Whatever disappointment Steinfeld may have felt after that first venture was short-lived. Instead of retreating, he turned the experience into a lesson.
“As an entrepreneur, if you’re not failing, you’re not pushing yourself hard enough,” Steinfeld says. “A lot of people equate failure with death. The great thing about failing is that you get up, you wipe yourself off and you go, ‘Hey, at least I did it my way. I gave it a shot. Now let me learn from those mistakes. Let me get with some different people. Let me try it a different way.’ If you’re passionate and you believe in yourself and your idea, you’re not going to let anybody throw you off course.”
It was about that time that Steinfeld finally agreed to enter the world of infomercials, something he’d been reluctant to do because of the stigma he felt consumers attached to the programs.
“I was not a believer in the infomercial business because I thought it was really cheesy things that were on television,” he says. “I said, ‘I’m not going to get involved in that kind of game.’ Then I sat down and said, ‘Wait a second, if we do it, do it with my passion, do it with the brand that we were building and make sure that we underpromise and overdeliver, we’ll have a shot.’
“That’s when we took a shot with the infomercial business. That was a major moment for me, a major moment. That gas tank was on ‘E,’ baby.”
Not one to waste a moment, even today the hold music on the Body by Jake telephone system includes inspirational messages from Steinfeld. In one, he counsels listeners to embrace their fears. And true to form, Steinfeld shares his own.
“The fear was committing that this was what my life was going to be,” he says. “I was not cut out to work a 9-to-5 job. I was not cut out to work for anybody else. I was not cut out to do mainstream anything. I’m going to set myself up. I’m going to put everything in this game. I’m going to make this work.
“The fear was not succeeding. I love what I do so much, whether it was going to someone’s house and doing a workout with them or doing my first book, my first video or television show. I had no training in any of it — it might show. At the end of the day, when you’re watching or reading or perusing, especially television, you can see honesty in someone’s eyes and if they’re bullshitting you or not. I’m as straight up as it gets.”
And Steinfeld confesses his deficiencies as a businessman.
“To say that I had this plan — no, no way,” he says. “I got more and more courageous, more and more encouraged, felt better about myself every step of the way with everything that I started to get involved in and making sure that I was keeping true to what the core idea, the core business, was.”
