Finding a Tune in Nashville: Jay Franze's Story of Perseverance

Have you ever thought about how music is made behind the scenes? You'll find out all about it in our riveting chat with Jay Franze, an industry veteran who has spent two decades in the heart of the country music scene in Nashville. Jay shares his intriguing journey from Boston to Nashville and how he made his mark in audio engineering, music production, and beyond.

Jay's move from New York to Nashville was a leap of faith that led him to the SAE Institute, Nashville's largest recording school. Navigating the challenges of earning a master's degree while recording bands and starting a family, Jay gives us a candid glimpse into the grit and determination it takes to succeed. He reflects on the long hours and hard work that have shaped him into the professional he is today.

Finally, we touch on Jay's time as a contracted project manager and audio engineer for the State of Kentucky, where he had the unique opportunity to develop songwriter demos with a Nashville production company. Offering his top tips for success, he advocates for perseverance, passion, and financial savvy. And, of course, don't forget to check out Jay's podcast and other projects at his website, JayFrenze.com. Be inspired by his journey and the valuable lessons he's learned along the way. Tune in for an enlightening episode that will surely be music to your ears.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:21

Hey guys, ryan Amant from Chasing Financial Freedom podcast. I hope you guys are having a great day. Today on the podcast we have Jay Franz and Jay is the host of the Jay Franz show. On a show, jay takes a deep dive into the entertainment industry to provide you with the viable insights and entertaining stories you won't find anywhere else. I was telling Jay before we started recording that Jay is the first person in the music industry that I've had on in his capacity, so these will be some interesting questions and topics. So, jay, welcome to the show. Thank you very much.

Speaker 2: 0:58

I appreciate you having me.

Speaker 1: 1:00

Not a problem. Thanks for coming on and short notice. Looking forward to the conversation. But before we go there, a little bit about yourself.

Speaker 2: 1:09

Sure no, I was born and raised in Boston or outside of Boston. That's where I got the love for music, quickly found out that I don't have the abilities to perform as well as I would need to in order to be successful at it.

Speaker 2: 1:22

So what I did is I took a liking to the behind the scenes and I've worked behind the scenes ever since I ended up going to school for audio engineering in music production. That's where I spent most of my career and that's also led into the management side, which is takes care of transportation security as well. So it was a long journey to get here, but that's the short path into it.

Speaker 1: 1:46

And where did your podcast come into play during this journey?

Speaker 2: 1:50

Oh, yeah, no, it seems like everybody that I ever met friends, family they always want to know what it was like. What was it like working with Soans? What was it like working with this one? In working in Nashville for over 20 years, I got to work with just about anybody and everybody in the country music industry, so there was always stories to tell and things you could share.

Speaker 2: 2:11

So what I decided to do was put a show together and that way I could talk to the people that I worked with. So I was reaching out to the engineers, producers, musicians everybody that I worked with in the industry and started bringing them on the show and just asking them to tell their story, and we would just go down the path and find out how they made their records or how they bought their first guitar, who influenced them to get into business in the first place or who supports them behind the scenes that people don't typically know about. So we get into that pretty heavily and it took off. People seem to really like it, so we just continue to do it.

Speaker 1: 2:47

That's cool. It's how it always starts, is you just get into something and you love it and it's a conversation and it's a starter. That's great. Born and raised in Boston, when did you go down or when did you move to Nashville?

Speaker 2: 3:00

No, that's a whole chapter in its own. I was in Boston right up until school. I went through high school there and then I went through the first couple of years of college, and the first couple of years of college were at an engineering school, but it was for architectural engineering Quickly realized it wasn't something that I was truly passionate about, so I switched to audio engineering and because that's where my passions lied, even during architectural school I was out playing in rock bands and I just wanted to be in the music scene. So I ended up going to school for that, and the only school at the time was the school in Ohio. So I moved to Ohio and then after school I went back to Boston with a piece of paper in my hands, into the two recording studios that I knew of, and I said I'm an engineer, I want to work here, and they said, yeah, no, great, we'll hire you. I said, great. They said you're our new freelance engineer, and at the time I didn't know what freelance meant.

