours. I said, okay, what do you want them to do the other three and a half hours? They're not doing anything. Oh, just be available in case something happens. I said, okay, how about I am just on property for 15 minutes and I come six times throughout the night and then I go to other properties and I spread out the time and I'll cut your time in half. So as you can see, six times through the nine month property, an hour and a half. And I reduced his bill by 10%.
- [11:23]
Travis
And.
- [11:23]
Reed Niffler
But I went controls exactly right. But I went from $20 an hour bill rate to $40 an hour in profit. And so that goes down to the exact thing I was saying. I lowered the cost to them while increasing my profit. So Instead of making two or three dollars an hour, I'm making $20 an hour after all the costs were 15. But that was scalable. And so that became. And I had to do that with technology, right? Franchise ownership and technology. But I helped them understand how this was a better solution for them. Yeah, right. And so then we built our global platform as a result, leveraging technology. Think of like Uber, right? And, and a good analogy for people to understand is if you go get a taxi cab, they have to sit around waiting for you to wave them down. And so that taxi cab owner or that the business owner is paying for that time you're sitting there. Whereas Uber's like, I'm only going to get out of my bed when it's, there's a real ride to pick up. Right. So I do scheduled Uber. Same exact idea as to how we operate all of our businesses. And that's the frame brand platform, which is a franchise organized, you know, business to business commercial services platform designed to launch it. And so I developed that in Signal after our fourth application and then I'm launching Filter go on that platform to create business opportunities for the next generation.
- [12:31]
Travis
The, the one part that I don't want to gloss over is that the only way that you figured out where the problem was in the, in the broader problem that you were solving was by talking to the customers.
- [12:46]
Reed Niffler
Right?
- [12:47]
Travis
It's not, you're not sitting down talking to jet to chat GPT or whatever, whatever AI you like to use. You're not sitting down and talking to them for the third month in a row trying to be like, okay, well what are some of the problems that this customer segment solving? You're not going to learn more than you will by just going and talking to the ideal person that's going to use the service and just going, what do you want to see here? What do you think is a good, what do you think is a positive outcome from our working together? Oh great, you want to do it like that? Okay, well what if we did triple the amount of, of of patrols and then cut your costs down because I'm going to have them go somewhere else too like that. Yeah, you gotta go talk to people, man.
- [13:31]
Reed Niffler
100%. And I think when you talk to people to your point is a lot of people are addressing the symptom but not the problem. Right. The symptom in that instance was there's people on my property at 9:30. And so many people would have said, okay, I'll just add a half hour on the front end and then the problems would happen at nine. Right. Instead I'm addressing the problem which is saying, hey, I've got a tight budget, I need expanded coverage. And so we put them in a high visibility vehicle to drive through that. And so if you're a business owner that's like, don't their symptoms are what people feel the problem, what is, what is driving that? And so I always looked at the problem again, back to the loft business. The problem was I couldn't fit all my stuff in there. The symptom was dad needs to go and he's complaining because there's too much stuff to carry up here. So I'm like, hey, I can help you. Right? And you know the one thing the dad values his time. And so $120. He didn't want to make one more step up those stairs or down or take anything home. You know, he didn't Want that in back in his house. And so that was the problem. And I addressed the problem and the symptom was they didn't have enough space for their things and I addressed it by putting the loft. Lofted bed up there for them to fit more space.
- [14:34]
Travis
Reid, were you going to school for business or what were you doing?
- [14:37]
Reed Niffler
Communications. You know, I called it to get a certificate of attendance and I did not want to be indoctrinated. I think if you're an entrepreneur, you don't want to be indoctrinated into all the. The answers are on the test, right? A, B, C or D or true and false. And I think so many entrepreneurs educate out their ability to take a calculated risk.
- [14:55]
Travis
That's right.
- [14:55]
Reed Niffler
Because if it's not in the word bank and it's not in your multiple choice, then what do you do? And so truly, if you really be curious, find a way that nobody else has found and execute well on it and you'll be successful making money if you do those three things.
- [15:09]
Travis
Yeah, the difference between divergent thinking and convergent thinking. Where school tends to promote this, like it's one of two things, like you are fully right or you are fully wrong. Where life tends to reward the those who look at the problem and go, well, there's an infinite number of possibilities here. So what if we just took this one down a little bit and then we use that over here, we sprinkle in a little bit of this there. You know, like it's that. That all encompassing ability to solve a problem is going to be much more beneficial for especially anybody who wants to get an entrepreneurship for sure. Were your, were your parents entrepreneurial? Reed, where. Where do you think you got this from?
