- So today, we are gonna hop into ChargeTech,
where the CEO Jeff Maganis is gonna reveal his story
around the business and how having a Ferrari
has helped him build a seven figure business
or how you can go from zero to five million
how to go from a five million and beyond.
A lot of stories, alot of experiences to share.
A lot of strategies and tactics that you can take
to grow your own business.
So let's go ahead and hop inside,
and we'll learn more about his business.
So Jeff, tell me about the interesting life of Jeff Maganis.
I mean I look at your Instagram sometimes,
and you're always eating donuts.
You're always eating Afters ice cream.
What's going on?
- I'm just a regular guy, entrepreneur.
I love cars.
I love running business.
Yeah, I live life on the edge.
I live life fast, I drive a Ferrari,
but I'm actually the slowest Ferrari driver
you're probably gonna meet. - He is.
He is, you know what's funny?
All the guys look at him.
Right?
- I used to drive a Prius,
and I still have my Prius.
And I was happy in my Prius,
but honestly, like having a nice car,
it's great networking opportunity.
I got to Cars and Coffee all the time.
And I hate to say it,
but it opens up a lot of doors when people know
that you have a nice car.
(delightful music)
- You were in finance before,
before you decided to go all in on ChargeTech.
So what was that inflection point?
What was the story there?
- Former Wall Street,
I worked in finance out there.
I worked at Pimco,
which is one of the largest actively managed funds,
from three a.m. to three p.m.
So I did 12 hours at my day job,
and then from there, I started ChargeTech.
And I rented a cubicle office space down the street.
It was a rough year and a half to get the business going.
I finally took that leap of faith
when I saved enough money to give myself runway
to give the startup a chance.
I sacrificed a lot obviously to start the business.
But I couldn't be more happy where I am today.
- So in that 1.5 years, you said it was really rough.
I mean what was going on?
- To get enough profit to be able to substitute
your previous paycheck was the hardest.
I mean knowing what I know now but,
I started the business trying to do an infomercial
I mean that obviously wasn't the right thing to do.
And I didn't catch that right,
I literally did everything and whatever stuck.
- Why wasn't the infomercial right?
- Google actually set up a software platform
so you could buy TV spots
through a web-based platform on these channels.
And I used it.
And I literally bought 10 million video views
because I grew up thinking that infomercials
was the way to start a successful business.
ShamWow and what not.
- ShamWow, Shake Weight.
(laughs)
- It completely bombed.
I mean even for Google.
But everyone takes risks.
And whatever sticks, keep on doubling down.
- So you were working three a.m. to three p.m.,
and that's I'm assuming, it's because markets open.
What does your day look like starting at three p.m.?
Can you walk us through the breakdown there?
- I mean back then,
WordPress was in its infancy stages.
So I was figuring out how to do a website,
figuring out Google search engine optimization.
But 50% of my time was spent learning,
actually doing the other 50%.
And because we're in an e-commerce hardware space,
I was actually talking with China,
and my suppliers and factories into the evening
and usually started at anywhere from six or seven p.m.
and didn't end 'til say midnight.
- Wow, okay
So you went from three a.m. to three p.m. and up to 12 a.m.
So you basically got three hours of sleep?
- Yeah I'd average like three hours of sleep
for a good amount of time. - Wow
- I mean, were you single at the time?
What did your mom say?
(laughs loudly)
Were you living at home?
Like what's going on?
- I was living at home.
I was single.
And it was literally just so passionate
about growing and getting out of my current situation
that it just fueled me to move on to the next thing.
I sleep eight to nine hours a day now.
- I guess on a scale of one to 10,
sleeping three hours versus now,
how much more effective do you think you are
now that you sleep eight to nine hours?
- This is Orange County.
The usual workday nine, 9:30.
You leave five or six.
You go out.
You go to happy hour.
You hang out with your friends.
If you're in the Valley,
gosh, you know, from morning 'til night,
you go out with your friends,
but you talk about business.
You learn more techniques.
And you go to bed watching a YouTube tutorial
on whatever it may be until like midnight, one a.m.
And literally, it's Friday today,
but if we were in the Valley,
the team would probably be having pizza
and having drinks at 10 p.m. - Oh they'd be cranking.
- Yeah cranking. - Yeah.
- It's a different culture.
I think there's no substitute for hard work and long hours.
- What are some key lessons,
and I guess some challenges you face
going from zero to one million?
- I actually didn't even pay attention
to when I hit one million.
I looked at the bank account more than anything.
- Okay, what were you looking at there?
- As long as it was going up,
to be honest. - Okay.
- You're moving so fast, and I was ordering more product.
I didn't have a proper inventory management in place
'til I hit five million.
- What is inventory management?
- Inventory management would be
(chuckles) still just Google Sheets
and actually knowing how many pieces you have.
- What do you use for that now?