Speaker 2: 3:52

But I quickly learned what freelance meant and the long and short of it was. I had to go out and hustle my own work if I wanted to do anything. So that's what I did. And then during the day I did books on tape at the one studio and across the street I recorded rock bands at the other. And then, after several years of doing that, I bought a recording studio in New York. And after a few years of doing that I decided I want to take it up another notch. I never seemed to be satisfied where I'm at. I always want to take it to another level. So I moved to Nashville and I moved to Nashville with the intent of working in the music scene there, teaching at their local institution and going to work for this guy named Bob Bullock. And I did, and I was there and within the first couple of years those things all happened.

Speaker 1: 4:39

That's a pretty cool journey. I know nothing about music production so I'm total novice. So I'm going to probably ask some crazy questions. But hey, what the heck, sure, let's do it. So you're out freelancing, so you're almost like maybe I'm relating it wrong like a sales person really and you're trying to you book some musicians into the studio.

Speaker 2: 4:59

Sure, no, I would go out to all the local rock shows and where the bands were performing and just introduce myself and see if they had a record and if they did, and record CD, whatever calling it album, and see if they had one and if they did, great, what can I do to take it to the next step?

Speaker 2: 5:16

If they didn't allow me to take it in the studio and record it for you? And the goal was, yes, that they would say yes and they'd pay for the studio time and pay for my time to be in the studio. But it didn't always work that way. Sometimes I had to go in and pay for things myself. If I had to pay for it myself, the hope was that we would make something from the product after the fact to make it all worthwhile. And at the beginning, the start of it all, you also need to learn the experience of all the different studios you work in, because although everything is very similar, consoles are the same, the tape machines are the same, but they're all by different brands and you have to learn those little nuances of each of those pieces of equipment.

Speaker 1: 6:02

Of those projects that you funded yourself? How many of those became pain gigs or you got reimbursed?

Speaker 2: 6:10

The story of those is you hope to just make enough money back that made it worth doing or something came of it.

Speaker 2: 6:16

None of them ever become hugely successful in buying you a house or anything, unless you're just extremely lucky. But no, the projects I did were always sold at shows. So as long as the band had a large enough following, it didn't take long to make the money that you put into a pack. And I would develop a reputation at that time. That was the early days, but I would develop a reputation for the person in town who was recording rock records. And if you do a good enough job, then their fans or their friends want to know hey, how do you do this, can we do it? And you say yeah, and then you tell them what it costs and you go in and each time you go in the studio the amount of money you're willing to invest is less. The amount of money they're willing to invest in you is more. So eventually you get to a point where you're making a living. And it wasn't until I moved to New York and really understood the business side of it, because I did go to business school as well. My parents always told me I had to have some sort of backup if I was going to go in the music industry. But I went to business school and had an understanding of it but never really put it into practice until I bought my own studio. I bought a building, had it converted into a recording studio, and it was a small studio. It had several rooms in it but it wasn't huge compared to Nashville standards, but it was big enough that I was able to take bands in, record them. We had a room for photography, we had a room for graphic arts and we were able to do this whole package of artist development for them. And that's really where the value that we could offer came in, because we were doing more than anybody else could do. So even if you found a studio to go into that was willing to spend extra time with you developing you as an artist, they didn't have the ability to do photographs or the graphic arts or promotion or king of your shows, and this was all something that we did. So the studio in New York was the first time where there was enough value that I was able to offer people that I didn't have to invest any of my time or money into the artist. So they would come to me, we'd put it together for them, we'd be fair and put these projects together and then they would take off and that's how I would get. The business was from referrals.

