Today we’d like to introduce you to Jeff Fox
Jeff, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
I started off as maybe not the best student. “High potential, low effort”. I passed through getting A’s on tests without doing any of the homework. And a lot of that continued into my time at Palomar Community College until my little brother was about to pass me. I got my act together and decided to get a business degree. After working hard to redo a lot of the classes I got poor grades in, I was able to get my GPA up and eventually graduate from the University of San Diego with a Bachelors of Business Administration Cum Laude.
While at USD I ended up doing an internship with an author who just happened to be starting up a film production company called Princebury Productions & Media up in Del Mar. I took a part time, temporary position there while “looking for something permanent” and over 10 years later, I’m now the President of the company.
Because I knew almost nothing about the film industry, I ended up going back to Palomar and going through their Graphic Communications department as well as taking some other assorted classes like Japanese, where I met my now wife.
At the end of 2019, my business partner at the Princebury was moving out of town, prompting me to reevaluate my life and where I believed I thought I could have the largest impact. Since I had been taking on individual marketing and video clients on the side, I thought I’d spin that off into its own company and Star Fox Media was born. I called up another friend from that same Japanese class and we started helping local small businesses grow their companies utilizing digital marketing. This became my full time gig only a couple months later with COVID shutting down the whole film industry.
After building the Star Fox team with people that are all much more talented than myself, I decided to get more involved in the community and joined some non-profit boards, the local chamber of commerce, and started getting involved in my Church. A chance conversation with my local City Councilmember about his race ended up with him talking me into running for City Council myself. I ended up running and winning in November of 2024, where I am currently serving the City of Vista on top of running the film production company as well as the digital marketing agency which brings us to today.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
The road has been anything but smooth. From my lack of motivation when I was younger forcing me to work twice as hard to get my grades up, to COVID-19 shutting down my industry and completely changing the plan on my 3 month old company, I have had to learnt to pivot and make the most of things. I believe that skill to stay positive and keep looking for opportunities has been a huge asset to me.
As you know, we’re big fans of Star Fox Media. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about the brand?
While I currently run a couple different companies and serve as a new Councilmember, Star Fox Media is the business that initially allowed me to connect with my local community and really start having a positive impact.
We specialize in working with local “mom and pop” small businesses that don’t necessarily start with huge budgets, and come up with custom creative strategies to help them grow. Most businesses in our industry either have very cookie-cutter, set packages or charge 10x what we charge to come up with something custom.
We want local business owners to know that they don’t have to try to figure everything out on their own. No one can be an expert at everything, which is why we designed our business to offload a lot of that work from you, freeing up your time to do the things that made you want to get into your business in the first place.
Is there a quality that you most attribute to your success?
I think my most important quality is the ability to step back and look at every situation through multiple different lenses. This helps not only when facing problems, but also in personal relationships. I can put the emotional reaction on hold and start thinking about the situation from multiple sides and try to really get an understanding of the motivations, not just the outcomes.
Pricing:
- We give free marketing audits, but offer custom marketing plans, so please reach out if you would like to work with us
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.starfox.media
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/star_fox_media
