The Alimond Show
Welcome to The Alimond Show --join us as we share our entrepreneurial guests' stories, uncover their secrets to success, and explore the unique paths they've taken to build thriving businesses in our community.
In each episode, our host, Aliyah Dastour, sits down with a diverse group of local business owners, from the corner cafe to the boutique shop, from tech startups to family-run enterprises. We peel back the curtain to reveal the trials, triumphs, and transformational moments that have shaped their entrepreneurial journey.
Discover the passion, perseverance, and innovative thinking that fuels these businesses, as well as the challenges they've overcome along the way. Whether you're a budding entrepreneur seeking inspiration or simply a curious listener interested in the stories behind your favorite local spots, The Alimond Show has something for everyone.
Our guests share their experiences, insights, and valuable advice that can empower you to turn your own dreams into reality. We discuss topics like marketing strategies, customer relationships, community engagement, and much more, offering practical takeaways you can apply to your own business or career.
Join us every week as we celebrate the unsung heroes of our local business community and explore the vibrant tapestry of entrepreneurship in our area. Tune in to The Alimond Show and get ready to be inspired, informed, and motivated to support and nurture the businesses that make our community thrive.
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The Alimond Show
Jeff Granger - From Professional Sports to Financial Services Visionary and Restaurateur
From the basketball courts of Europe to the intricate world of financial services, Jeff Granger's journey is nothing short of extraordinary. Co-founder of Granger Financial, Jeff sits down with us to recount his pivot from a professional sports career to the banking sector, followed by an unplanned stint at State Farm. He shares candid stories of his wife’s unwavering support, sacrificing her own career in clinical therapy to help build their thriving business. Together, they’ve established a personalized, white-glove approach to insurance and financial services, while also nurturing young talent within their dedicated team.
In this episode, we examine the hurdles and triumphs of the financial services industry, including navigating rate increases and the essence of customized policies. Jeff opens up about their ambitious plans for expansion, touching on future ventures into employee benefits and enhanced tax services. We also explore their parallel journey in the restaurant business, comparing the dynamics between suburban and city locations. Finally, Jeff reflects on the profound difference between personal success and meaningful impact, emphasizing the family mantra: "It's not your success, it's your impact." This inspiring conversation is a testament to resilience, partnership, and the power of giving back.
My name is Jeff Granger. I am a co-founder of Granger Financial with my wife, and how we serve our clients is we provide them the best insurance and financial services that they can find. We represent all of the major carriers, but we do it in a white glove way where we take a very, very personalized approach to making sure our clients understand what they're purchasing and have the most informed buying decision process that's out there.
Speaker 2:How did you guys get into this?
Speaker 1:Oh wow, Take some steps back, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, tell us the story.
Speaker 1:I played basketball professionally coming out of Hampton University. Oh cool. So I went overseas and started playing basketball. I played in a couple of countries and then came home and couldn't find work. I was either overqualified or underqualified as a college athlete that didn't have any real work experience, so I started working in banking.
Speaker 2:Was that shocking to you?
Speaker 1:Oh, it was very shocking, very shocking. I had a degree. I'm like I got a degree, like hire me.
Speaker 2:Where's the job? Where's the job?
Speaker 1:Well, sir, it doesn't work like that. So I was either overqualified or underqualified and I actually got my first job in banking. Wachovia Bank hired me as a financial specialist. I had zero clue about banking or money and all they told me was that if you get these licenses, you'll have a job. My first job, I made $38,000 a year with benefits, and I had potential to make bonus. I was an athlete. All you had to tell me to do was do the play, and I was gonna do it. So I studied. They said I only needed a 70. I got 90 out of 100. They told me I overachieved. Right, but I got my securities license.
Speaker 1:I started working in banking for a couple of years and then what happened was I worked on Saturdays. I was missing my daughter's soccer. I was trying to get her to put her money in the bank and she was like you know what? You really would be? A good state farm agent. And I'm like I don't know anything about state farm. Whatever, I'm good, I'm making good money at the bank, leave me alone. And she showed me one of her checks. I'm like, oh, that's cool. And she's like, no, that's two weeks. I was like wait a minute.
Speaker 2:Let's talk. Wait a minute, we got to talk.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I got into working at State Farm, moved to Charlotte and I worked at State Farm for 10 years. I worked my way up the ladder, qualified for every program as a State Farm agent, independent contractor, and went into corporate into a leadership role from 2016 to 2019. And then I was terminated from that position unexpectedly in 2019. So I got fired on July 12th of 2019, which was a Friday. July 15th we opened Granger Financial and July 16th we took our first client.
Speaker 2:Wow that fast.
Speaker 1:That fast. I'm from North New Jersey. Man, we don't slow down.
