Jeff Harrow on Mentorship, Entrepreneurship, and Balancing Business & Family

Welcome back to Uncorked: Wine - Business - Life! 🍷✨ In this episode, we sit down with Jeffrey K. Harrow, a visionary businessman, investor, and philanthropist whose career has shaped multiple industries, from experiential marketing to travel management to finance.

As the former Chairman of Sparks Marketing LLC, Jeff led one of the world’s top experiential marketing agencies, working with global Fortune 100 brands like Google, Microsoft, Verizon, and Facebook. Under his leadership, Sparks expanded internationally and completed three strategic acquisitions during the COVID-19 pandemic, growing to over 700 employees.

Before Sparks, Jeff was President & CEO of Travel One, where he transformed the company into the 6th largest travel management firm in the U.S., growing revenues from $8 million to nearly $1 billion before selling to American Express.

Beyond his business success, Jeff is a Director of FS KKR Capital Corp. (NYSE: FSK), overseeing a firm managing $19 billion in assets, and an early-stage investor through Gabriel Investments. His passion for philanthropy is just as strong as his business acumen—he actively supports organizations like the Police Athletic League, Abramson Cancer Center, and University of Pennsylvania.

Join us as we uncork Jeff’s journey—his business insights, family values, and the lessons he’s learned along the way. Whether you’re an entrepreneur, investor, or just looking for inspiration, this episode is packed with wisdom you won’t want to miss!

Introduction and the Start of a Lifelong Friendship

Welcome to Uncorked Wine, Business and Life with Bill Green. I’m Jerrold Colton, Bill Green’s co-host. Bill, we are here in a spectacular setting and we have a really special guest today.

This one is really a special one for me. In 1995, I got introduced to Jeffrey Harrow. That was 30 years ago. There hasn't been a chink in the armor as far as our friendship. We were both vertically challenged at five foot six or seven—we could say seven. There are some advantages to that, though I still can't figure them out.

Jeffrey has had an awesome business career, but he is also an amazing athlete. I don't even think we talk about that much. You were a club champ in tennis. But the thing I love most about Jeff is the way he is with his family. I’ve known his kids since they were little. Jeffrey, thank you for being uncorked. 1995 was a pretty special time for you. Tell the story about Travelone.

The Early Days of Travelone

First, thanks for having me. Bill, those are the nicest things you’ve ever said about me. It only took 30 years and a favor to get that going. If we want to start in business, the predecessor to Travelone was a little candy store on the corner in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, called Cherry Hill Travel.

I knew nothing about the travel business. I had graduated college and was working in New York, unhappy in what I was doing. My father-in-law, my mentor and a wonderful guy, said, "Why don’t you come down and run this travel business?" I was 22 years old and knew nothing about travel. He said, "Neither do I, but I’m going off to do this other thing, so why don’t you consider that?"

The travel business has changed so much over the years. At 22 years old, it turned out to be really lucky because all that change gave us the ability to really compete and do something different. Without that uncertainty and chaos, we wouldn’t have been able to do it.

So many people left the business at that point, but we saw opportunity. When I joined the business, there were three different fares: first class, coach, and 21-day advanced purchase. That’s it. By the time we sold the business to American Express, there were 2 million fare changes a day. Imagine the chaos to get from here to there.

There was also no internet when we started, which changed everything. You had to call a travel agent to book flights because you couldn't do it yourself. My first business actually became a client of Travelone, and they put a ticket printer in our office connected to a dial-up modem. If somebody needed to travel, they’d have to come into the executive offices and get a ticket.

Once again, to tell you how crazy it was, you chose a travel agent by how close they were to deliver you a ticket. A lot of people looked at that as scary and didn't know what to do. We looked at it as opportunity.

Scaling for Acquisition

When I came down, there were 36,000 travel agents in the United States. When we sold to American Express, we were the sixth largest in the U.S. It was quite a ride. We were young, we were stupid, and we really felt we had a mission.

We felt we were the underdogs because we were competing against companies like American Express, whose brand was monumental. The president of American Express Corporate Services told me one of the reasons he wanted to buy us was because he couldn't beat us. That was neat to hear. They bought our business and our people flourished after that, which is always what you want as a seller.

You called the business a candy store when it started. We had eight employees in one location with a giant airplane on the side of a building right in the middle of the strip malls of Cherry Hill. The first major thing we did was shift from being a retail travel company to a corporate travel agency.