- [15:44]
Reed Niffler
No, I think I'll kind of tell the long extended story that I think kind of comes back from it. My great great grandfather immigrated from Aardvag in Switzerland and I happened and a half ago and it was a farming community and there was four males that were there and they saw a couple of acres and like not enough land to raise the family. So took a risk. Like many immigrant immigrant families in the late 1800s. My great great great grandfather gave him a couple of bucks and said, hey, here's a go buy a boat and a train ticket. And then he came and became a farmer. And I think those were the early entrepreneurs. Right. They're taking on land, they're figuring out what works, they're figuring out the land. And so, you know, then my great grandfather got his own parcel of land through the, you know, The Land Act. And then my grandfather was still a farmer and said to my dad, my dad asked my dad, what do you want to be? He said, I'm going to be a farmer. He said, no, you're not. There's tractors now, and the price of crops have gone way down. I'm working diligently so you can be a, you know, you can go to college and get an education. So my dad went to become a college educator, and he actually went to college and became an educator. He was a shop teacher. Right. So he's teaching, you know, farm fixing things in a classroom setting. And they put him at, like, the worst school in the area. And so he's locked in this place teaching these kids, you know, mechanical skills. And then he had me, and they couldn't afford it, so he started roofing houses and on the side. And then from that, it was really your big boom of your, you know, the baby boomers buying houses, et cetera, and your big real estate boom. And so he then was a superintendent for decades, and they sold the business to him ultimately. So it's really just that career path. But I look at it this way. That entrepreneur was the risk taker that left Arvang in Switzerland.
- [17:10]
Travis
Yeah, yeah.
- [17:11]
Reed Niffler
And so he. I am capitalizing on those risks early on, and I think many of us as Americans, we fall into the trap of the risk that our families took to get here. We're just entitled to the outcome of that. I'm saying, no, I'm here to build on top of that. And if you look at that trajectory of all those generations, it's there. So that original entrepreneur is the one that hopped on the train, risked everything, you know, left his family. Saw it one other time, and I'm. And so if you say yes, as an entrepreneur family, I said yes. That's what the farmer that came and figured out what crops to grow and ended up being corn in the middle of Nebraska.
- [17:40]
Travis
So, yeah. Yeah. The majority of us in America are descendants of people who are willing to take risks. Yeah.
- [17:47]
Reed Niffler
And if you go look at Europe, they're not entrepreneurs because they all left. Right. I mean, think of our economy over that same period of time in the 1800s. I look at these things, we were behind everywhere, over, and we're so far ahead, it's not even funny.
- [17:59]
Travis
Right.
- [17:59]
Reed Niffler
Because all the entrepreneurs came here, and we can't lose sight of that's what America's built upon, and that's what we should do. And there's so much legality over there that Stifles growth and we want to lean into it here.
- [18:10]
Travis
So let's talk a little bit more practical steps for somebody listening if they want to jump into a space like this. We talk a good amount about home services type companies or at least home services adjacent companies on the show because I think that that's one of the areas that is least likely to be negatively impacted by AI. Obviously you can use AI and it's helpful in that world but working with your hands is there's going to be quite some time before it gets fully replaced versus like these, some of these white collar jobs have been glorified for the last three, four decades. You, you mentioned before we hit record an example of a couple of 20 year old kids. Can you tell me a little bit about which, what business that they were actively involved in doing and then break down the steps. What does it look like? You know, how much money can you make and what are a couple of
- [18:51]
Reed Niffler
the success stories that you y Travis, thanks for asking. I, I think you know, I was long term just telling other people how to make money and I'm like, you know what, I'm going to even simplify it even further and show you how to make money and, and I'll give you an opportunity and it's all it's going to take is your effort. Right? Because I remember getting started, I had no money and I just had my belief and, and at the same time as I'm probably a greater risk taker than others, I'm going to fight for that. And I, I know how to make money. And so I thought you know what, I'm going to put all those into a business model that's easy to adopt. And so I looked around and I, I thought you know, the best thing that to build a business around is recurring monthly revenue. And so home services are not going to be recurring monthly reven get into lawn maintenance or something because you don't really need those frequently and someone's going to come and leave that house. But business services are long term recurring monthly revenue. And I did research and I saw there's 166 services that a business pays for. Service is not going to be replaced by AI right? Someone physically showing up at your site. You're not going to get robots there for at least decades, if not millenniums. I