Right About Now with Ryan Alford - Creativity - Uncommon Leadership - Profitable Pivoting - Luke Peter’s Path to $600 Million in Revenue

Episode Date: December 10, 2024

Right About Now with Ryan AlfordJoin media personality and marketing expert Ryan Alford as he dives into dynamic conversations with top entrepreneurs, marketers, and influencers. "Right About Now" brings you actionable insights on business, marketing, and personal branding, helping you stay ahead in today's fast-paced digital world. Whether it's exploring how character and charisma can make millions or unveiling the strategies behind viral success, Ryan delivers a fresh perspective with every episode. Perfect for anyone looking to elevate their business game and unlock their full potential.Resources:Right About Now NewsletterFree Podcast Monetization CourseJoin The NetworkFollow Us On InstagramSubscribe To Our Youtube ChannelVibe Science Media In this episode of Right About Now, host Ryan Alford sits down with Luke Peters, former CEO of Newair, a leading brand in portable refrigeration. Together, they delve into the intricacies of entrepreneurship, sharing invaluable lessons on achieving business success. Luke recounts his early days of spotting market opportunities through Yahoo search trends back in 2001 and how these insights fueled NewAir's growth into a flourishing enterprise.Listeners will gain practical strategies, including the necessity of maintaining robust profit margins, the art of hiring the right talent, and the power of influencer marketing. Luke also highlights the critical role of differentiation, emotional branding, and ongoing market research in staying competitive. This episode offers a wealth of actionable advice for entrepreneurs looking to carve out a unique space in the business world.TAKEAWAYSEntrepreneurship and business success strategiesIdentifying and capitalizing on market opportunitiesDirect-to-consumer (DTC) business modelsAdapting to market changes and competitionImportance of profit margins in business sustainabilityEffective hiring practices and attracting top talentCreating a clear vision and motivating employeesLong-term perspective in business growthEmotional connection and branding in marketingRole of influencer marketing and content strategy in business success If you enjoyed this episode and want to learn more, join Ryan’s newsletter https://ryanalford.com/newsletter/ to get Ferrari level advice daily for FREE.  Learn how to build a 7 figure business from your personal brand by signing up for a FREE introduction to personal branding https://ryanalford.com/personalbranding.  Learn more by visiting our website at www.ryanisright.comSubscribe to our YouTube channel  www.youtube.com/@RightAboutNowwithRyanAlford. 

At the time, Yahoo showed that there was a lot of searches for portable air conditioners. That's literally how I got into this business. And just from the beginning, we were just cash flowing it. It was super easy to show up and search. I didn't even think there were paid ads at that time, 2001. There may have been. But early on, the paid ads were super cheap. This is Right About Now with Ryan Alford, a Radcast Network production. We are the number one business show on the planet with over 1 million downloads a month. Taking the BS out of business for over six years and over 400 episodes. You ready to start snapping necks and cash

in checks? Well it starts right about now. What's up guys? Welcome to right about now. I hope you're doing great wherever you are, whatever you're listening. We appreciate you for making us number one in business and marketing on Apple podcasts. Today, talking one of my favorite subjects, entrepreneurship, success building and hey, I like the little mini fridges, baby. You'll know what that means shortly. Once we talk with Luke, Peters. What's up, Luke? And stoked to be here. Thanks for having me. Looking forward to it. I know. Hey, I have a surfer too. I heard. The waves are right here. So yeah, love it. In Huntington Beach. It's a great place to surf out here.

It's beautiful. We've had last month's been really nice, kind of small right now, but the weather's gorgeous. So yeah, blessed, very lucky. I mean, other than knowing, you know, I'm in South Carolina. I don't know how you'd necessarily deal with some of the California bullshit, but other than that, it's a beautiful place to live. You got a little bit of the beach, right? Well, believe it or not, we are in like the sanest coastal city in California. So very very patriotic city. We have a huge Fourth of July parade, American flags everywhere. So so we lucked out where we are. But hey South Carolina is beautiful too. We had a we have a warehouse distribution center out in Spartanburg. So I know the area of Trowell.

I've been out there, been out to Lowe's, of course, and it's in the area. And then Spartanburg, we opened up over there. Yeah. GSP, our airport code, Greenville, Spartanburg. We don't even bother with GSP, man. Just flying to Charlottesville, Charlotte. Yeah, Charlottesville. Oh, come on. GSP is a model of efficiency. If I have a six, I used to fly to New York every week. 6 AM flight, I'd get up at 5.30 and be the first one

in line on the plane. Oh, yeah, yeah. Tiny airport. Tiny airport. Tiny airport. It was like flying private commercial until you get into the plane itself. But Luke, I know you're a former CEO of New Air. People probably know that. They're like, I know that name. When you first hit my radar of New Air, I know that name, I know that name.