Instead of talking to one person about their trip to Hawaii, I wanted to talk to a company about their 10,000 employees who travel every day. That meant a lot of change. The second thing was that we started growing like crazy, and you always need help. You can't do it all yourself.

During our hiring sprees, I would tell our employees that I couldn't possibly answer every call. By the end, we were taking about 26,500 calls a day. I needed them to represent us. We spent a lot of time on training and giving people the ability to succeed.

The Service Excellence Philosophy

I did a lot of business travel back then and your staff was always excellent. It was clear you made a point of making that happen. We believed that in a competitive business, you just had to be better. We defined for our people what "better" meant. It’s all about measuring.

We always joked about "smiling but incompetent" service. You don't want someone saying, "I'm sorry I screwed you up," without a solution. The first thing is to say sorry, the next is to fix it, and the last is to make sure it doesn't happen again. Those are the three things you do in a service business.

Partnership and Family Business Dynamics

Competition makes you stronger. It would be a boring world without it. But I want to touch on the family aspect of the business. You have a partner, Scott Tarte, who I have a tremendous amount of respect for. You guys were the classic Mr. Inside and Mr. Outside.

Scott was in there grinding the operations, and Jeff was out there speaking with corporations. It was a masterful execution of a great story. We all know how difficult family business is. Your father-in-law, Jerry Goodman, handed you that "candy store" and was a mentor of mine.

Jerry was a pharmacist turned banker turned real estate guru. Scott is such a rockstar operator, and there are so many lessons there. I’ve been asked many times to write a book on family business because few people can believe how long Scott and I have been together. We are family, and in 40 years, we’ve never had a fight.

Just to clarify, Scott Tarte is your brother-in-law. You married sisters. Jerry had four daughters, and you and Scott aren't even blood relatives. About five years into the business, things were getting out of control because we were growing so fast.

Building Equality and Persistence

Scott is a lawyer and very smart. He was living in New York, and I asked Jerry what I should do. I told him I wanted Scott to join me. Jerry taught me by his actions rather than his words. He let me make mistakes and figure things out.

Jerry said it was up to me what I did with Scott regarding economics, but recommended we be exactly the same. He said that way you have the same goals and there is never a fight. People often worry about equity and ego, but I learned from Jerry about not needing credit and letting things go.

I went to New York and started talking to Scott about coming to Cherry Hill. He asked, "Why do I want to be a travel agent?" I told him it wasn't a travel agency; it was a travel business. I literally wouldn’t let him out of my sight for 48 hours.

He finally said, "If you get out of my apartment, I'll do it." I asked when he could start, and he mentioned needing to sell his place. I said, "How about Monday?" We’ve been together since that Monday.

There is a lesson in that persistence. It’s about the grind and not taking no for an answer. On the marketing side, there is a fine line between being a pest and following up to get what you want. I was a pest in this case because I needed him. He was so good at execution. Here we are 40 years later, partners in every business and investment.

A Tasting of Chateau La Mission Haut-Brion

I have a little tear in my eye because I can't imagine we are sitting here 30 years after we met. We are going to drink some amazing wine now. To your left is a Chateau La Mission Haut-Brion 2000. It is a 25-year-old wine and absolutely spectacular.

I bought this on futures around 2001 and waited two years for it. It has a 100-point rating by Robert Parker. If you look at the color, it is so dark. When you talk about Bordeaux compared to big fruity Napa wines, you are tasting more soil than fruit. It has hints of blackberry.

The Transition to Sparks

In 1999, you were a free agent. You were on some corporate boards, and then in 2001, you shook hands with Bob Ginsberg, who was running Marlton Technologies. It was a public shell in the display business, which mirrored the travel business because you were going after corporate customers.

You shook hands in August 2001, and then 9/11 happened. The world fell apart and nobody was on airplanes. I called Jeff and asked if he was killing the deal. He said, "I am a man of my word, and we’re buying this company."

Jeff was right and I was wrong. You and Scott bought that company in 2002 and Team Harrow and Tarte swept in. You eventually sold it last year to a very large display company. It took 20 years, but in that time you became an excellent golfer, so "Mr. Outside" was definitely outside.

You renamed the business Sparks. It was a display and exhibit business. Bob built a great company with first-class products, but they had issues on the sales side. They had a manufacturing-first mentality, and we brought a customer-first mentality.

