Focusing on Success

In Austin, Texas, Three Former NFL Players - Jeff Novak, Will Furrer and Tony Boselli
Tackle the Marketing Game and Come Up Winners
by John Egan

While Jeff Novak was protecting quarterbacks for the Jacksonville Jaguars in the late 1990s, he was also protecting his future. Novak had started a low-voltage wiring company, Saber Security, which in 2000 was considered one of the fastest growing companies in Austin, TX. But Novak already had his eye on bigger things. So he got together with his friend Will Furrer (a former NFL backup quarterback), who was an executive at S1 Corporation, an Austin-based developer of software for the banking industry, and they started working on forming a software marketing company that would merge their executive, sales and entrepreneurial talents. Furrer brought in fellow S1 Corporation executives Rik Copley and Robert Cowes and by 2002, a new company called IF Development was born.

Like an expansion team that improves a bit each year, IF Development has grown in every area. The company now provides an array of marketing services, such as branding, logos and website development. Among the firm's more than 80 current clients are financial, educational, transportation and technology companies, and numerous residential real estate developers and builders. In 2005, the company had a dozen employees and earned $2.5 million in revenue. By the end of 2007 IF Development projects 35 full-time employees and $6 million in revenue.

One of the new employees is the former Pro Bowl offensive tackle Tony Boselli, who was Novak's teammate with Jacksonville. Boselli is the company's Senior Vice President of Business Development and leads the firm's office in Jacksonville, FL. Rik Copley, who heads Research and Product Development for IF Development, says much of the company's success is due to the three former NFL players being diligent in learning all they can about the marketing industry.

"Over the course of the past five years, these guys have eaten up marketing books and have become students of the profession," Cowes says. "They are legitimate experts on what we do."

Despite a perceived lack of what CEO Novak refers to as "transferable job skills," Novak says he thinks he, Boselli and Furrer may have enjoyed a relatively easy transition from the NFL to their business careers because they've never defined themselves as just football players. First and foremost, they've considered themselves husbands and fathers.

(Novak and Boselli have four children and Furrer has three.) But the former pros believe that playing in the NFL taught them about competitiveness, accountability, hard work, teamwork and sacrifice, life skills and traits immensely valuable when starting and maintaining a successful business.

As Furrer, the company president, says: "We know what it's like to work when you have the flu, then leave a meeting to throw up and then go back into your meeting, throw up some more and then still go to practice."

In building their post-football careers, Boselli, Furrer and Novak all stress the importance of strengthening relationships inside and outside the sports world. Furrer suggests that professional athletes keep all the business cards they collect and cultivate their post-sports career contacts by sending thank-you notes and birthday cards to key people they meet along the way. Novak says pro football players should view the NFL as a platform for being great throughout their lives, not just when they're in their prime as athletes. "In the end, you have only your name."

Furrer says, "That needs to be protected at all costs."

Furrer attributes the success of Intra-Focus to the fact that the firm's three ex-NFL players have endured being fired, traded, booed by fans and humiliated publicly. So in the business world, the IF Development three don't play scared.

They're not intimidated when making marketing pitches to big-time prospective clients. "We've lived with failure as part of our lives," Furrer says. "The fear of failure for us is pretty much gone."

John Egan is a Texas-based freelance writer. This article was originally printed in OverTime Magazine.

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