Then I read a little further, yes, Mini Fridges. Yeah. Yeah. I remember them. You guys like one of the first, were you the one of the first like big names in mini fridges? In many also in wine. So we do like just, yep. It's a wine, the beer, the cigar. So we cover the fun portable refrigeration categories. Okay. And you put all those together and it's fun. The employees love it. People love like, now we've got a whiskey ice maker that makes the ball ice. So these are the fun categories that people can get behind. Tanner Iskra Fun refrigeration. I like it. We put the fun in business. I like to let our hair down a little bit on our show. So I like, you know, you don't naturally go refrigeration and, and fun

necessarily, but Hey, the wine coolers, the mini fridges for your Cokes. I mean, beers, I mean, Cokes, you know, all that stuff. I always think back to Chris Farley. He was doing, you know, Tommy boy. He's like, Oh, he got a mini fridge and everything. I put all my beer. I mean, Coke, He talked to his dad. No, we had it. It's part of the culture. I mean, everybody's responsible, you know, but

we had kegerators in there. We testing those out. We've done different licensing and partnership deals with different beer brands. And so we'll do cool wraps. It just, you know, different events that the products will be shown in. So it's, listen, when you show for work, you got to have fun too. So it's great. You know, we were very fortunate to be in that fun category. Luke, how'd you make New Air so successful? That's a lot of questions. There's a lot of luck and it's a long story, but you know, you want me to take you back

to the beginning then? Yeah, man. Tell me, let's set the table for the audience. How do we build a, you know, a $460-$80 million company in sales? Right, right. We did $80 million the last year. Yeah. Over the course of, you know, we did well over half a billion total, but then grew up to that size of a company. Yeah. So what happened was, so the beginning's kind of funny. I come from a big family. So I come from 12 people in my family, okay, 12 siblings. And I grew up here in Orange County. And it was always just, if you want something, you had to go make it, buy it, fight for it,

whatever. You had to kind of make your own way, right? Well, anyways, I wasn't that great of a student, but I did finally graduate college, and I, but I got excited about science, I became a hazardous waste scientist. So I'm working for like a part of the government. And this is after hustling as a kid, right? And it's kind of boring, you know?

And all the old guys are like, man, what are you doing here? You're young, you know, come back here to retire. Like you gotta get out in the world. Meanwhile, my little brother was selling stuff online. Okay, and at this time I'm probably 24 maybe, and he's, I don't know, 18, something like that, 19. And he's selling stuff online, making tons of money.

Driving a sports car, I'm driving a beat up truck, an hour and a half into LA, I'm like wait, something's wrong. So I just start burning the midnight oil. I see that HVAC is actually an untapped category. Okay. Back in the day, it was like, you know, the digital stuff was being sold online. Okay.

And I know you're a marketer. So it's like even back then people are selling RAM, computer stuff, but this is like 2000 and 2001, right? But nobody's selling anything semi-commercial or HIV. Nobody and the people who were selling it, they sucked. And so I just learned HVAC or learned SEO and just stumbled on that category because it showed, because at the time Yahoo showed that there was a lot of searches for portable air conditioners.

That's literally how I got into this business. Just from the beginning, we were just cash flowing it. It was the search. It was super easy to show up and search. I didn't even think there were paid ads at that time, 2001. There may have been, but early on, the paid ads were super cheap. It was all DTC up until 2012. Of course, paid ads came in.

You had paid ads, you had all the typical things, except social media wasn't that big back then. And so we just kind of grinded D to C, earning our customer, but we're like a one sale and you're done, because you don't need, you maybe need a fridge and an ice maker or whatever, but you're not like coming back six months later, right? So it was, you had to be profitable on sale number one. And then what happened was, you know, and this is kind of a big pivot was then all of

a sudden, you know, I'm ranking top three for all the big terms. And all of a sudden I see Home Depot showing up, Walmart showing up. All of these guys woke up around 2012. And they got big freaking marketing departments. I don't. And I'm thinking, okay. And then of course, your paid ads starts to get more expensive and more competitive. And I'm like, whoa, this is going to be a problem going forward.