When 9/11 hit, the world stopped and no one was going to trade shows. It was a difficult time, but there is opportunity when things fall apart. We knew people wouldn't be off airplanes forever. We used the slow time to learn the business and the marketplace.

We turned it from an exhibit business into a full-fledged event marketing company. We won Google’s business and have run their developer conferences since day one. It started in their cafeteria and grew to conferences with 20,000 people.

We were good at consolidating. We told companies like Mobil Oil or SAP that instead of using 32 different agents, they should use one. We did the same thing with events. We created a breadth of services to kick out the competition.

We hired fantastic people who grew up with us in the business and are still there today working for Freeman. We handled everything from logistics and setups to main stage speeches and lighting. We were a one-stop shop.

It was also a diverse business. When Verizon or Comcast Xfinity wanted to redo their stores to look like Apple stores, they came to us. We built every one of them in the U.S., and we even did that in China.

Financial Services and Board Roles

You are also still on the board of FS Investments, founded by David Adelman and Michael Forman. FS Investments is a Wall Street-level credit fund based in Philadelphia. We lend money to large buyers of companies for M&A.

Michael Forman did a masterful job taking that business to the New York Stock Exchange. They are partners with KKR, which is a massive player. Michael was actually a year ahead of me in law school.

It puzzles me that Scott and Michael are such hard workers but also awesome golfers. I always say if you shoot over 100, you have no business being on the course, but if you shoot under, you have no business being in the office. Is Scott still a one handicap? No, he’s a three.

The Importance of Family Priorities

Let's talk about family. I love the story that we can have Saturday night plans with our wives, and you’ll call at 5:30 to cancel because your son Ross is coming into town unexpectedly. You always prioritize your children, just like Jerry.

You have three awesome kids. Jason Harrow, the oldest, went to Princeton and Harvard and argued in front of the Supreme Court. Then there is Dana, who is 38 and a mother of two. Her husband is a rockstar business guy. Ross is 35 and married to Amira, and they are both rockstars in the business world too.

It is easy to get caught up and work seven days a week. When my third kid, Ross, was born, I would work Saturdays. Jerry would literally throw me out of the office. He’d say, "Go home. It’s going to get done tomorrow. These moments you will miss."

Those were great lessons. I’ve lost friends because I’ve canceled things for my kids, but you have to have your priorities. Now I’m a grandfather and we have a great relationship with our kids.

I’ll never forget another Jerry story. We moved our offices to a beautiful building in Mount Laurel, and Jerry’s office was next to mine. My son Jason Harrow was about nine and came into his Pop’s office. He asked, "Pop, what are you doing today? Can you hang out?"

Jerry looked at his calendar. He had a meeting with Trump because Jerry was the commissioner of the sports authority in New Jersey and controlled the Meadowlands. Jerry looked at Jason and said, "Nothing."

I heard him in the next room canceling the meeting with Trump. It’s easy to learn from someone like that. His priority was his nine-year-old grandson. He was a sweet man. He could be meeting anyone and he’d be wearing blue jeans and a black t-shirt. That was the uniform.

A Second Toast: Colgin IX Estate

Let’s pivot to more wine. I want you to notice the difference between the Bordeaux and this 2013 Colgin IX Estate. This is an iconic business story by an amazing lady named Ann Colgin. This one is even darker.

It’s a blend and you can tell there are different fruits in this. It’s definitely got some Merlot and Cab. It’s fantastic. It’s a little early in the day, but we shoot whenever we can get amazing guests.

Conclusion and the Legacy of Jerry Goodman

Jeffrey, thank you so much. I love you, brother. Your business story is fabulous and there are so many lessons for anyone listening. You combined business and life as well as anyone possibly could.

Jerry Goodman is looking down. I had the pleasure of knowing him and playing basketball in E.B. Kerr’s driveway next to his house for years. Seeing him at the soccer fields with his grandchildren was incredible. He had such humility.

For Jerry Goodman, his greatest success was his family. It was family first, second, and third. There was no fourth. In business, he was a killer negotiator, but in life, he was selfless.

We will have you back again because the negotiation part fascinates me—going from a small agency to negotiating with American Express. You did great and learned a lot from Jerry. Thank you for watching and listening to Uncorked. On behalf of Bill Green, I’m Jerrold Colton saying thanks for listening.