don't even know if it's feasible to let them in. And these businesses are not going to do it themselves. And so I thought what is the easiest and quickest service that is easy for people to do and it's commercial filter replacement. You talked about filter go. That's exactly. It is. And so what do we do? We go into buildings that are 40 years or newer and they usually have roof access, they're single story, the parking lots are flat. We go up to their commercial air conditioning unit up top, we take a picture and show them the last time it was changed. We go down and talk to that, that salon owner or the restaurateur and we say, hey, did you know you need to change Your filter every 90 days and your property manager won't do that for you and I can change it to you for you for $30. A filter filter. And so the average place has four to six filters. So the average ticket's 150 bucks or $600 a year. And on the spot they say, sure, 80% of the time. And so just as you mentioned, we're here in May and we had interns start literally yesterday. We went through a day and a half of training within the first hour. Both of them, two of them signed a contract. It's that simple. And so ultimately, you're making about $20 in profit of filters. So if you were to buy that filter at Home Depot, I went and looked myself, it was 17 bucks. So that's what a think of that business owner. I always look at it from the business owner. They're there working the register. They're in a 2,000 unit, 2,000 square foot facility. They have four filters. Basically every 500 square feet you have a filter. They walk in and they're not thinking about the filters.
- [21:07]
Indeed Advertiser
When you need to build up your team to handle the growing chaos at work, use Indeed sponsor jobs. It gives your job post the boost it needs to be seen and helps reach people with the right skills, certifications, and more. Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit@ Indeed.com podcast. That's Indeed.com podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need a hiring hero? This is a job for Indeed. Sponsored jobs.
- [21:36]
Schwab Advertiser
Trading at Schwab is now powered by Ameritrade, giving you even more specialized support than ever before. Like access to the trade desk. Our team of passionate traders ready to tackle anything from the most complex trading questions to a simple strategy. Gut check. Need assistance? No problem. Get 24. 7 professional answers and live help. And access support by phone, email and in platform chat. That's how Schwab is here for you to help you trade brilliantly. Learn more@schwab.com trading thinking about opening the
- [22:07]
Reed Niffler
doors and serving the customers. And then by the time they go get up on the roof and they go and look at what filter they need, hop in their car, drive to Home Depot and come back, it's cost them an hour at least, right? So what is their time worth? And they'd buy that filter at 17 bucks. We get our filters for $4 and 25 cents and we do the install and we install the entire strip mall, right? So I'm doing that on every one of those units and it's one single roof access. And so we launched this last May and there's one area that has 45 buildings. We have 17 of them.
- [22:37]
Travis
Wow.
- [22:38]
Reed Niffler
A third of them, Right. And so we installed them quarterly. And each of those units, it's the same air conditioning filter, same unit, you're just walking across there. And then it's all in the scheduled app, right? And we're there quickly. It's called filter-go.com so filter go built a franchise brand on that software. So it's all ran by your phone, point of sale software. You go and ask the questions what size filter you have. You take a picture, they confirm you've changed it, and then you charge the credit card right there and boom, it's ordered and set in the app. So then every 90 days you're changing it. So I don't want to tell people how to make money, right? Because then they have to go build out the system and show it. I'm going to show them how to make money and all they have to do is come and get trained. And so the franchise fee is 10 cents a person, a 50,000 person territory is 5,000 bucks, and your average ticket's 600 bucks. And you make about 300 bucks a year on that 600 ticket.
- [23:26]
Travis
That's awesome, man. Great profit margins, super small franchise fee, but also really low cost to the end user, really low friction for the sale. You don't have to be an expert salesperson, you have to be an expert marketer. You don't have to be an expert H vac technician. You can build a beautiful recurring business over the course of a few years. And the, the, the nice thing about it to me is that anyway, is that it's a space that is no stranger to private equity. Meaning that there's plenty of people shopping around and buying businesses in that world. So if you build something with strong recurring revenue and strong ebitda, then you can exit to an infinite number of possibilities. And even because like you have a lot of other people that are competing even in, like the H Vac space itself, and they' H Vac companies out. Well, how many of those H Vac companies are doing something like this? You know what I mean? Like, probably not as many as would like to be. So they might even be willing to buy it up so they can bolt it onto their business, add in a strong recurring revenue arm, and then exit their company to private equity. There's so many, like, potential opportunities to exit, which is somewhat rare in the franchising space, I think.