Speaker 2: 8:36

But it wasn't until I moved to Nashville, which was shortly after. That was a few years later, and I moved to Nashville and realized, wow, this is just not the same. It was a whole different level. It was like going straight from little league to major leagues. It was that much of a difference. And you don't realize how much of a difference that is because you think I'm killing it in New York, my own business clients, I'm making money, yeah, no.

Speaker 2: 9:01

Then you moved to Nashville and you realize I can go out and get the water for you guys and help you out. And I was willing to do that. I was willing to start back over again and do that. But the difference is now I'm working on projects here on the radio and now I'm working with artists people know of, and so I spent the first 10 years in Boston and New York and then the last 30 or last 20, 25 years working out in Nashville and that's where I really worked on the albums that people would know of. People hear those albums. I can say I was a part of that.

Speaker 1: 9:39

So when you had your studio there in New York, was that the 90s, roughly it was.

Speaker 2: 9:45

I ended up in Nashville in 99. So yeah, it was throughout the 90s for the studio.

Speaker 1: 9:51

So just out of curiosity, what would it cost to go into a studio in the 90s to record an album?

Speaker 2: 9:58

I guess it depends on a lot of variables, but which studio? In my particular studio we would charge by the day and we would include engineering fees into the day, so we would be charging $500 a day.

Speaker 2: 10:10

That would get you studio time and the engineer, so it would get you everything. You pay $500 for that day. You basically show up and we can record 10 songs or we could record once up to your skill level. It's up to how you choose to use that day, and if you choose to use our guidance, then we'll guide you through what we think is the most effective way to use the day. So what we would normally do is have bands come in and book a week straight, and we even had sleeping quarters so if they needed to travel they could stay there. So it was a good experience. It was fun. It was a lot more fun than working in Nashville. Nashville was a lot more exciting. You get to work with a lot bigger artists. Sometimes just the earlier stuff is more fun.

Speaker 1: 10:54

What made you and maybe you asked this and I can't remember, or you said this was what made you jump from New York to Nashville.

Speaker 2: 11:01

Just the desire to want to keep getting better, getting better at my craft, getting better working with people that have done more. So what happened was I was sitting in a little eatery we had at the studio a little corner nook we had and there was a mixed magazine and a Shania Twain CD sitting on this table and I was flipping through it while we were eating lunch. So it was just me and artist and assistant whoever was there and I was flipping through it and I saw this advertisement in mixed magazine for a school called SAE Institute, which used to stand for the School of Audio Engineering, but it's SAE Institute out of Nashville. It was the largest recording school in Nashville at the time. So I said I'm gonna move to Nashville and I'm gonna go teach at the school. I remember everybody just laughed and thought it was funny. And then we're looking at the Shania Twain CD, for whatever reason. I opened it up and there was a guy named Bob Bullock who was the engineer for Shania Twain. I said you know what? I'm gonna go to Nashville, go work at the school, I'm gonna go work for Bob Bullock. And everybody's just laughing.

Speaker 2: 12:06

The very next day, without fail, I locked the doors on the studio and I drove to Nashville. I said I'm gonna do it. Prove everybody wrong, here I go. And I did. I moved, I drove straight to Nashville. I drove straight to the school. I got to that school the very next day and I walked to the girl that was at the front desk and I said, hey, can you direct me to the director of education? And she said, yeah, you go up that elevator and it's the third door in the left. So I go up there.

Speaker 2: 12:34

And it, just out of happenstance, it was the instructor that I had at the school in Ohio. He had moved up and he was running that school and he recognized me and he's like hey, what are you doing here? And I told him. I said hey, came here because I want to work. And he said I can't hurt you. Why? I thought I had an in as soon as I saw him there.

