Jeremy Fennema is the Director of Internet Services and Training. Flanked by his assistants, Gwen and Tracy, there are very few times during the day he isn’t within arm’s length of a phone and computer. Ask him a question about anything ranging from Market America business to home improvement and he’ll have an answer for you. So we gotta ask…
Q. How would you describe your role within Market America?
A. Primarily I head up the Internet Services and Financial Services divisions in Market America for all countries. What that means is I mostly focus on growing the maWebCenters program in our main countries, USA, Canada, Australia, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the Philippines, as well as expanding that program to new countries like the UK and others; while I continue to develop maCapital Resources here in the US and Canada for Financial Services products. It helps having an awesome team though, cause there’s no way we could get done what we do, without Gwen and Tracy here in the office making sure everything stays working.
Q. What is your favorite country to do training seminars at?
A. I love speaking in every country, they all have something different and special about them which makes it a treat to speak there, but I have to say, my favorite is speaking right here in my own backyard, and really it’s a very selfish reason, they get my jokes. It’s really hard to be funny in another country and I like to make people chuckle when I speak, even if they’re chuckling at me for something I did, it puts people at ease so they can hear what we’re trying to say better. It’s always a challenge to try and do that in other countries, sometimes it comes off great, and well, sometimes, not so much. That’s not to say that my sense of humor always hits here in the states either, haha, but, usually I’m funny more times than not… I hope.
Q. How has your time in the military and college degrees helped you at your job?
A. None at all, complete waste of time and money. Just kidding. I’m a big fan of education. I think it’s completely overpriced these days and has lots of problems, but, I spent over a decade in college and graduate school and I wouldn’t trade it in for anything because I learned probably one of the most valuable skills that I have today, which is critical thinking. I direct the efforts of a huge number of projects here at Market America, for both domestic and global markets, and our business environment is incredibly complicated. Most businesses simply have two layers, Corporate and the Customer. In our environment we have three layers, Corporate, Distributors, Customers, and we need to structure things so that they work intelligently and intuitively for all three layers. You need to “think around corners” quite a bit, and lay out contingency plans, and model out how distributors and customers both, might want to use the project you’re developing, because in nearly all cases the Distributor is a Customer. I credit my education and my military background for my ability to do this to the benefit of the projects I head up. It always seems to make a big difference.
Q. With your time spent in the military and the UFO poster on the wall… Do aliens exist? Have you been abducted before?
A. Hahaha, well, I do joke sometimes when I get the odd bump or bruise I don’t remember getting, whether from working around the house or working on the car, that I must’ve been abducted by aliens, but, no, to my knowledge I have never been abducted. Mostly the poster is a recognition of one of my favorite shows, the X-Files. It’s the poster that Mulder had up on his wall in his office “I want to believe.” The neat thing is that it has a double meaning in our business, since we strive to be UFO’s and requalify as a UFO, the secondary meaning for me, helps remind me to build my business every day. I remember a couple months after I had hung this poster in my office, Andrew Weissman had come in for a meeting and he saw the poster and all he said was “I want to believe in being a UFO, right on, right on!” It was great to see someone else get the meaning that I see in it every day.
Q. The word around the office is that you are an adventurous eater. What is the wildest thing you’ve ever eaten?
A. Hmmm, wildest thing I’ve ever eaten, well, I’ve definitely eaten a lot of different foods when I’ve travelled around, and I love trying pretty much anything (except stuff even the locals stay away from, cause then it’s probably not tasty or safe). The wildest, I’d have to say, was crocodile, I think that’s animal I’ve eaten which could’ve eaten me the fastest (given the chance). The weirdest food I’ve ever eaten though, was chocolate covered locusts (big grasshoppers). They were extremely tasty, very crunchy, but surprisingly good, I guess you can pretty much put chocolate on almost anything and it’s going to be tasty. It’s hard picking just one though, cause there’s such a long list of weird foods I’ve eaten. My parents can be proud, they did teach me to always try whatever was on my plate, at least once. One food I won’t eat though, beets, can’t stand ‘em.