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OhHello - Jason Fairchild
30 Plays1 year ago
"just shut-up" - that's the advice from this mentor. Ohhhhhhhh...Hello!
🌟Welcome the 69th episode of the OhHello.io 🌞☕️ vod/pod. In this convo, Jason Fairchild and I talk Entrepreneurship, Mentorship & Giving Back 🌟
Here's a snapshot of our engaging conversation:
🚀 Entrepreneurial Journey: With over 30 years in tech, co-founding ventures like tvScientific, this "Hello" (aka an OhHello mentor) learned to thrive in chaos and prioritize creativity
🔍 Mentorship Highlights: This "Hello" is grateful for guidance from luminaries like Bill Gross (Idealab e.g. GoTo), John Gentry (OpenX), and Tim C. (GoFundMe), that have served as mentors and friends; Jason has learned invaluable lessons in navigating entrepreneurship with resilience and adaptability b/c of them.
💡 Life Lessons: Embrace adversity, leverage anxiety as fuel for growth, and sometimes, the best advice is to "just shut up" and let life unfold.
✨ Jason's words of wisdom: Seek mentors, share experiences, and together, let's inspire, uplift, and create a brighter future! 🌟 hashtag#Entrepreneurship hashtag#Mentorship hashtag#Philanthropy hashtag#startupadvice hashtag#OhHello
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Transcript
Greetings and Musical Joy
00:00:07
Speaker
You love that music. There you would go. Oh, hello, Jason. How are you? Hey, hello. Doing well. That was a great way to intro, put a smile on my face for sure. Awesome. That's a great segue. In the middle of the afternoon for you in Los Angeles, for me towards the end of the day in Chicago, it puts a smile on your face. You're going with the beat. That's what matters. So I have the pleasure of knowing you for the past few years, Jason.
Introduction: Meet Jason Fairchild
00:00:33
Speaker
Why don't you tell our audience
00:00:36
Speaker
Who are you? Who am I speaking to?
00:00:38
Speaker
Yeah, see, Jason Fairchild, you got that right. And I guess a lot of things. Co-founder and CEO currently of TV Scientific, we're a performance platform for TV advertising. And I've been in technology, staying with the technology theme track, career track since I'd say the early 90s. I worked for an ISP, one of the first internet service providers, Earthlink, and then moved to
00:01:08
Speaker
My own startup for a while and crashed and burned and then went to go2.com, which is the early paid search pioneer, became Overture and was acquired by Yahoo. And then that was many years ago and here we are at TV Scientific.
00:01:22
Speaker
Amazing, amazing. And that's how we met. We met through you starting TV Scientific. Personally, I've gotten to know a number of people on your team and it's a great product. So giving you guys some extra gas behind that.
The Entrepreneurial Spirit
00:01:38
Speaker
What defines you? What defines you as a founder, as a CEO, as a father, as a husband? Yeah, I don't know that I've ever really been asked that before. I think as a founder,
00:01:50
Speaker
I would characterize myself as almost a serial entrepreneur. I've done it many times. And I just love to create. And there's a lot that goes into creating. It takes a lot of energy. And then there's the next phase, which is sort of scale and optimize.
00:02:06
Speaker
Totally different skill sets and I'm definitely more on the on the create But as you as you get through these career stages you learn you have to really get good at both and or surround yourself with people who are complement your skill set so I've you know
00:02:22
Speaker
through many years of banging my head against the wall, kind of learn those lessons and try to apply them every day. So that's who I am on the professional side. And then just more broadly, I'm a father, I'm a husband, I'm friends, I have lots of friends.
00:02:40
Speaker
I love interacting with people, whether it's creating in this context of business or creating in the context of going out and having fun on the tennis court or whatever it is. Just have a passion for engaging in life.
00:02:56
Speaker
Engaging in life is a good way to explain it and also just using your creative mind to create businesses. So that's wonderful. I'm glad that I didn't throw too easy of a softball at you for that question. I may refer back to my answers in the future and use them again, having never said those things before. What beauty of this, Jason, is that we're recording it and that you're going to be able to keep this in the archives, give it to your kids, your grandkids down the line. It's wonderful.
Technological Innovation and Motivation
00:03:24
Speaker
How would you characterize your skillset that you're gonna be sharing with the Oh Hello community?
