Fantasy Football Counselor – About my story and my why

Published by Joseph Robert at May 2, 2020

Place of birth and beginnings

So, a little bit of a backstory. My parents immigrated from the Middle East and I was born and raised actually in Canada. The city I was born in was Hamilton, Ontario. It’s kind of a steel city. So if you guys know Pittsburgh, it’s kind of like Canada’s Pittsburgh, I would say. It’s kind of near Toronto, in between Toronto and Niagara Falls, if you guys know geographical locations. The closest team for me to go see games was the Buffalo Bills. That was about a 45 minute to an hour drive. Detroit was about four hours away from where I grew up. Again, guys, I grew up humble beginnings. Dad was a steelworker who worked really hard and he was more into survival mode. So he didn’t come to the country thinking, “Hey, you know what? I’m going to come here and I’m going to crush it, dominate, be an entrepreneur.” It was more just like, “Hey, I want to survive, feed the family.” I grew up with one sister, my mom. Good upbringing, very, very happy with that, but again, it was just a lot of scrounging, we can’t afford this, we can’t afford that. That was a bit of a struggle for me, seeing that, because there’s a lot of things you want as a child.

Now, we got everything we wanted. I mean, I had a Sega Genesis and all the toys, and clothes I wanted growing up. I had the video game systems. I had all the latest things, but we never thrived. It was more of a survive and get what we had to kind of thing. So going through college, I took a community college, which was like a hydraulic technician course. There wasn’t really any guidance in high school. I find that’s why I went entrepreneur, because I was sick of the way the structure was. I mean, before online it was very hard to do the entrepreneur thing, so a lot of people just went with what the system taught you. If you had a good grade, you went and tried to become an engineer or a doctor. If you had bad grades, you took a humanities course, which is basically a social course to lead into a teaching kind of gig, that type of thing, to become a teacher. There wasn’t any guidance. So I sat down with my guidance counselor and said, “Listen…” My best grades were in dramatic arts. I was good in drama and arts and English and that type of thing. And they’re like, “Hey Joe, why don’t you try this hydraulic technician course? It pays around 40 grand after you’ve done a year.” I’m like, “Hey, that’s pretty cool. Might as well give that a shot.”

Education and work

So then with that course, it wasn’t my thing. It was a two-year course at a community college, I hated the mainstream schooling system. You know, you had to learn machine shop hydraulics and not the car hydraulics, but more like industrial hydraulic cylinders, stuff that works automated machinery and factories and stuff like that. So I did that and I’m just like, “Okay, you can become a pipefitter, mill. You can go into the steel trade.” I didn’t want to work in the steel mills. I just found it was just wasn’t for me. So I said, “I’m going to go into sales.”

So I went to the sales, did sales, but I was never fulfilled because I had bosses that I didn’t like. I just couldn’t conform to working for somebody. So at the time, as I was working for these hydraulic sales jobs, traveling, going to different plants and meeting with plant managers and stuff like that, I just felt unfulfilled. Again, guys, with this story, hopefully, you guys can resonate with this and maybe it’ll spark something in your brains and you can say, “Hey, I’m not happy with my job. Maybe I should make a move.” I did a Social Lion course as well, for these guys at the thefantasyfootballcounselor.com. If you guys want more information, I did a course to help people break out of the 9:00 to 5:00. I just added that.

Breaking out of 9-5 and Finding My Passion

It wasn’t really part of my brand, but I wanted to add it because if anyone can take away something from it, I think it’d be important. So again, I added that course called Social Lion, guys. It is available at thefantasyfootballcounselor.com under programs. Check it out if you guys want to break out 9:00 to 5:00. So again, I was doing the sales job, unfulfilled. I loved Fantasy at the time, right? I was doing Fantasy. I was in a friend’s league. There was 12 of us. We got together every year. It was a keeper league. I just absolutely loved it. This is probably 2011-12. Andrew Luck was my quarterback, I think that year. I was drafting guys like Ray Rice, Arian Foster, Matt Forte. This is where I was really, really getting into it. I did it years before, but not to this level. I was really becoming obsessed with it. I got all the updated magazines. I sat there, read them all the time. It was just a passion of mine. But then I realized I didn’t like the way things were at a time. It was kind of in the back of my mind, but I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know how to take action with it, that type of thing. So then what I ended up doing is creating something called a Fantasy frame, which what it was is actually like a league prize. I’m like, “Hey, this is really cool. Let’s replace the trophy.”