Speaker 2:We got to keep grinding. You're like one thing didn't work, we're going to go straight to the next have to?
Speaker 1:Yeah, you have to, you can't stop.
Speaker 2:Now you said you're in partnership with your wife.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:So was this something she was always into as well.
Speaker 1:Absolutely.
Speaker 1:She absolutely not, I should say had a background, a master's degree in clinical therapy or counseling psychology, I should say, and she really loved working with at-risk youth. That was her passion. But she gave up part of her career to follow me and we moved three different places because the career called for it Monetarily. It impacted and helped our family that way to do that. And she followed me and she knew the business just like I did. And when we had our independent agency, what better person to mind the business when you're not there as the owner or the co-owner than your spouse Right? And she did that and she's been doing that since we've been in business and it's been one of the best things ever.
Speaker 2:We don't always see eye to eye, I can say that I was going to ask how is it working together? How do you guys find that balance?
Speaker 1:Oh man, it's funny. Our staff laughs at us because we're very real, like, we're very real people. If it's something that needs to be said, it gets said right there and then and we move on. Um, we laugh about it, we joke. Um, we've been married 15 years, so there's not a lot that we haven't gone through together, and I know I have the right person in my life because she sacrificed everything for us to be where we are, and I just want to make sure that we reciprocate that by providing a lifestyle that her and my children enjoy, enjoy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, what do you find most rewarding about what you do?
Speaker 1:The people yeah, the people, the young folks that I get to work with. I have an amazing staff. One person has been with me for over 10 years. She was with me when I started at State Farm. She left there and came to work with me here. No question, I've had some people come in through the business, work with me for a bit and realize it wasn't the right thing for them, but they're back in school or finishing college and working on something else because we've had time to work with each other.
Speaker 2:And you gave them that opportunity to kind of figure out if it was something that they wanted to pursue.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'll give you a prime example One of the young men that I ended up having to let go terminate. He told me that he got he never went to college and he said he worked for me for a year and he got four years of college experience inside that one year working with us. Because we don't hide our business from our staff, right Like it's not a lot that they don't get to know right.
Speaker 1:Because we want to help build young men and women into whatever they want to be. I don't want you to be here forever if you don't want to be Right. My, my job is to help leverage results and develop people Right, and if I do those two things, my business will always flourish.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I've never had an employee problem. We've never had an employee problem because we know how to help build people and we build great relationships with them.
Speaker 2:Right, and coaching and mentoring.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's. That's the number one thing that we do. It's huge.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I actually want to back up for a minute to when you were talking about the person who kind of who brought you on at State Farm. Was she kind of your mentor?
Speaker 1:No, she wasn't, she was. She brought me in, she was a good.
Speaker 2:She definitely saw something in you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, she saw something for sure, but she was not a mentor. Through the process, one of my mentors was a guy that hired me. His name was Butch English, one of the best leaders I've ever known, and he gave me the opportunity to become who I am today by teaching me that you have to put people in hot water and make them harden the egg a little bit, right and but you coached them through that process, and it's more about who are you as a person, what's going on in your life, how can I help you? And the business will take care of itself.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:And I think that's where a lot of people miss. They focus solely on the business that they miss the person.
Speaker 2:Right and kind of understanding how they learn best and how they operate best and what makes them? What makes them go yeah.
Speaker 1:Because everyone isn't motivated by money.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Society tells us it is.
Speaker 2:But it's not true for everybody.
Speaker 1:It's not true. Yeah, I understand that. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:What challenges are you seeing these days in the financial world and how is that impacting your business and how do you overcome those challenges?
Speaker 1:So we don't typically see challenges right.
Speaker 1:We call challenges OTEs opportunities to excel.
Speaker 1:But I will say that the insurance industry has faced unprecedented challenges over the last couple of years with COVID Right, it's driven the not the severity of, not not the frequency of events up, but the severity, meaning that let's say, you get in a car accident and it should take three days to fix your car, but because we had covid and we couldn't get chips from China or things shipped in, now you're in a rental car for seven days and the insurance company has to pay that.
Speaker 1:And you multiply that extra three hundred dollars times 30,000 claims a day. Insurance companies are seeing losses that they hadn't seen right, which makes rates have to get impacted and adjusted to balance out. And I don't think the natural consumer can also understand that. They just see it as, oh, they're just charging me a higher rate. But there's things that impact those things and what we do is we try to explain those things to give you an understanding. I saw your eyes kind of peek up when I kind of explained it that way, because no one's probably explained it to you like that before.
Speaker 2:That makes a lot more sense Than just hey, we're charging you 30% more. Yeah.