Speaker 2: 12:56

And he goes. No, he goes. You don't have the type of experience we would need and you don't have the education to support it, so you have to have one or the other. He's like great. I said, all right, I'll do it. He goes. Yeah, I know you will, but for now you can't. So I said okay. So I left and I didn't hop in the car, I didn't go back to New York. What I did is I signed up for a school in Nashville that would give me the education that I needed and I hunted down Bob Bullock, not stalkerish way or anything, but he came in school to be to teach a workshop and I set the room up for him that day and at the end of the day he asked me who set the room up and I told him I said I did it. He says is there any chance you'd want to come work with me? I said yes, sir, there is, I'd love to do it. And then, maybe six months from that point, I was teaching full time at that college.

Speaker 2: 13:47

I eventually took my way up to take the director of education position from the guy that taught me at the beginning.

Speaker 1: 13:54

That's a cool story. Most people don't have things really line up like that, but you also and let's we could back up and you can put some context around it is you probably busted your ass during that time to get what, where you needed to go?

Speaker 2: 14:09

No, no probably oh yeah, no doubt long days, because I would have again. I'd have to go back to school and that took up Jardy of my time. And, granted, the school wasn't as hard as it was the first time, but the first school I went to didn't offer a degree and in order to teach at a college level education, you have to have the degree to support it. So I went back. I eventually worked my way up and got a master's degree, but that took a long time, a lot of work, a lot of hours, and I had to do that while working. So I wasn't a typical student who could go out drinking on the weekends or at night, so I would go to school all day, just cramming and all in and working with. I'd pick out the what I thought were the best students in the classroom and I'd partner up with them and just people that would always hold me to a higher standard. And I ended up becoming a partner with this guy named Matt Green and he was just really good at the testing and how to handle the paperwork and I was very good at how to handle the gear and the practical. So the marriage of the two of us for that group was strong and we were able to help each other. And we did that, and then the whole time I worked outside of there to make money.

Speaker 2: 15:27

I was recording bands in town, but it wasn't like New York. They weren't coming to me because of my reputation. I was begging for work and the only work I'd get was assisting people. I'd go assist other engineers, and that's fine. Even assisting people paid more than New York. The average assistant in Nashville at that time was making $300 a day, so that's not bad at all. It's great money. The problem is you're only working a handful of days a month, so you have to be able to fill in all those holes and the gaps. Maybe work for multiple people. So this week I'm gonna assist you, next week I'm gonna assist the guy down the street, and so on, so that way you can keep consistent money. And it didn't help either at that time I, towards the end of my time in Nashville, I also got married and kids make so much harder as well, having other people who are relying on you. But eventually it's just all comes together.

Speaker 1: 16:26

So you left Nashville. You're not there now.

Speaker 2: 16:29

I am currently in Kentucky, which is the northern brother of Tennessee. There, so I still do work out of Nashville, but I live in Kentucky. Whereabouts in Kentucky, my street actually dead ends on the Ohio River, across the river from Cincinnati. Oh cool, I could swim to Cincinnati if I wanted to.

Speaker 1: 16:50

Nice. So do you like Kentucky better than you like Tennessee?

Speaker 2: 16:55

No, there's differences. Kentucky, they're both beautiful places, but Kentucky's beautiful. What I like about Kentucky is that literally on one side of the river is Cincinnati. It's big enough city. It looks like Gotham from where you look at it from. You just see all these high rises across the river. And then on my side of the river it's very country and there's farms and country, roads and hills, so you get the best of both worlds. It's really nice for that purpose, but for working purposes, to drive back down to Nashville. It's about a four hour drive and I do a lot of my work right here in this room you can't see. In front of me here is a console and broadcasting console. To my right, mixing console, in front of me All of the equipment, audio monitors. You can see some of the acoustics over there. Yeah, now you have to have a room that is properly built and properly tuned in order for the people in Nashville to take you and your work serious enough to keep giving you work.

Speaker 1: 18:01

Something I'm working on here just for my podcast. I'm at that level to where I want to step up another game, so that's what I'm planning. So maybe I'll be reaching out to you to talk to you about acoustics, because I am no expert, I'm not.

Speaker 2: 18:13

My podcast started. I'm not.