As it is today, DTC is challenging, right? And if you're selling a product and you don't have recurring revenue. So what we did is we just totally changed the whole business and focused, put everything into brand, okay? Just everything was focused around newer brand, creating the best brand, the coolest brand, the most trusted, our motto was the most trusted brand in compact appliance.

So we're all after trust, customer service, all of those things, and we sold to those guys. Right? So we're still direct to consumer roots, hustle, understand copy, understand messaging, and we're going against guys who are real slow because they're just, they have no idea how to reach the masses. They just know how to like talk to a buyer. So we were a nice

kind of blend of that. We were actually back around 2012 to 2018, we were very unique in that respect. And that's kind of what kickstarted the growth is selling into these large retailers. Yeah, that 2012 rings true because that's right around, I think when all the big boys woke up, that's when Facebook stopped working organically for the most part, 12, 13, somewhere in there. And Google, all the big boys came in, I think they realized where they could get the ad dollars from versus giving the young scrappy guys that rode the train in, know, the end, then they let, they knew, oh, I can sell a million dollars a month in that pay-per-click ads to Home Depot. Yeah.

I remember that year. And the big guys don't care. They'll spend whether they're profitable or not. You know what I mean? So yeah, it's a home depot game. The metrics just go out of whack. Like it's like, they got to hit a certain number, no matter what the expense is. Kind of like the government, you know? That's true. That's true.

That's a great parallel, actually. Too big to fail. Up until a few years ago. Then all of a sudden, they got wise, because they're getting crushed by Amazon and Walmart, so they all had to compete. But yeah, there is that grace period in the middle. You know, 20 years, I mean, like as a leader of a company and doing the market that you did and having the growth that you had, when you reflect on the both the success and what you learned,

are there like light bulbs that kind of key points or things that come to mind? Yeah, for sure. So we ended up selling in 2001. And for me, personally, that was a big thing because it's like if you sell, you've created something that is proven value and then private equity is coming in and buying. And then I stayed on for a while and then I've got a great new CEO running it now. And so I'm able to take time and reflect on it. And, and I would say that there are definitely a couple of things. Like the first one is when you can afford it, like as a business leader, as a business owner is getting the

best people in and getting some skin in the game for the best people. Okay. And then creating a vision and letting them know what that final outcome looks like. So for example, you know, early on, I probably would have been, I was more tight, you know, because I'm thinking, okay, if I, you know, how much should I share? And then at later on is, is I, you know, kind of learned the right way to lead.

And there's a lot to it that I learned, but I'm just simplifying it here. It's like when you get good people and you say, hey, let's, let's sell them three years. And if we do, this is what it looks like for you. They're going to just run through walls. There's a huge... Because everybody's motivated by money. It's like, sure, you want people who are just going to always do the right thing, but you

got to show them that this is what it's going to look like for you. And they're going to work their asses off and get there if there's a big payday for them. And they're going to do things that you could never do on your own. So that was a big one that I learned, as far as getting the right people. I realized early on that can be hard, if companies don't have enough scale, they can't hire in that CFO for 250 or 300, or they can't hire the CEO. But you can still prioritize getting the best people over saving a few dollars is how I would say for most companies.

And then just another quick one is just focusing on margins. Too many companies are churning revenue, they're churning top line, they're building in lots of expenses into their business system, and they're saying one day, one day I'll get scale, one day I'm going to get leverage. That does work for some companies, and especially people who've already done it. They're really smart and they come at it round two and they really know how to get to that point. But for a lot of people, that doesn't work.

Before you go build like a 10 or $20 million company and then try to figure out how to make money, like make money from day one, because the thing is, that can actually, basically what it's telling you is your brand is not valuable enough to the market. Like if you're not profitable when you're a couple million dollars

at the transaction level, you know, there's a good chance that as you're 10 15 20 You still may not be that profitable because the markets telling you like this is all we're gonna pay for your brand You know, and so you want to figure that out early on. What do I need to do with my product or service? How do I add more value? How do I you know stretch these margins? And so that's that's a huge one You know right now you do CEO coaching and that that coaching and that's like one of my main focuses, like what are your margins? Okay, how can we get creative

and really think about your product and big focus on the product? Talk it with Luke Peters, former CEO of New Air, and now executive CEO, coach and mentor. Call you a mentor. I already feel like you're mentoring me a little bit here, Luke, I'm like taking notes, middle notes while you're doing it.