- [24:31]
Reed Niffler
Yeah. And I'm looking for low ticket recurring business. Right. And so said another way, with 300 clients, you can make 90 grand a year. Yeah. Right. And so if you can sell a client an hour, that's typically, if you're focused on it and doing that, that's feasible. So 300 hours, you could be making 90,000 a year in recurring monthly revenue. And then it just bolts on from there. And again, you're focused on these areas. And these business owners, they don't want to do that stuff. I mean, there's a series of. And, and all that stuff is captured in there. And I have a series of other businesses will be built on that same platform. Like I said, There's 166. So another business that I'm intending to build on that same platform is fire extinguisher inspection. You cannot get occupancy without it. Well, now, on that same technology, I have the exact buyer that bought the filter last time. Do you not think they want someone to go and inspect their fire extinguisher? And you already know what margin that other provider had. I have signal clients. We have 6,000 Signal clients, all of which would need filter changes too. So again, you're using that in a holistic, centralized way to be able to one, get new leads and new clients, because the traditional way of marketing is going away. You're not going to get a mailer, et cetera. You got to meet with the people physically, but you want to be able to find the decision maker. And if you can refer them off an existing business, they're already serving them a lot warmer lead than if you're just knocking on the door cold.
- [25:40]
Travis
Reid, obviously you're doing a lot more things now like this, like podcast guesting. You wrote a book Transform through Purpose. What's the, what's the idea behind getting your name, your face out there a little bit more? Is it more personal branding? Are you more looking for opportunities for franchisees? What's the goal here?
- [25:56]
Reed Niffler
You know, it kind of goes back to that story of my great, great grandfather. I know that I have an obligation because he took a risk, that I'm here and I can either go build income for myself and go retire and sit on the beach, or I need to train up the next generation of leaders. And I'll tell it by this story. So in the 1900s and 1920s and 1930s, the farmers became your industrial workers, right? And that was the next generation for the 30s and the 40s. Your industrial workers went to war on our behalf in the 40s and 50s and 60s, and they won the world war. They came back and they became your knowledge workers. Then in the 90s, your knowledge workers became your tech workers. And I'm thinking here in the age of AI, who's this next generation? And as I look at the last three generations, my father, they wanted opportunity first, and they take autonomy in their 60s, they'd go work for a pension and retire, and then they'd go on the beach and golf. Our generation or my generation, what we wanted was opportunity in our 20s so we can have autonomy in our 30s and 40s. This next group wants autonomy right now, and they want the best opportunity to serve that. So I'm building franchise concepts for them so that they can lead the country going forward. At some point, I'm going to retire. You're going to retire outside of the workforce. We need to have that next generation leading them. And there was always an impetus for that. And if there's not any leaders like me that have had success in my career passing that knowledge onto the next generation, it'll be lost. And so I have built a website, nextinleadership.com that's a way to curate that, right? Because I remember hopping into my car, driving to my territory early as I graduated college, and that was automobile University. I'm listening to Books on Tape now. It's podcasts, right? That's the content we consume. And so this podcast and that next in leadership is a way to learn, learn how to lead self first, lead others second, lead organizations third. But if you go search by keyword or something like that on the Internet, you're going to be totally lost. And it's not going to be a sequential build of how to improve your ability as a leader or a salesperson or a business owner. And so I feel a sense of philanthropic obligation to get out there and lead the next generation, because that's the environment that, you know, my grandchildren and great grandchildren will live in, and they'll be telling stories about how I was just a chink in that chain as we walked forward. And so that's why I'm on these podcasts. It's to share that knowledge base, give people an opportunity to live their life on purpose. Not a default life, right? And not an entitled life, but a life they lead on purpose. And if you have the knowledge and understanding now, it's your job to apply it.
- [28:12]
Travis
You've been listening to Reed Niffler on the Travis Makes Money podcast today. Go check out his website, nextinleadership.com and some of the other things that he's working with working on over there. Read. I appreciate you taking the time to come on the show. I know you're busy guy. Don't take that for granted. Everybody else tuning in. Remember, money only solves your money problems. But it's usually easier to resolve the rest of your problems when you got some money in the bank. So let's start there here on the Travis Makes Money podcast. Thanks for tuning in. We'll catch you next time.
- [28:35]
Reed Niffler
Peace.