Speaker 1: 18:16

I'm sure it's not. I just I haven't put a lot of time into it. My podcast started as just a hobby and now it's grown into. I'm booked out till April next year, so it's, I'm in that growth phase. So we're yeah, it's crazy. Just I just keep going and learn along the way, fail a few times, get back up, keep going back to, I want to say, new York and Nashville and combine those two, trying to get some background of some of the Journeys that you are on, but also the skills that you needed to employ. And what I'm trying to get to is today we unfortunately have social media and it's made instant gratification for a lot of things in our lives and people don't realize If you're going to get something. It's not going to be put on Tik Tok with a viral video next thing. You know you're a millionaire. You still got to bust your hump and work. What are some of those qualities that you found yourself either having or having to acquire to be successful and jump from New York to Nashville?

Speaker 2: 19:16

Yeah, that's a really good point, because there's so many things that I did behind the scenes that people never see in order to make it to where I am Whether that be going after a certain certification that I might need, whether that be going after a certain degree I might. In order to teach, the qualification was that you always had to have one degree higher Than what you were teaching. So if you're teaching an associates program, you needed a bachelor's degree, and so to teach at the college, that's what I had to do. I had a business degree in an associates degree in business from a school in Boston. Teaching certificate programs were no problem, but as soon as that school expanded and start teaching associates and then start teaching bachelors, I had to grow with the school. In order for me to do that, what I did is I continually went back to school to get the level of education that I needed to basically keep my job, because if I didn't, the school would eventually outgrow me.

Speaker 2: 20:14

That's what I did, and I also did it within work because, yeah, my foundation is audio engineering and producing records and I loved it. It's a blast, but in order to make a living these days, you have to be more well round. It used to be, you had to have a specialty. Now you have to be more well rounded. So what that means for me is maybe you record a record and you manage an artist, or maybe you put somebody on the road and you manage a tour. Maybe you're a live sound engineer on the road but then you take on the responsibility of being a tour manager. So there's all sorts of things that went on.

Speaker 2: 20:54

And what I did is I kept doing music production by added transportation so I would handle the transportation for the works. So if they're going to travel across the country, do they need a tour bus? How long do they need it? For what size bus do they truly need and the cost of that bus and the fuel for that bus and so on, driver bus. And then we started to get to access needed security. So we started to put people on the bus to work with the big.

Speaker 2: 21:22

So I slowly transit, transitioned into security. But each time I made those transitions I needed to have the education to back it up, otherwise I wasn't going to be able to do it. I could do it as a one off Maybe if it was your band and I knew you and I was the engineer and said oh yeah, I know you're a great guy, we'll take you on and you can handle our tour. But once you get to a point where you're handling a tour for a major label artist, the major label is not going to want you there unless you truly so.

Speaker 2: 21:52

You have to have the experience of working with somebody of that level and in order to do that, you have to the education to truly understand the work your way up in the transportation side of it, work your way up in the security side of it and then marry all those skills together in order to do that and I did. And when I say it doesn't happen fast, it doesn't happen fast. It took 10 years of working in Boston doing productions before I moved to Nashville. That's 10 years of building a craft that was even acceptable to be an assistant in.

Speaker 2: 22:29

Nashville.

Speaker 2: 22:29

You're playing first chair in Boston, new York, and then you move to Nashville and you're back at the beginning, and then it took the first 10 years of that to work my way up to a point where I'm doing quality work again and working on the main person on a project.

Speaker 2: 22:48

And then it happened. The same thing in transportation happened quicker. I was able to apply the skills I learned to the transportation industry and I was a little older, so I was able to be a little bit more self aware and utilize some of those skills that I learned, whether it be how to talk to people, how to put things together, the organization of it all and I was able to work my way up in transportation in just a few years and I was running this very large transportation company, the largest in Nashville, and I thought that was great. Then, as I transitioned into security and I'm starting at the bottom working my way up and because it's another industry and you have to know the nuances of that industry, it's not just as simple as walking an artist bust the stage I worked my way up in that industry and eventually became the vice president of operations for the largest security company in the world and I just recently left there and it's where we've been. It's that 35 year journey.