Luke, tell me, you went, I want to go back. There's a lot to unpack. There's a lot of good stuff there. I want to, you know, my ears point perked up like four to five times. My radar as a host went off a few different times and this is why I do this because I just take so much from our guests

and how knowledgeable they are. But the finding great people where you feel like you should share equity, give me some attributes that you look for in those people. Like you said, ultimately, you got gotta give them skin again, because everybody's in it. Look, we're all in it for ourselves.

They need to be. Then they should be. They should be money motivated. If they're not, they're probably hard to even motivate, period. But what are like the biggest attributes in key, maybe not all chief officer level, but key component people that you hire, what are the attributes

that leaders should look for in those people? Okay, perfect. Yeah, no, Ryan, I mean, Ryan, that's, this is, first of all, hiring is super hard. I was just talking to a friend yesterday and he's hiring and I gave him a few ideas, which we can talk about, but it's, it's still super hard. So here's, here's the ways to like, if you can afford it, work with an executive recruiter for your C-level positions, okay? Because a – and I'm not talking about a regular recruiter. And the executive recruiters are super expensive,

by the way. They're going to take like 30 percent. But they're going to do things that you could never do. And they have a network and a pool that they can pull from. And they can get people who are better that you would never be able to attract because they're going to soften up their ear a bit and they're going to pull them in. Right? Because you want people that might be hard to frankly hire for your company. Okay?

Because maybe they have the, maybe like a younger company, not your company, but I'm saying like the typical company that's starting out, it's like they may not have the reputation to pull that type of talent. Right? So that's starting out, it's like they may not have the reputation to pull that type of talent, right? So that's one idea. The other idea is, this is something that's a long-term play, is like first you got to make your place a great place to work. So we had, that was one of my main objectives was win best place to work awards because great people want to work for great companies.

They don't want to go work at a crap company and think they can turn it around. So you have to, you're selling your business to these great people. So, this is a multi-year thing. How do I become best place to work? What do I need to do? What do I have to change in my culture? And so, you should always be working on that if you're the leader because getting talent, it's like sports. It's like, you want to attract the best players. This isn't just a one-year thing. This is like a journey you're on so you can pull these best players in. The other thing is, the specific is when you hire, have they done successfully the job you're asking them to do? So too many times when we're hiring, you were saying, okay,

well, I think they have the aptitude. And now trust me, it's okay to think that way. But if you're hiring high level, VP, C-level, whatever it might be, it's like my number one thing is have they already done it? I want someone who's already done it because I haven't done it probably. It's like, dude, I'm just putting a team together. I haven't done all these things. I'm not able to… I don't have all these connections and know all these buyers.

Let's say if I'm hiring a salesperson or if I'm hiring a marketing exec. Sure, I know my marketing, but maybe they've got some skills I don't have and that's why I'm bringing them in. So, I want someone who's already done it. So those are the things, Ryan. And then the other one is just during the interview process, references. So first of all, it's like very detailed on their track record in their jobs. Super detailed. Put an eye mask on.

I mean, I'm kidding, but it's like, don't be, be careful that you're tricked on personality and how much you like the person. It's like, what is their track record been? And then do something called top grading, which is a great book. And this is pretty simple. And what it is is go through all the references.

And typically they're gonna, well, they're gonna give you like their three best references, right? But go through all their jobs and maybe let's say they've had seven. So you say, who did you report to? You get the name of the report. And then later on you've written down all these names. So at the end you say, okay, here's three references,

but here's four people they didn't list as a reference, right, because they just didn't. And you say, okay, you know, you reported the Jennifer over here, can you have, what would Jennifer say about you? First of all, you say, what would she say about you? How would she describe you? They won't lie. They know that now, oh shit, he can call Jennifer.

So they're gonna tell the truth of what Jennifer, and then you go through the list, and then you say, okay, great, oh shit, he can call Jennifer. So they're gonna tell the truth of what Jennifer, and then you go through the list, and then you say, okay, great, can you, and this is, of course, if you like this person, you wanna go to the next step, you say, okay, great, can you have Jennifer call me? And have so-and-so call me. Don't, you're not out there like,

otherwise take you forever to go get in contact with these people, right? So they're gonna do the legwork, and you put all this together and your odds are improved. Hey, throwing this. I mean, at the end of the day, and I've been guilty of this, you know, like never time. There's an old saying,

the old creative director I worked with said, and it drove me crazy. I was a young account guy and I'm like, he's just saying that cause he wants more time, but he's like, never time to do it right. Always time to do it over. That's true. And it's like that was hiring, you know, like,

oh, we gotta get them in, we gotta get them in. And you know, but it is just takes a some thoroughness with which to vet candidates. And I love, what would you call that last tactic? It has a name. You said there's a book. Yeah, top grading. Top grading.