Again, I was passionate about sports cards. I still collect sports cards. I’ve been collecting them since I was a young kid and grew up watching sports with my dad. We watched a lot of hockey here in Canada, and football, a lot of football. Grew up watching the Buffalo Bills, Dallas Cowboys, that type of thing. And I was collecting sports cards, and so I’m like, “Hey, this is cool. Why don’t we put sports cards in a frame? Okay, this is cool. And then that could be your Fantasy team. So if you won your league, we take your sports cards of your team players, we put them in the frame, we engrave your team name on that. And wouldn’t it be cool if you flipped it on the back, the frame, and on the back, there was like all the players, right? You have all the players, every sports card, you could see the back of the card.”

So I ended up spending… I don’t know, man, I was in debt like 60 grand trying to build this thing. Because I built the mold for the plastic backing. I ended up going with a wooden frame, so I ended up getting a wooden frame, custom frame. It was like a special plastic on the front that wouldn’t break. I didn’t want to go glass, for shipping reasons. Came up with this frame. At the time, my dad was alive. He was helping me with this, sorting out the sports cards, sourcing the stuff out. He just kept asking, “Joe, how is your Fantasy Frame business?” and I was like, “Yeah, that’s good.” I wasn’t doing well with it. It was okay, I was getting the orders, but I didn’t have a brand to really market it. I tried some Facebook ads, but I didn’t know how to do Facebook ads. I was just kind of lost. I’m just like, I’m wanting to do something, but I knew there was something more.

Tragic Loss

So I’m building this, unfulfilled with the sales job, building this side hustle, which I thought was a frame idea, but again, still unfulfilled. And then I got this call. It was a Saturday. At the time I was living on my own. My sister called and said, “Dad is dead.” And I’m like, “What?” I thought she said the dog was dead because we had a dog. I’m like, “What?” My mind couldn’t process it.

So I got the call and it was like, “Hey, Dad is dead.” I’m like, “Can’t be, it’s just not possible.” So at this point, I was in shock. I could have driven over because my mom and sister were actually living with my dad. They had gone out to Costco, get some groceries, that type of thing, and he was out mowing the lawn. I got this call and I couldn’t comprehend it. So I knocked on my neighbor’s door. I said, “Hey, can you drive me?” It was a 15-minute drive to my parents’ house. “Can you drive me?” Because I could drive, but it’s probably not a good thing, because I heard this news, I still don’t know if it’s real, don’t know what’s going on.

So my neighbor ended up driving me. I’m in a state of shock and disbelief. And then we get to the house and I guess the ambulance was there and they had just taken him to the hospital. My mom and sister were there. We all jumped in a car, went over to one hospital. Got to the hospital, apparently, he’d suffered a heart attack, fell. The problem is we don’t know how long he was down. That’s the issue. If you’re down for so long, I don’t know if it’s two or three minutes, you start going brain dead and the oxygen isn’t going to your internal organs and the organs throughout your body.

So, long story short, he fought from like 2:00 PM, I think it was a Saturday. This was Father’s Day, it was the day before Father’s Day, so he passed… It was a Saturday, I think it was the day before Father’s Day. And he fought from 2:00 PM till around 3:00 AM into Father’s Day, and we lost him at 3:00 AM. They just said, “Too irreparable damage to the internal organs. There’s just no coming back.” But the last thing he had said to me, I think it was day or two before, was, “Hey Joe, can I have 10 bucks?” Because he didn’t have a lot of money and he wanted some gas money for his car. The day of, actually, I think the day he passed away before he was mowing the lawn, he put 10 bucks of gas into a car and he drove my sister to the doctors. Yeah, that was that. He used his last 10 bucks.

