Hello everyone and welcome to another edition of Up Close & Personal. Today’s guest is a well-travelled entrepreneur, I think it’s safe to say. I first met this guy 2 years ago in a networking event and we’ve done a little bit of business together, but we’ve become great friends to boot as well. I’m looking forward to you hearing his story because it does pan the globe. From a small town in rural Illinois, to the depths of Japan and back to where he now calls home, in the deepest darkest valleys of the beautiful South Wales. Like most people who stay, or end up in Wales, it’s not just because they love the scenery and the country. It’s normally for love, and in this case, it’s for the love of a good woman. This guy started in graphic design and has helped loads of charities and is passionate about helping others. What started out in the charity sector, now sees him dealing with the vultures of the business world, in his business Webfibre. They specialise in app development and DRM lead generation campaigns. Without further ado, I think I need to introduce him. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Duke of Direct Response and the Lord of Leads… Ben Treharne-Foose. Ben how are you Buddy?

Ben Treharne-Foose: I’m very good, thank you Steve.

Steve Matthews: I’ve given you a big build up there Ben.

BTF: You have yea, and I have to say it’s all true.

SM: So, are you going to put that on your business card? The Duke of Direct Response, that would be quite good.

BTF: It is good.

SM: I’ve given you the big build up as I’ve said, so how come, with that fantastic American accent that we all love here in the UK, from rural Illinois, which I guess is Obama state isn’t it?

BTF: It is yea, he was Senator for us for a while.

SM: It’s actually a beautiful day today and the scenery is pretty good, but how did you end up here?

BTF: I wasn’t planning to end up in South Wales… I left the States in 2004. I was working for the Boy Scouts of America, recruiting for members to join different Cub Scout Groups and Boy Scout Groups, and training and working with volunteers so that they could start groups of their own. I was loving that, but I’d never really lived more than 2 hours from where I was born, it’s Illinois so everything looks the same no matter how long you drive, it’s just corn fields.

SM: Is it flat?

BTF: It’s extremely flat, yea… I thought I hadn’t seen much of the world, I’m getting into a career now, mortgages and cars, family and kids were all moving on the horizon and I thought, I hadn’t had an adventure yet. So, I asked my boss if I could go and have an adventure for a year. I said, I want to go and teach English somewhere abroad and when I come back, will you still give me a job, and can I start this career back up again. And he said, “Yep, no problem, if I don’t have anything for you, I’ll find something for you in the organisation”. Boy Scouts, of course go across all of the States, it was a win/win. I could go and have my adventure and still come back to a career. So, I made some applications, I got into a program in Japan, flew to Japan, and within 2 weeks I’d met Gemma who ended up becoming my wife. She was on the same program that I went over on, but obviously she went from Wales, and I haven’t been back… I’ve been back to visit but I haven’t lived in the States since 2014. So, I had 3 years in Japan teaching English, started a charity there to raise money for students who wanted to study English abroad. That was mainly out of boredom because we had so much free time on our hands as teachers, that I started a charity and organised fundraising events just to pass the time really. And then we moved to Wales in 2007, so that my wife could do a Master’s Degree. And at the time it was purely just for a year to do a Master’s Degree, because she had a scholarship to do it in the UK for free and at the school she applied to in the States, it would have cost $50,000. It was a no brainer, so we just moved to the UK. My Grandmother was English, she’s from Northamptonshire. She told me all these stories about life in the UK in the 40’s. I’d always wanted to live in the UK, so that was my chance to have another adventure, and the adventure has not stopped in the 11 years that I’ve now been in the UK.

SM: Grandmother English… We don’t hold that against you here in Wales. But don’t tell everybody that in Wales mind, you know that don’t you.

BTF: I do keep it under my hat.

SM: Actually, that’s a little bit unfair, we don’t dislike English people here in Wales, we love English people. The only English people that we dislike, are the 15 blokes that wear white and play against Wales. That’s it, the 15 English men, everybody else is cool, they’re alright. It’s just those 15 people in rugby, that’s all it is.

BTF: It’s funny, I’ve now adopted that same hatred for those 15 men in white. Granted, I am technically a quarter English.

SM: No, you’re Welsh, and actually it shows how Welsh you are because didn’t you do your citizenship or whatever it’s called?

BTF: I recently became a citizen a couple of months ago. I finally got my British citizenship.

SM: But if I’m not mistaken, you were going to read it in Welsh.

BTF: I was going to and then I chickened out. My wife is a Welsh speaker and my daughter goes to a Welsh speaking school, so there’s a lot of Welsh being spoken around the house. I’m not too shabby, I understand a lot of what they’re saying but I struggle to put sentences together. But that’s in English as well.

SM: Well, I’m a Welsh boy who’s lived here for 46 years and I can’t speak any Welsh, so you’re already one up on me. So, you can actually speak American, English, you also have Japanese, can you speak any Japanese?

BTF: I do yea, I can get by in a conversation as long there’s beer involved.

SM: And obviously you can speak Welsh, so you’re multi lingual.

BTF: Barely, but yea, I’ll accept it.

SM: I struggle with English but that’s another thing… I think there’s a massive thing there already about you and your charity work. I know that when you first started, when you came to Wales, you started up a charity organisation didn’t you? Was it in Penrhys?

BTF: Yes, so my first job in Wales was working for a mental health charity called MIND, then I went and worked for a local authority in Bridgend helping with employment support. So, helping people do their C.V.’s and apply for jobs and from there I went on to working with a small community charity up in the Rhondda Valleys. I set up a social enterprise called Big Click, which was a web site and app development social enterprise. It was a way for us to create some income for the charity, but then also help small businesses and community groups get the most out of technology. So, we built apps for a community radio station and we built quite a few Welsh language apps to be honest, because at the time, there weren’t any. We were the first company to create a Welsh language app for the Apple launch when it came out. It was all about promoting community activism through technology, in a way that technology could support that. And we did that through a lot of apps. So, that charitable aspect has been a big driver for me. The incentive for me to work harder, is how am I improving things for someone else. Either an individual or an organisation, or a business, whoever it may be. So, including the work I did with the Boy Scouts and obviously working with the schools in Japan, I spent nearly 15 years working in a charitable aspect of what I was doing, not working for a private company. My first job out of University was for a private company as a Graphic Designer and I ran the art department for a small print company in Illinois. And I have to say, it really soured me on private enterprise, because the guy I worked for…

SM: Go on, you have to tell everybody his name.

BTF: Ironically, the very first boss I had after University, his name was Dave Dean from Illinois and now of course I work with the wonderful Dave Dean… and they couldn’t be more different. So, I really got soured on the private sector and I found a nice little cosy home in working for charities and government organisations and felt well looked after. Amazing annual leave packages, I could call in sick whenever I wanted to, and nobody cared, and it was very cushy, I have to say. The salaries weren’t amazing, but it was good. I really enjoyed the work. But then in 2016, the charity I was working for in the Rhondda was struggling financially and I could see the writing on the wall. I knew that, although what I was doing, and my team were successful, we had a lot of orders coming in and we were making ends meet; the actual parent organisation was crumbling beneath us. So, I started putting some feelers out and stumbled across Dave Dean and Darren James, and we started working together in 2016…

Listen to the rest of the interview at 729Renegades.com/podcast