Yeah, that's interesting. Yeah, can they call me? Yeah, I like that. I like that. Talked with Luke Peters, former CEO of New Air. Luke, you know, my radar went off on that first little spiel on all the success you built with new air and some of the tactics and things that got there. Really interesting. Now I'm going where the brand, your differentiation.

It is amazing sometimes. I've worked with a lot of companies, good, bad and ugly over the years in marketing. And it's real hard to take a, you can't make the bad companies good. It's really difficult. You can make the good companies great, but it's really difficult to make bad. And I do think, you know, there's a lot of truth to be had

and a lot of mirror to be looking in, you know, to really determining if your product, service, or what you do differentiates and stands out and can be made to be, again, profitable. It seems like there's a lot of people that do things that a lot of other people do and they just assume that success will be guaranteed, but it just doesn't happen that way. Yeah. No, that's why it's important early on.

Like I think it's tough because a lot of times people give up too early. So it is really, really tough to say, you know, if it's not working, you got to tweak this. But I guess you should always be tweaking. But too many people, I would say it's a bigger error is to give up early. So you can't do that. But it's like at the beginning, you have to be smart and you got to look at your product and, you know, have some way to measure your competitive advantage over, you know, what the market is offering. I guess I'd say it like

that. Like, think deeper about your competitive advantage and even use things. I mean, there's all kinds of online tools. You can use SurveyMonkey. You can use your friends. You could use things, I mean there's all kinds of online tools. You can use Survey Monkey, you can use your friends, you can use LinkedIn. There's ways where you can vet that, but often what happens is as you're growing your business you kind of naturally do that. You know what I mean? The good leaders are naturally, like you're probably not even thinking about it, but you're learning. You're like, oh okay, I got the sale here.

What copy did I use or what pitch was I using? Oh okay, this is what they wanted. I thought they wanted this, but they actually wanted this, right? And you're sort of iterating along the way. But if you can do that without making it accidental, like from the beginning, if you could do your basic market research and this is basic branding, right? So it's like, what is your position in the market? Okay. And can you create some sort of emotional connection? Now, not every product, a lot of people think, well, like with us, with Fridges, how are we going to do that? But you can

do it. You can come up with fun ways to create some emotional connection because a brand is a feeling that somebody has about you. That's literally what it is. So how do you make more people feel a certain way about you? And I think And that, I think that would be a good, I think the guys like, I don't drink a lot, you know, but the company, it's like, you know, we're having all these beer partnerships and stuff like that. And the guys, and every year though, you can even do this in a company. It's like, I'm really not, I don't drink whiskey. I'm, you know, I like my IPA a little bit, but I don't drink a lot, right? But every year we would, I would joke around

and at our party, we'd have a shot of Jägermeister. Okay, everybody hated Jägermeister, okay? But it was memorable. I have flashbacks of you say that like, oh, Jägerbaum, that was like, it just come out when I was in college, like the, you know, mixing Red Bull with Jager, like that, oh, good idea. But you haven't forgot it. See, so, so like, I would do that at the year-end party because

it was fun. It's like everybody would be complaining, ah, Jager, no, why is he choosing Jager? So it's making the fun memory stamps in people's heads. Like that's, that's, you know, what I want people thinking about. Yeah, I think with, had people think with their head and they buy with their heart. That's one of my all time saying to the clients, they're like, they get too rational. I'm like, hey baby, this is, this is all about emotion. You know, emotion moves the strings in the wallet. Luke, what was, you know, what was that process like for you guys at New Air? I mean, you're selling fun, like you said, in a way with what you did. It sounds like you guys found a balance there of the functionality of, hey, the mini fridge, you need it in this tight

space, all that. That's a very functional thing, but you brought the fun in somewhere. Luke Gromit Yeah. Well, you know, early on I didn't. And so that's definitely something I had to learn. Early on, it was about winning eyeballs. So it was about dominating SEO, right? It was like, how do I, you know, and that's what it was. Of course, it was good delivery. It was being agile, but that, you know, early on we're selling like just portable air conditioners, thermostats, fans, humidifiers, dehumidifiers. So if you think of those products, like, you know, you're not buying, you know, like a portable AC and you're like, you're probably not taking a picture of it to your friends. Guys, look what I got. You know, you're not, it's not a shareable product, right? Yeah. I did with my wife. See, I've had a, we have a houseboat and, you know,