Speaker 1:This is why and it's spread across the board, but I think Do you find it challenging to have people understand that? Yes, because things are going up, but wages don't always go up, Correct, and I think it's hard. And that's where the compassion part comes in in our business. It's not really about hey, we just want to sell you something and get you in a policy. Let's make it the best one for you. Let's tailor fit this suit your insurance suit for you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so that you understand, tailor fit this suit, your insurance suit for you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so that you understand. Yeah, because you know we try and bespoke our policies right.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And I think that's the hard part is getting a consumer to understand. Look, I've checked 25, 30 companies that we represent and this is the rate. I really don't have anything more for you or better than what you currently have or what you're seeing in the market. This is the going rate.
Speaker 2:This is it yeah.
Speaker 1:And it's unfortunate at times for people because things are expensive and we understand that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and we just try to make sure, especially around here.
Speaker 1:Oh yes, yes, in Loudoun County.
Speaker 2:Yeah, what advice would you have for somebody young, maybe graduating from college, that wants to get into this business, into the financial business, insurance business? What advice would you have for them?
Speaker 1:Number one. It's the number one maker of millionaires in the United States the insurance and financial services industry. You can go look it up. Anybody can Google it. I think my advice I'd give them is that hard work. The one thing you have to understand is build relationships right and be willing to work hard and be patient. Right, and be willing to work hard and be patient. Yeah, because this society puts everything in the microwave.
Speaker 1:No one cooks on a gas stove anymore. It goes in the microwave and it's five minute ramen and it pops out fast. But in the insurance and financial services industry it takes time. You have to let it build up, you have to build the right relationships and then over time you'll see the fruits of your labor and you're like man. We built that. We started with zero customers, zero. We're impacting over 600 households right now. In four years, Wow.
Speaker 2:That's tremendous growth yeah.
Speaker 1:It's really good growth. We want it to be more, but we're still growing at the right rate with the right people.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that's a good thing. Yeah, where do you see it all going in the next four or five years? You see more growth.
Speaker 1:Oh, absolutely. I think we're going to expand to different avenues. Right now we do P&C. We do property and casualty as P&C, so that's auto and home. We do business insurance. We write a lot of life insurance for our customers. We have other avenues of our business where we actually have private client services, where we work with high net worth athletes, entertainers or C-suite executives.
Speaker 1:And we do their bookkeeping. We have CPAs that work for us, that do the tax work for them. We have CPAs that work for us that do the tax work for them. Where I see us going is probably getting into employee benefits and bringing on a specialist to manage employee benefits and then building out the tax business a little bit more, because I think that's another area that people struggle.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, and understanding that part. So I think the overall holistic financial picture is what we do, and then we help our clients get matched with financial advisors when they need Right, because we don't do, you know, manage money. We don't manage money. We don't do any investing for you. I used to be licensed to do it, but I know the right people and good people that we can put in front of. Yes, that we can put in front of our clients if they ask.
Speaker 2:Now you dabble in some other business businesses too. Tell me a little bit about that.
Speaker 1:Wow, we have a local business here, uh called rebel taco.
Speaker 2:two locations one in Bramilton um Bramilton, virginia, uh, right across underneath the library right here and then we have one. In many, many times I haven't had the opportunity to eat there yet, but I'm going to. We're inviting you. We're inviting you.
Speaker 1:And then we also have a location at 508 K Street in Washington DC.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:So we own, we're part owners in the restaurant business as well.
Speaker 2:How is the city location comparing to a suburban location?
Speaker 1:Believe it or not, everyone would believe the city location does better.
Speaker 2:That would be my guess.
Speaker 1:That and your guess is. I'm not going to say you're wrong, but I'm just going to say the Ashburn location does way better it does great.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because there's so many families that support us. Right, the city is very transient and because people aren't going to work in the city anymore, it's not the same type of crowd, so you have to wait for summer for the travelers to come through or conventions, and it changes the approach. Now DC is always buzzing, but it doesn't mean that that part of the city is, and it's a great location. We're two blocks from Capital One Arena.
Speaker 2:Oh, that's great. Grab a bite to eat and go out, go to the game, yeah.
Speaker 1:But the Bramilton location is the one near and dear to our heart because it's right in the heart of the city and it's where all the families are.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it's relatively new, right. I mean how long? Two years, two years, yeah, yeah just over two years now. How was that? Are there any ups? I'm sure there's a lot of ups and downs in opening a restaurant the restaurant business, partly because I'm not a I was not a restaurateur. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Right. I got in the business by happenstance and what I realized very quickly was that business across the board are all the same businesses. You have to have the right people and you have to understand your target market and what you're trying to accomplish. Right, you're playing. And once we figured those things out, we started to make some changes and we have a different vibe in our restaurant now. Uh, and the business is improving because we're focused on it in different ways. So we love it. We actually love it. I love it because it's a challenge and something that I'm not good at right, naturally. So it's kind of like golf I play it and I love it because I'm not good at it. Yeah, but we're getting better.