- We use Skubana.
We're unique.
We're an Amazon business.
We're an e-commerce business.
And we also do a lot of B2B and B2C.
But we thought about building a software on our own,
but to get a dev team in was just way too expensive.
- Were there any moments in time
where the business almost went under?
- Yeah.
I think mentally the business almost went under.
And I think that any business,
it fails when the entrepreneur gives up.
- So what happened? - Yeah.
I think from a financial standpoint,
I've had some very rough experiences.
Importing a container, literally with my savings,
that was improperly labeled.
And you're dealing with U.S. Customs and Border Patrol.
So a lot of lessons learned. - So what happens
when you don't label something properly.
- U.S. Customs and Border Patrol will seize the goods.
You're out, and now you're going to the factory
to figure out what happened and who's gonna pay for it.
And unless you have a team in China
that's actively managing the product,
I mean you're literally buying thousands of pieces
and containers full of product.
And by the time it gets here, it's already too late.
- So what kind of advice would you give,
'cause I'm sure there's a lot of aspiring entrepreneurs
here that are looking to start
some kind of physical goods or e-commerce thing.
What kind of advice would you give someone
that wants to start a physical product as this.
Get an unpaid internship
with somebody that knows how to do it well.
If you want to learn internet marketing,
go work for Eric Siu for free.
And get the guy a coffee.
And do whatever it takes. - Or Jeff.
- To try to get to his level.
It's actually really tough.
And honestly for myself,
any new industry that I want to get into,
I could have done what I know now
in probably a third of the time
had I just really immersed myself
in learning with the best of the best.
Be a value to somebody.
- Let's talk about that for a second.
How do you decide who you want
to hang out with kind of thing?
- I always want to learn.
And I always want to grow.
And I do enjoy positive people.
I join entrepreneur organization, for example.
I just love interesting people.
Time is so limited and finite.
You can only spend it with so many people.
I prefer to spend my time
with interesting people that make me happy.
- And on that point, spending time
with interesting people too, Jeff is really good
at getting the attention of interesting people.
So can you share a story about how you get attention
from these interesting people?
How you get them to respond to your emails?
- I guess the biggest myth is that
it's actually really easy to get a hold of
influential, important, and busy people,
as long as you send them an engaging email or message
that really appeals to them.
And don't think about it for your own personal benefit,
but what you could do for Eric.
What you could do for Elon Musk.
What you could do for, I don't know, Warren Buffett.
I would do a lot of research on who that person is.
And I would make the subject line of the email
something relevant to something they just did.
And I would quote it,
where they know I did some research.
Probably the biggest competitor in my space,
I literally sent them an email that said,
you know, I think there's a good strategic fit
in terms of both of our companies.
It's easier for myself
because we've made a name in the phone charging space,
where I can do the outreach
and they instantly know who I am.
But in an industry that I'm unfamiliar with,
let's use bitcoin or cryptocurrency,
usually that email's a bit harder
because I still have to make a name for myself.
Email, cold email, it works.
Do it.
- Oh 100% yeah.
Key takeaway there: Cold email,
you just have to be persistent with it.
The reason why I have my cohost Neil Patel,
the reason why I know him is from cold email.
You go I think six or seven years back.
It's from cold email, right.
- So I actually hand write my emails now.
I think as marketers whenever you have a communication
medium, it gets abused.
People are abusing email.
People are abusing social media.
People abuse TV and TV commercials, but on my cold email,
I average anywhere 70% plus open rates.
- You have to make sure that you are,
it's the same thing with a billboard, right?
With the billboards that you actually notice,
they're actually really well done,
those are getting open right?
'Cause you are paying attention to them.
Same concept with the book Purple Cow from Seth Godin.
You go through a field of cows,
you're not gonna see, notice the cows.
But if you see a purple cow, you're gonna talk about it.
You're gonna notice it.
You are opening yourself to that, right?
So that's basically what I'm hearing?
- Yes, yes.
And I always want to make myself attractive
to whoever that person may be.
And let's use Elon Musk for example.
Trying to get a hold of Elon Musk.
Maybe he's really into crowdfunding.
I would go to the website that he reads daily.
Maybe it's CrowdFundingInsider.com.
And I'd write an op-ed piece about crowdfunding.
And that cold email that I sent him four months ago,
he's gonna say, "Oh wow, that guy Jeff actually emailed me."
And I'd love to be Elon's intern for.
- I'd love that too.
I've love that too.
So we talked about lessons and struggles
from going from zero to five million.
How about five million and beyond?
What are some challenges you faced?
- Everything's at scale.
And we do crowdfunding.
We've raised over, at this company, close to $3 million.
- [Man] Wow.
- And you're dealing with 15,000 backers.
And when product is late,
it's no longer responding to the ticket.
But it's creating a Zendesk knowledge-based FAQ,
so you can answer responses at scale.