Finding my why and motivation

I still have his wallet to this day and there’s no money in it. So again, I use that as a driver for me to do what I do. After he passed away, I realized, “You know what? There’s nothing to lose. I can do more than just this.” I said, “I could do more,” and I started the podcast. I started back in 2016. Then I got into this industry and then I go to one of these events where they… It was a trade association. And here I am, guys, I’ve got my backstory. I was coming from humble beginnings, I had nothing. I’m doing this sales job, really unfulfilled, came up with this Fantasy frame. I’m really excited about this idea.

And I take it to some of these top industry experts and they say, “Oh, we’ve come up with this idea. The idea is not that good.” Here I am, man, blood, sweat and tears, 60 grand, creating a mold, sourcing out the cards with my dad, just losing my dad, and these guys, the big boy’s club telling me, “Hey Joe, we don’t like your idea. Basically, you’re a nobody.” They didn’t say it like that, but I felt that I was being pushed out. I came in with all this passion and excitement to come in, and I was really nice to everybody. And there was this arrogance and this big boy’s club and this whole like, “Who is this guy? Why is he here? He’s not going to stomp on our territory. This is a big boy’s club. You don’t belong here.”

It’s not something I felt and it was not something I misinterpreted. It was something I genuinely knew. I don’t know whether they thought I was a threat or whether they just didn’t like me or whether that it was the color of my skin, because I’m brown. Who knows? I don’t know, and I’m not here to judge or say anything of that, but I just felt that it was a bit of a threat. I was a threat to them in regards to the industry. I was up and coming. At that point, I was crushing Instagram. I had 30,000 followers on there I’d built every day, posting like an animal. I think this was summer 2017. I had started the brand May 2016 and I started Instagram around that time. It was like summer 2016. I was going hard. I actually started in ’15, but I was going hard summer 2016. I think this was like summer 2016, actually. Yeah, it was summer 2016 when I went to this convention. And again, the arrogance from some of these top podcasters and industry guys, it was absolutely disgusting. Again, I was super nice to them. I actually acknowledged everything that they did for the industry, and again, the arrogance was just unreal. And again, I continue to see that with the success that I’ve had now, going into my fourth or fifth year… I think the fifth year. It continues to be prevalent and I keep seeing it, right?

So I didn’t like the way things were going, with the way the consensus rankings were. I didn’t like the way things were going with the arrogant white-collar attitude. I didn’t like anything of the way anything was going. Another thing that I felt was lacking in Fantasy Football was personality, and that’s why I reply back to a lot of the messages. That’s why I sit there and I DM people back because I think everybody’s special in their own way. And I think a lot of people that haven’t reached their success haven’t put in the effort or time or haven’t found their why. That’s one thing I want to emphasize to you guys. You’ve got to find your why.

For me, a lot of it is legacy. A lot of it is coming up from humble beginnings. A lot of it is the loss of my dad. A lot of it is also changing the way things were to the way things should be and they should be done in a better way. So again, my statement and my mission to you, the reason I put this video out is that, again, a lot of people don’t know the backstory. They sometimes see me the last show saying, “Oh, they can [inaudible 00:13:57] this, this, and that.” It’s because I see it. I see how fake it is. When I got into the sales industry with hydraulic sales, I didn’t like a boss. I didn’t like the politics of it.

When I wanted to do Fantasy, I wanted Fantasy to be fun. I just wanted to have fun. And when I go in I see the politics behind Fantasy, I’m like, “Oh, screw that shit. I don’t want any part of that at all. No part of that garbage.” So I said to myself, “I’m going to change the game and to keep it real with fans and make the fan experience amazing and keep it real.” And never have I thought once in my mind that I’m better than you listening or I’m better than the other guy because I’m verified on Instagram because I’ve got millions of podcast downloads because I’m number one Instagram and because I’ve got a lot of things going and the success I’ve got.