we've upgraded over the years, but we had a portable AC. You know, I'll send it to my wife. Hey, she's happy. You're the one we need, but, but, but yeah. So, but then I wanted to build the brand. Now we're still selling those things, but then around, I talk about that pivot in 2012. So really want to focus on the brand. And that's where we got deep into, into wine, into beer, and even into cigar, even though I don't smoke, it's like my, you know, the guys make fun of me. They take me to like a cigar house and like, I'm even, I'm not

even sure how to inhale properly, you know, and they're making fun of me, but people love those categories. Okay. It's they, they they want when they buy one of those First of all, they search all over YouTube for it So we so what we did is we had a cool influencer marketing strategy, right? Because they're like, okay, you know, I want to get a cigar humidor What do I need to think about and so they're doing all this research and that's like very top of funnel and we just want to be showing up at different points in the funnel and It as far as like ACs, for example,

they might search, you know, what size do I need? They're not going to really watch a 30 minute video on it. They're just going to be like, what are the specs I need to cool my room? The other ones are really deep into content. And so it worked good for a, for an influencer marketing campaign. And we were one of the first to do it for appliances.

Yeah. I love talking about the phone now. Everybody wants to jump to the bottom. Hey, you can't jump to the bottom. You gotta be, someone's gotta be aware of you. They gotta consider you. They gotta have intent for you. And then they buy. Yeah. That's so true.

That's so true. It is true. We don't want it to be true. I wish it wasn't true. And performance marketing is sort of, you know, spoiled people because, you know, you have the hyper-targeting because, you know, maybe somebody's just raised their hand immediately. They're looking for X product and you can close them on one ad, but that's just not the reality for most things. And you got to build that that T-O-P-A top or T-O-M-A top of mind awareness. It's hard to do.

It is hard. I mean, and for, but for your segment, you know, new air is funny. You guys did something, cause well, again, back to, you know, focus group of one here, as soon as I heard that, I knew that. And then when you said the wine fridge, that's when it rang.

I knew I, that's where I associated you guys. Cause if I went into a store and I saw the New Air logo, I would know that that would be like my first. So you guys did something that triggered my brain for that over the last 10 years. Yeah. Well, we're fortunate. I mean, we do have in-store placements. We're in Home Depot. So we did a little bit of the online, the in-store, the direct consumer, the show up on all the retailers. But now everybody's doing that. So everybody's like, they're doing the quote unquote, multi-channel. But I think what we were lucky, so it's different

for different categories, right? And you know, it's being a marketer, but it's our stuff, since it's expensive enough, we can trade it for a video, let's say. Okay. And I know TikTok's hot now, but when I started doing this, it was like 2017, maybe 20, you know, it was early for influencer marketing. And we were using the micro influencers, not micro, but you know, we had criteria, but they were small and it was always the trade. And, but our system was worth it. Yeah.

Send them a fridge. And they're like, okay, cool. We'll do an unboxing and I'll show how it looks. And you just do, every time you launch a product, we're like, okay, find 25 influencers. And this is exactly what we want them to do. Of course, it's got to be organic and there's rules around what you can do and what they have to say. But yeah, that was, that was, it's funny is that was literally what my marketing was. Like,

you know, there's all these other things I could do. I could write blogs, I could do PR, we could do lots of paid ads. I'm like, you know what, just do this one because I think it builds the most trust. If you saw someone you follow and they opened up a product, I think you'd kind of like trust that more than if you just see some paid out or something like that. Well, shameless plug here, Luke, but podcast advertising is the number one trusted medium in advertising. There you go. And the fastest. We need a new era. I'm seeing a spot for my energy drinks. You know, I'm just saying. Well, it is because it's sticky, right? So people who listen, they're coming back. And so they're hearing it and they trust. But yeah, that's a good one. Hey, Luke. So you've taken all you've learned

and now we're teaching others, right? And so how are we helping, how are we coaching CEOs? What are some of the common challenges and things you're working on with them? Yeah, you know what's fun is that everybody's got a different challenge. So it's, I think sometimes Alexio coaches, I don't know if you want to call it an oxymoron, but it's like, it's an overused term.