Speaker 1: 23:49

So are you still in transportation and security on your own, or you're just doing sound engineering and sticking to that?

Speaker 2: 23:58

The engineering is always my foundation. For sure, I love doing it. It's just the part that I. The reason I say that not only is it's my love and my passion, but I can do it on my own. I don't need another soul to do it. We're transportation you need the company and the buses, vehicles, drivers there's always more to it and same thing with security. You need officers, you need organization, you need an HR department, somebody to handle payroll. So these are the things that we have to deal with when we're working with companies like that.

Speaker 2: 24:32

So currently I am working as a contracted project manager and I'm doing it for the state of Kentucky and I love it. It's very enjoyable. I work with some great people, so I still do my projects. There's a production company out of Nashville that feeds me. They basically do what they call songwriter demos for people, and when they get a songwriter that looks like they're gonna have a really good chance of making it or selling a song, then they work with me to take that song to another level, production wise. They work on it as far as writing the song, and then I handle the production to make sure it sounds as close to a record as possible. So I enjoy that and it's fun.

Speaker 2: 25:18

It's not a full time job, that it keeps me busy the Monday through Friday, nine to five or anything, but I'm doing maybe a few a month and that's perfect because then it allows me to do other things. So the other things for me is obviously the podcast. Take that very serious. That's. A very large piece of what I'm doing right now is working with the people in the industry that I've worked with in the past and then taking on these contracted projects. So doing contracted projects, they can go anywhere from six months to years. Project I'm doing currently was supposed to be a six month project and I'm at two and a half years at the moment.

Speaker 1: 25:58

Wow, that is a long journey and I circle back as we're gonna land this here real quick. What would be three nuggets that you could share with the audience on your success? What three things got you to where you wanted to be today, or what you wanted to accomplish?

Speaker 2: 26:20

Could be skills, could be mindset whatever Number one would be in the mindset category just never giving up having the passion to just follow through. Because I will tell you, especially in the fields that I have chosen for myself, I'm responsible for what I put myself through, but these are industries that are desired People wanna work in, so therefore the amount of positions are low and the amount of people applying for those positions are high, and a lot of times what it takes is for you to be the last person standing. It's not even talent. A lot of the times it's just be the last person standing and be a good person when you get it, because people get married and they have families and they have to make money doing something else. They have to have a more stable life, where audio engineering is not necessarily stable, like I said, you're working five, six, seven days a month and there are long hours when you are working 24 hours shifts it.

Speaker 2: 27:31

So you really have to have a passion and love doing it. And then, during those times when you're not working, you're hustling your next gig. So you're out fighting to get next gig. And the trick is when you can do them simultaneously, when you're working one gig and then you are somehow trying to fight for the next gig during that time Because you don't wanna have downtime. That's hard understanding that there's finances involved and that you have bills to pay. You need to be wise with your money. Don't just think you make it and spend it. Make it and save it. Make sure that you have enough to get you through the hard times, cause if you don't, then you end up taking a job at McDonald's or something and then you feel like your path is turning. So if you put enough money in the bank where, during those lulls, that you have enough to pay your bills, then you're good. So I think those were probably the two biggest things.

Speaker 1: 28:30

If somebody would want to last question if someone wanted to break into this industry, would you tell them yes or no today?

Speaker 2: 28:42

He can't tell him no and probably tell him you might really have to have the passion, because if you don't, you're you're not. Even if you do, chances are you're not. You have to have the passion and have to have the fight in you to try to make it, because you, the way you have to look at it is, I'm gonna have fun doing this, whether I make it or. So that way, if you make it, great, if you don't, hey, you still achieve your goal Because there's things you can do, like when I said I started, I was recording books on tape.