00:03:29
Speaker
You know, I think it's about connecting dots with various technologies or capabilities and seeing what can be. And you can call that business development, you can call it innovation, you can call it probably a bunch of different things. But that is what gets me out of bed every morning. And when I'm talking to a potential partner, for example,
00:03:54
Speaker
I try to deeply understand what exactly they do and what their core capabilities are and then try to map them to ours to see what new thing can be created or how that technology can make us better or vice versa. That process is
00:04:12
Speaker
is really deeply embedded in my psyche and what I like to do a bunch. I don't know if it's a defined skill set per se, but it's hard to quantify it and there's no school for it, but I really enjoy it. How did you develop that process?
00:04:32
Speaker
So just being a founder of multiple companies throughout your career, being in tech for 30 plus years, what helped you refine those skills to be able to sharpen that spear, so to speak?
ADD: A Double-Edged Sword
00:04:45
Speaker
It's a good question, I think.
00:04:47
Speaker
I grew up ADD, like a lot of folks, and I've always viewed it as a weakness that you have to build controls around and crutches around. I think what changed for me was when I first got into the internet business at EarthLink,
00:05:05
Speaker
It was an incredible time where there's just an explosion of innovation, of new companies doing different things. Even within the company, we had to wear many, many hats. I realized then that what I thought was a weakness actually was a strength.
00:05:25
Speaker
track a bunch of different things at once. That's the curse and the gift of ADD. And then that's when I started realizing that then I could start to see the interplay between seemingly disparate, whether it's companies or capabilities or whatever it was. And then I started to really excel in that environment. And that was sort of the seed of a more disciplined approach today. Back then it was just chaos.
00:05:53
Speaker
slightly controlled chaos, but led in a few really interesting innovative directions. And you know, now it's more refined when you're 20 years later, of course, it's going to be a bit more mature and refined. Well, thank you for sharing for being vulnerable. Thank you for sharing that. A lot of people within our ecosystem, within advertising, within ad tech, within martech, have ADD as well. And a lot of people just don't don't admit to it, or weren't properly diagnosed at different stages or steps of their childhood or their adolescence or their careers.
00:06:23
Speaker
And when you look back, I think that could have been part of the reason and rationale as to how you became a founder and a CEO, because you're able to have your multiple fingers on multiple pulses, so to speak. And so that's definitely a gift, not a not a curse.
00:06:38
Speaker
Yeah, I've come to view it as such. And yeah, because you can focus on multiple things at once, some would argue that if that's really possible, but I think it is, you can then start to associate between them. And that free association actually builds muscles of connecting the dots or seeing how one thing can complement another or become another. Those muscles start to build, and it really is a positive thing, I think.
00:07:07
Speaker
So looking back then, what would you tell your 25, 35 year old self?
Reflections and Advice to Younger Self
00:07:13
Speaker
You know, I've been asked that question before and I think I just shut up because anything I'd want to tell myself would be to try to comfort the, you know, anxiety that we all, many of us have.
00:07:29
Speaker
early in our careers or early in our lives, especially when I've had some lack of stability early on. And for me, that made creative more anxiety. And I would have an urge to go back and tell myself to relax. But honestly, I think that anxiety, it fuels
00:07:50
Speaker
sense of urgency and fear is a great motivator and anxiety is a form of fear. So I don't know that I want to change that, honestly.
00:07:59
Speaker
I love that. I absolutely love the fact that you said, just shut up. I have recorded, we have done, at this point, we've recorded roughly 70 different pods and no one has given that kind of answer. And I really respect that because that's something that looking back, like I would also tell myself is just shut the fuck up. Just let it be, just for that exact reason. I really respect that way that you look at it.