And a lot of times some of these coaches haven't even literally started their own business. So for me, I want to work with a founder CEO. I can kind of share the same learnings and I know what they feel. And I think I would say I would boil it down to, are they working on the right problem, believe it or not? That's a big one because people are in their business, they've gotten to a certain level of success probably,

but now it's hard for them at this point to be super creative. Now they've just got to keep double down, triple down on what they currently are doing. And so I can kind of come in and be like, okay, you know, it could be something they're not thinking about. It could be something obvious, but then I'll just hold them accountable and show them how to get from point A to point

B. That's one. The other one is a lot of, especially now, a lot of clients want to exit their business. Okay. And they want to exit, but they're not ready to exit. Or they don't realize, this is like bad news when they hear it, but it's like, it's going to take you a couple of years to get ready to exit. Okay. But it's better if you start today, right? Because, you know, if you just go exit, you're going to like lose a lot of value. And so there's a lot of older entrepreneurs, they want to exit. And so that's an area that I end because, you know, I sold my company and there's a lot of people that can help them exit, but it's different when it's somebody who has done the same thing, sold a business,

I'm not a banker, you know, so I talk their language and help them exit. And then the other one is just focus on product positioning and let's think about margin. Other times they have people issues. A lot of times you'd be surprised, you know, people don't have a system they run off of. Their team is not built around goals and metrics, which is like one client asked me, hey, I need to do employee development. Okay? And so I start working with them and I'm understanding their company.

And I'm like, the best employee development is just let's set up goal. Every one of your employees should have a goal. And that's super simple because's set up goal. Every one of your employees should have a goal. And that's super simple because that makes it clear why are they literally coming to work? Like if the employee doesn't know why they're coming to work, like they're not coming in fired up every day. They're like, okay, boss told me to do this. No, you want employee telling boss like, hey, I think I can achieve this. Put a goal around it, let them run with it, and then have one-on-one meetings. Show them you care, listen, scheduled one-on-one meetings.

So it was like, you know, it's an easy solution for something like employee development. So there's a lot of different ways, and those are a couple examples. Luke, what's the craziest thing you ever saw at your company? Like, tell us a fun, like like or anything crazy like or funny or just out of the box that people would get a kick out of, you know, running a million dollar company.

Like shit happens, right? I mean, so the more funny the better here, Luke. So the more silly sis are funny, the better here, Luke. Well, I'll tell you, I'll tell you. Yeah. Some of them I don't know if I can even tell. Okay. Some things happen. That means that's the ones we want, Luke. Well, you know, when you have two employees at a Christmas party get friendly with each

other, yeah, that can make it awkward the next day when they show up for work. That never happened, right? I mean, how many employees did you have? How many employees do you have? At that time, we probably had 35. There's probably 35 at the Christmas party. That is pretty obvious. That's not a big number. I mean, yeah, it's sticking out. No, no, no. Everybody knows everybody at that point and everybody knows what happened that night and okay that was one I can't Another one another funny one I can get more into more detail was that you know, you know, I'm in California, right? So this is the land of the stupid lawsuits. Okay, it's like you open a business here. You're gonna get sued

It's like as soon as you hire an employee get ready to get a lawsuit, right? so I had this one guy and I always thought he was kind of odd because, you know, he told me, you know, he's talking about his son and his son is going to his son is going to MIT and one time I was right next to MIT because we were busy in Wayfair. And I'm like, Hey, there's MIT. Let's go visit your son. He's like, No, no, no, no, he's probably busy. I'm like, dude, you flew all the way out here. You can been telling me about your son. Let's go visit him. Anyways,

he pushes off and I'm thinking, okay, whatever. So we go on to our sales calls. Anyways, down the road, I hear more lies come out of this guy, right? And I'm like, all right, I got to let him go. So I let him go. First off, what he does is he immediately writes me back this thing on how I'm, you know, I'm, uh, ageist, cause he was like over 50 or something. And I was like, I was like 45 or like the same age, but he's like five years older, right? Yeah. Yeah. And he's writing this thing about how, how many, then he writes me this, this really well, well written email about how I had been making fake claims to them. They're all fake. Then he walks out the door and he's yelling at everybody, Luke, you know, you said all these things about me. I'm like, this is like, I'm literally in the middle

of craziness. And then he ends up faking an ER visit in a hospital on the freeway with his wife helping him to say that this caused a heart attack. And of course it turns into what, you gotta settle these lawsuits. Like this is, I'm like, wow, this is just, of course I have insurance, but I was pissed, man. I'm like, I went to the arbitration, to whatever it was, arbitration or some hearing.