Speaker 2:We're getting better. Absolutely. That's awesome. Do you see more locations in the future?
Speaker 1:Yeah, we do. We actually have been approached by a couple of people to franchise. We have the opportunity. We're seeking the opportunity to go into the stadiums. We want to expand the business, we want to expand it to make it a household name Rebel Taco and we will do that. So it's just step by step, step by step, little by step, step by step. Little by little, step by step.
Speaker 2:Now, with both of your businesses being quite different, but also in the financial world, what are you doing for advertising marketing these days to get your clients in?
Speaker 1:Both businesses are different. Right For Granger Financial, we do a lot of word of mouth. We do a lot of community outreach. We partner with Mobile Hope a lot.
Speaker 2:We were just talking about Mobile Hope this morning. They're great, huge shout out to Mobile Hope because we love them. Big shout out to Mobile Hope.
Speaker 1:We partner with Mobile Hope a lot. Speaking of it, july 13th of this year, every year we do it we do a free basketball camp, free basketball camp, free basketball camping clinic, um, for anybody in the community ages. We do five all the way to 17. Come on out, we have some. My dad is a a professional coach. Um, he coaches in Europe.
Speaker 2:Uh well, sorry sorry, where does he coach?
Speaker 1:Basketball, basketball, okay, basketball okay, uh, my brother plays professional.
Speaker 2:Why you played?
Speaker 1:yeah, my brother plays professionally now, uh, and then I have some of my clients that are in the nfl and stuff come out. Um, we have good auction items. I think last year, uh, we had uh signed creed boxing gloves by michael b jordan that got auctioned off. Michael B Jordan's a good friend of ours and those went for $1,200 and all of that money went to Mobile Hope. So we partner with them and we love it. And on the Rebel Taco side, we do a lot of social media marketing. We use our Instagram page a lot and then we target market our clients based on who comes in and we have their emails. We do email blasts to them.
Speaker 2:Great. I wanted to circle back to Mobile Hope for just a moment. How important is it to you to give back to the community? What does that mean to you?
Speaker 1:It's one of the most important things for us. I'll tell you a quick story. I grew up with a grandmother who had a free clothes fence, and I know you're going to ask me what the heck is that?
Speaker 2:What is a clothes fence?
Speaker 1:Yes, so in front of our apartment we lived in Newark, new Jersey, which is, you know, if you know that place, it is not a place of Loudoun County means and we used to have people donate clothes to. My grandmother had them donate clothes and we would wash every stitch of the clothes and we used to have to put them out on the fence at night and she had a sign that said free clothes. And I said, grandma, why not just give the people the clothes? She said when you give them the people, sometimes it takes a part of their dignity or they don't want to accept it. But if they can come get them themselves and take it for themselves, it changes the way it feels for them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like it doesn't feel as much like a handout.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's not as much as a handout. As you know, when they take it themselves, they're giving themselves a hand up. So I grew up with that type of giving and that type of thoughtfulness every day of our lives, Like there was always support for someone else before yourself, and she's the person that makes us, made us go. As it relates to putting whatever business you have, there has to be some sort of community service a part of it.
Speaker 2:Absolutely or you won't have anything. Yeah, and it sounds like she led by example Absolutely, or you won't have anything.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it sounds like she led by example. One thousand percent, right, one thousand percent. I lost her in 2013, which was my first year of opening my business, in July, and it was probably one of the better years we had. We had lost her in 2013. And my daughter was born in December of that year and we named her. My grandmother's name was Dorothy Parker. Her maiden name was Parker, so my 10 year old's name is Parker.
Speaker 2:I love that.
Speaker 1:So we see her every day.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and I'm sure she's smiling down and so proud of you.
Speaker 1:Absolutely.
Speaker 2:As we wrap up here, are there any words of advice you'd like to leave us with? Maybe a mantra that you live?
Speaker 1:by Ah man, I think there's so many right.
Speaker 2:So many.
Speaker 1:But I think the most important thing is you got to give back and make sure I'll take your words. You leave the world a better place than you found it. And that's the impact that you can have on the world, the world, and I think, if we live that way, we'll have a lot less hate and we'll have a lot more people crossing different genres to make sure that we're all living in a harmonious place.
Speaker 2:I love it and you said something earlier about your family that you. What was the quote that you guys live by? That? It's not your success, it's your impact.
Speaker 1:Yep Success is one thing, impact is another.
Speaker 2:Impact is another.
Speaker 1:People look at you and they see the success, but they don't know the impact that you may or may not have on other people, and that's the most important thing. You should look at Not being successful, but being impactful.
Speaker 2:Impactful. I love that Well. Thank you so much for being here. Loved hearing your story, Thank you.