And it's no longer selling one product
to this certain company, but it's creating a pitch deck
that can get virally shared across your
however many customers and still to this day,
understanding organization, understanding systems,
and understanding people is that next tier.
Zero to five, you can bootstrap that.
And then five to 10, then you're gonna need people,
employee management.
10 to 20, 25?
Systems, developers.
- Great.
There's a framework that you can use,
especially for a physical products business.
How does an entrepreneur juggle multiple projects?
- It's always about delegation and automation.
But on Gmail, you can have that tab
where you can see when it's just addressed to you.
I basically, unless you personally text me
or you send a message to me, I try and build a team
so that everybody is cc'd on something,
and I don't have to worry about it.
And then I can just review on a weekly basis.
I literally have a sticky note that I keep on my laptop,
and I won't go home until I finish
whatever's on my sticky note.
- You talk about building a great team, right?
So what's the story of you going out there
and finding the right talent to bring into ChargeTech?
'Cause it's hard in a less-known kind of city, right?
- The biggest thing is somebody that immerses themself
in whatever they're interested in.
If somebody is a big YouTube media person,
then they love doing YouTube.
Then come on over to ChargeTech.
We'd love to have you shoot videos for us.
Whoever is a good fit for ChargeTech
isn't a good fit for the next company,
isn't a good fit for the next company.
What's worked well for us, in terms of hiring,
is actually building the relationship
over a couple of months and cultivating these people
to know that it's a right fit,
rather than putting up a job posting.
You get them.
You hire.
That hasn't worked for us.
But, what works for us.
- Why hasn't that worked?
- The culture fit.
Definitely.
And now we try to be as transparent as possible,
upfront on who we are, what's gonna happen.
And if you don't like it, then.
- Bye bye. - Yeah.
- Bye bye.
You started to change your warehouse in the back.
You held inventory before.
Now you have a hockey goal set up there.
So what's the story behind that?
- I think our team, maybe half of us are hockey players.
And so we turned our warehouse
into a shooting gallery to play hockey.
We try to have fun.
Obviously Google has the most enviable campus.
We have snacks.
We have whatever it takes to really keep your team happy.
Because you think about how much you spend at work.
And if they aren't happy, you definitely see it
in the way that your customers are being treated.
You see it in your marketing materials.
Life's too short.
Enjoy what you're doing.
Entrepreneurship's so much fun.
And even just growing a company.
We always talk about numbers,
and how much people are doing,
but it's a big scoreboard.
I do it for the passion of what I love.
But I do it for that score and everybody wants to win.
And everybody wants to be on a team
where they enjoy who they work with.
I love the sport of growing a business.
- Awesome, one thing I want to add.
So you have another thing you're working on,
with one of your best college friends.
Talk about the challenges and the benefits
of working with friends.
- Yeah I've actually known my right hand man
here at ChargeTech, I've known him for the last 16 years.
Both of the people that really run ChargeTech
and run my other company,
they were my groomsmen at my wedding.
One of them actually was really emotional at the wedding,
and he spoke in front of 300 plus people.
And he just broke down into tears.
I think that's the hardest thing.
I wouldn't say it's hard,
is that mixing friends with business.
And at the end of the day, I'm always 100% transparent
and upfront with them, from numbers to performance
to they will tell me, "Jeff you're being a jerk.
"You're not being a good leader right now."
And also being empathetic with people.
And if people can't take candid feedback,
Sheryl Sandberg always talks about it at Facebook.
Then the organization is gonna take a hit.
- You strike me as a guy that's really even keeled
and really patient with people.
I don't see you ever raising your voice
or anything like that.
So do you think that plays into you
having such a long standing relationship with your buddies?
- Well there's always anger, but I think what hurts most,
in even in our culture, is disappointment.
To know that if I let down my friend
or my friend let me down or whatever it may be,
if customer service, that burns more than somebody yelling.
- Right.
That makes sense.
So I mean, I think the lesson is on a case-by-case basis.
'Cause I do work with some friends, in some capacity.
Some work out.
Some don't work out.
I think it all depends on how you gel with people.
I think Jeff's done a good job of doing it.
Thanks so much for doing this.
- Absolutely.
(progressive music)
- So some of the key lessons today
I think for me, are around the difficulties
of having a physical products business.
It's not as easy as most people think.
Most people think you can just have a product
and slap it on Amazon.
There's a lot of headaches that go with it.
So if you are really interested
in building a physical products business, great!
You can learn from Jeff.
There's a lot of other podcasts out there as well.
But it's also interesting for me to see
how he reaches out to influencers,
how he starts out when basically you can go from zero to 100
when you're a nobody, and you can become a somebody
just by adding value to people.
So there's a lot more to this.
And if you like stories on entrepreneurship
and marketing in general, just hit subscribe.
And we'll see you in the next video.