I’ve never thought in my mind that I’m better than anybody else. In fact, if you check my DM, I DM as many people as I can back. I try to keep it real. I guess it gets to a point sometimes when you’re so big it’s like, “Okay, well I don’t have time, or I’m busy, I’m doing this,” and that’s understandable. But to not reply in your comments on Instagram and not to reply to comments on YouTube, I think that’s just absolutely ludicrous. And I think that’s a terrible thing, not even one reply. Again, I just didn’t like the way things were. A plus side of this is that you guys now have 16 Rounds, a practical way to dominate. And I’m just so happy to be here with you to share my story and to give you guys a product that is a lot better than the way things were done.

The industry continues to go down the dark path of arrogance, of constant, constant… I’m telling you… BS analysis and advice. Literally, I talked to one guy who’s a so-called expert, one of the top guys. He goes, “You know what, Joe? I get hate all the time. People just give me a sheet, I read my sheet and away I go, and that’s it.” It’s literally like they just do a job, they fill a quota and they go home, and that’s not what I’m bringing to you. I’m bringing passion. I’m bringing heart. I’m bringing actual knowledge and analysis. I want you guys to genuinely win your league.

That’s pretty much the story, guys. Kept it under 20 minutes. Again, guys, super passionate about what I’m doing. So to end this message, if you are interested in building a side hustle, there is a course called Social Lion at thefantasyfootballcounselor.com, under programs. I definitely want you guys to consider it. If you are kind of stuck in that place, it will give you a little bit of guidance. It doesn’t solve all your problems, but my piece of advice is that whatever you do in 9:00 to 5:00, you’ve got to take your passion and really, really find your why, and then constantly build your passion consistently and persistently. I mean, it’s persistence.

Whatever effort you think it’s going to take to build whatever you got to do, you got a hundred exit cause it requires that much effort. I could have quit at Fantasy Frames when I was 60 grand in debt and I got rejected at this convention with all the other Fantasy analysts. I could’ve just said, “Okay, I’m done. I suck. This frame has already been done. I’m not selling too many. I don’t know how to market. I don’t know how to do Facebook ads,” and then just could have just quit. But I learned how to do Facebook ads.

How I got out of it is I actually started a digital marketing company out of the sales job. I forgot to tell you that. The sales job, I got out of it by building a digital marketing company. I managed car dealerships and restaurants, social media accounts until Fantasy Football Counselor grew. With the YouTube revenue, sponsors, product sales, t-shirt sales, that kind of grew. That’s what got me out of the sales job, was digital marketing, and now I’ve pivoted and made Fantasy Football Counselor a full-time thing.

So, whatever you guys do, if I can make fantasy a reality, you can too. You can, as well. Make sure you guys find your why, find your passion, and take massive action towards whatever you’re working on at a persistent and consistent level. Don’t let the haters bring you down. Don’t let your family bring you down. Don’t let anything bring you down. Focus on your why, your goals, your family, your future, and your legacy, and I promise you, guys, you will succeed.

Again, if I can make fantasy a reality, you guys could do absolutely everything else. So, that’s my story, guys. I thought I’d keep it real with you guys. And again, I love you guys for being here, appreciate it. And I know 16 Rounds is going to help you guys get a massive advantage over the competition. Stick with me. You will succeed. Thanks for being here. I hope you guys enjoyed the video. I may be adding a couple more bonus videos, as well, to 16 Rounds, maybe a mock draft. Check the updated notes under the video, as well. Everything is here for you guys to dominate and get a better advantage. Tanks for being here, guys, and I’ll talk to you guys soon.

I wanted to share my story with you and why I do what I do. I hope it motivates you to take action towards your dreams and goals. If I can make fantasy a reality, you can do anything.

The Counselor – Joseph Robert

www.thefantasyfootballcounselor.com

Joseph Robert

Joseph Robert's outside of the box, LION mentality has created the strongest and most loyal fan base in the fantasy football industry! @fantasyfootballcounselor

Place of birth and beginnings

Education and work

Breaking out of 9-5 and Finding My Passion

Tragic Loss

Finding my why and motivation

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