And I'm like, this is complete bullshit, but the judges know it's bullshit. And they all gotta just settle. And it was actually kind of sad too, because it's bullshit and they all got to just settle. And, and, and, you know, it was actually kind of sad too, because it's like, man, that guy just worked here a couple of years. It's like, what's he going to do next time he goes to get a job? It's like, why wouldn't you just, you know, go with honor? I'm never going to talk bad about anybody, you know, behind them. It's like, he really just screwed himself.

But at the time, I mean, that was crazy. It was just like, wow, somebody is such a compulsive liar that they would say these things. It's the, it was definitely a giveaway when he didn't want to visit his own son. He's driving by the university. Talk about like coming back, you know, he's kind of, I wonder if it's running through his mind going, oh God, I hope Luke doesn't bring up my son, you know, or if you really just caught him, like in the moment, he's like, he's on a botanist journey. He's doing a sabbatical in Brazil.

And I'm just naive. I'm like optimistic and naive about those things. So for me, it's like, I'm the last one to catch these faults. You know, it's like that's my weakness there. Yeah. Any success stories or maybe not naming names, but like with your coaching and stuff, like some transformations or things that you've seen or things that you're proud of? Definitely. Well, I'm pretty new. I'm only a couple of months into it. So this is, it still is a new thing that I'm, because I sold the company, then took some time off and then now I'm starting this. But yeah, it's actually really exciting helping people who like one in particular has a vision for a product. And it's a really cool

product. But this is early stage. And this is something where it's like, you know, it's not really, I'm not, I'm not even charging, you know, for this one. Cause it's like, I'm not gonna, I'm not even charging for this one because it's like, I'm not going to, I've made my keep, I'm good, so I'm doing this for fun. And it's not really meant for startups because startups don't really have the money to pay for coaching. But in this particular case, I mean, this guy's got a great product idea, so just helping him along, but he doesn't know how to get it to the next level. And also he's like invested way too much money to get where he is. You

know, so it's for in this case, it's, it's fun because it's holding them accountable. Like, Hey, no, dude, if you, you know, you got, he's got a gold mine over here, which is another business, which is supporting the failing business. And it's like, no, no, no, you got to get this thing to an MVP, minimum viable product. You got to launch this thing. You got to stop spending money on it and helping them get to that point and even manufacture it here in the USA, which I think will be a cool differentiator for them. So it's early, but I think this one's got a lot of potential.

It's exciting to work with businesses like that to hopefully reap the reward of some success in the future. Luke, other than surfing, what keeps your motor running? Well I got six kids so you know we're talking about kids before you got four boys. Yep oh yeah I'm coaching I'm coaching I have basketball practice tonight you know. Yeah I coach them all yeah Yeah, I coach them all. I've coached them all.

Soccer and basketball. I don't do football because the guys get too crazy in football and then baseball, they're never really into it. So yeah, I do do that, hang out with the kids. We're doing a road trip this weekend. We're just gonna go up to St. George by Zion, do some hiking. So a lot of outdoor stuff.

There you go. Luke, for our listeners that want to learn more about what you're doing, how you're helping coaching and all that sort of stuff, where can people keep up with what you're doing? Sure. On LinkedIn under Luke Peters, follow me there and then check out apexceo.co. I do a free coaching call. So if someone's got a business and they just want to throw some ideas at me, just schedule a call on there and we'll have a fun conversation. I can probably help you out in just a short amount of time. Just some of the bounce ideas off of. So I got the free call offer on the website, ApexCEO.CO. Tanner Iskra Love that. We'll have that in all the show notes. Luke, you got a great demeanor. I think you're going to really help a lot of people. You have this approachable, practical side, but then there's this fun brand. I don't know.

I really think people will be lucky to work with you. Thank you, man. I really, really appreciate it. Thanks so much for having me on the show. You know where to find us, Ryanisright.com. You'll find links to all of Luke's stuff. You'll highlight clips, the full episode, and go over there and subscribe on YouTube. We're growing like bang busters over there. We've got the largest Radcast, the Radcast Network, the largest podcast network on YouTube. Go check it out and look, we're bringing you value, baby, like Luke Peters. We appreciate you, Luke.

We appreciate you for listening. We'll see you next time on Right About Now. This has been Right About Now with Ryan Alford, a Radcast Network production. Visit Ryanisright.com for full audio and video versions of the show, or to inquire about sponsorship opportunities. Thanks for listening.