The CEO Journey and Mentorship
00:08:29
Speaker
With that said, what excites you about mentorship? What excites you about the Oh, hello platform. So in my late fifties, and this, the CEO job is hard founding companies is hard. And people have this associates, this almost glamour like association with being a tech entrepreneur, such a cliche term. And it's just effing hard. So
00:08:55
Speaker
And honestly, most people who do it are not qualified to do it. And I had the benefit, and I'm not saying I'm qualified, I just happen to be doing it. I had the benefit of co-founding OpenX and being a chief revenue officer under a CEO and a president who had way more education than I did, way better experience than I did. And I frankly got to be a, I got mentorship for 12 years and an act of apprenticeship
00:09:21
Speaker
Where you know I co-built a company, but I wasn't a ceo and I got to see you know I got to see I was done right and in a few occasions where mistakes were made and that's just an incredible learning experience and I wouldn't be where I am today such as it is without having
00:09:39
Speaker
that level of mentorship. Even before, when we started GoTo.com, I wasn't a founder, but I was in the early 25 employees, something like that. That was built out of IdeaLab. IdeaLab was one of the first tech incubators. I saw firsthand, I sat in the building and watched Bill Gross, who runs IdeaLab,
00:10:04
Speaker
start, I don't know, I probably saw him start 50 to 100 companies, including go2.com, eToys, there's a bunch of them. And I never thought that was even possible before. And then I got to know Bill, and Bill is a co-founder and investor in TV scientific.
00:10:21
Speaker
And just having access to people who've been there, done that, and it shows you that, hey, it's possible. And it also has a forcing mechanism of raising your own expectations about yourself, which I think are all super positive. And you got to pay that forward.
00:10:39
Speaker
So whether it's just being a sounding board or walking through, not the glamour, but really the crises that you have to live through to be an entrepreneur and how you deal with it. And it's reasonable and rational to have crises and have a lot of anxiety. And I think having someone there to tell you that is probably really important. I can offer some value there.
00:11:03
Speaker
Amazing. Well, we're excited to have you on the platform. Who are some of the, you had mentioned Bill, any other specific names that you want to mention that have, of people that have had a profound impact on your career?
00:11:14
Speaker
Yeah, I think we all have our networks that when I go through an experience, whether it's a starting company or whatever, that I reach out for perspective on, there's career folks and the big ones there are John Gentry from OpenX and we also worked together in go2.com back in the day. Tim Cadogan, former CEO of OpenX, he's like, go find me now.
00:11:39
Speaker
These are the guys I've worked with in the trenches for decades and learned a bunch from. Bill Gross, who's the founder of Idea Lab, he's less a bat phone. I have a problem. Let me call somebody kind of mentor, more of someone I admire and basically demonstrates what's possible. He's been a great contributor in my career in that regard.
00:12:09
Speaker
Then I've got like personal mentors where if you're going through a crisis, you've got like sort of the business aspect. And then, then you've also got whether it's, you know, just anxiety management or, you know, just perspective. You know, I've got a few of those as well. And I, like many of us probably triangulate across, across, you know, your support network. But those, you know, those are, those are two by name or three by name and then a couple more on the personal front.
00:12:35
Speaker
Amazing. Thank you for mentioning them. And I'm sure that they'll appreciate hearing that as well when they listen to the pod.
Family and Philanthropy
00:12:40
Speaker
What, as you know, philanthropy and just giving back and altruism is so important within the Oh, hello community. What is a cause that we have 50 plus charities are integrated into our platform? But what's a cause or causes that are near and dear to your heart and your family? So
00:13:00
Speaker
We have done a lot of work for a charity that supports Children's Hospital, Los Angeles. That's been, I don't know, it's been 12, 15 years we've been a part of that organization. The fundraising events, for example, our entire family has participated in and does participate in. It's been near and dear to our hearts. We dedicate time and energy to that.
00:13:26
Speaker
Our own son, independent of that, had been to Children's Hospital and had a big impact on us. It wasn't a life-threatening situation, but when someone gets hurt, you remember it, and they did an incredible job for him. So yeah, that's the one that sticks out to me.
00:13:49
Speaker
Amazing, Jason. I'm happy everyone's healthy. Any other parting words of wisdom in a sentence or less that's going through your head that you can just expel to the Oh, hello community. I would say
00:14:02
Speaker
I would say whatever you want to do, there's people that have gone through something similar and probably have stubbed their toes, have gone through Christ's eye, have experienced the highs and lows of whatever it is you want to do.
00:14:23
Speaker
There's tremendous value in talking to those people because you feel like you're not in it alone and that this is all doable because people have done it before and you can also maybe, if you're lucky, save a bunch of time by not going down tributaries that are dead ends because you talk to folks that have experienced that dead end. Amazing, amazing. Thank you, Jason. Thank you, everybody, for watching, for listening. We appreciate you.
00:14:50
Speaker
Jason, so excited to have you on the platform. Thanks, everybody. Until next time.