Speaker 2: 29:16

There was nothing glamorous about. You had a one microphone, one person and one stool in a ring and they would read to you all day and you would just sit there and press the big red button and they would read and there, it wasn't exciting. There was no thrill to that. You weren't experimenting on what microphone to use or what pieces of gear to use on this. You just needed to get a nice clean vocal sound so they could read in their book.

Speaker 2: 29:43

But at night, when I would go in and do the rock bands, that was awesome. There was just the exciting room and the bands that would get together. Sometimes they'd work out parts right there in front of you and it was just exciting. Then, when they start asking your opinion and you start to feel like you're part of it at that, you start taking on more of a production role and giving them advice and not. And then it's like at the end of the project, when they're so happy with the quality of the project and they start asking you Do you know who can take our photos or who can do our graphics?

Speaker 2: 30:14

and all that and then you start to play more of a role in that. And if you get a mindset for business, then you start thinking like I'd probably hire my own photographers or do my own graphics and next thing you've got a business. You have to have an open mind in a business mindset in order to truly make a living at this.

Speaker 1: 30:36

Would you say the skills that you got along your journey could be applied to any aspect of your life and could it be outside of what you're doing today?

Speaker 2: 30:45

Absolutely hands down. And I can tell you why. I worked at that school when I first moved to Nashville. It took a little bit of time, but I finally got my foot in the door at the school and all of the students looked at me like who are you and why should we care? And it took took a while for me to Earn their trust, to show them why they should care. And hey, I was working on this project. This is what a takeaway we can take from it.

Speaker 2: 31:09

But then I wrote a book and when I wrote that book, the students instantly gave me credibility. So, okay, so he wrote a book and it's a book of something that we're interested in. A lot of the students read the book and when they read the book they're like, oh, this is telling me how to do what I want to know how to do. And it became something that the school put in their library and then a few other schools started carrying it as a textbook and that gave me credibility. And then, when I went out into the world of transportation and then into security, I wrote other books, but I wrote them business related and used that same Business really and used that same Mindset of, hey, the book helped me get credibility in the music industry and education. I bet a book would help me get credibility in this industry as well, and I did that, and at this point I've written four books and They've all helped me get to another level. The same thing is education always helps me get to another level. A, a certification, might help you get to another level.

Speaker 2: 32:17

Whatever you can do to set yourself apart from the person who's competing for that same job as you are. So I used to tell people when I would manage a team. I had a team of Thousands of officers at the security company. I had five officers under me. I had, no joke, thousands of officers. I had over 500 officers. That on the Facebook campus alone, I mean we had a lot of officers.

Speaker 2: 32:41

People don't really truly understand how many officers you put out in the field. So I had all these people in the field and they used to always ask me how do you get ahead? How do I get promoted? How can I get to my next spot? I would always tell them the same thing set yourself apart, do something for yourself, because if you and the officer next to you come to me and tell me that you're both ready to be promoted, you're both equal in skill and you both equal in education. My next question gonna be what have you done for yourself? And if one of you stands up and says I read this book or I took this class, I Got this certification, anything to show me that you were willing to invest in yourself without any hope of getting something back. And that's what makes the difference when you're willing to invest in yourself without any hope, that's gonna pay off, and so that is so right and a lot of that is missing in today's society.

Speaker 1: 33:39

But that's a whole another Conversation. But I want to first thank you for coming on the show sharing your story. It's very powerful and what you've done. But before we go, best place for people to find your podcasts I know you want to get out there or do you want them to go to a specific website?

Speaker 2: 33:55

You can just go to my website. It's J A Y F R A N Z E Dot com. Jay frenzy dot com.

Speaker 1: 34:03

Okay, I will also list that in the show notes. Sir, thank you very much for coming on the show. Love your con, love your story, love the conversation and we'll be chatting. Thank you, I really appreciate it. You're more than welcome, oh.