Creativity - Uncommon Leadership - Profitable Pivoting - Luke Peter’s Path to $600 Million in Revenue

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.
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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 little mini fridges, baby.
You know, you'll know what that means, certainly. 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, avid surfer too. I heard.
The waves are right here. So yeah, love it.
In Huntington Beach. It's a great place to surf, I hear.
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, very patriotic city. We have a huge 4th of July parade, American flags everywhere.
So, so we lucked out where we are. Um, but Hey, South Carolina is beautiful too.
Um, we had, uh, we had a warehouse distribution center out in Spartanburg. So, uh, I know the've been out there.
I've been out to Lowe's, of course, which is somewhere. It's in the area, right? And then Spartanburg, we opened up over there.
Yeah, GSP, our airport code, Greenville Spartanburg. It's tiny.
We don't even bother with GSP, man. Just flying to Charlottesville.
Oh, come on. GSP is a model of efficiency.
If I have a six, I used to fly to New York every week. Six a.m.
flight, I'd get up at 530 and be the first one in line on the plane. Oh, yeah, yeah.
Tiny airport. Tiny airport.
Tiny airport. It's almost like flying private but 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. You know, like when you first hit my radar, I was like, New Air, I know that name.
I know that name. Then I read a little further.
I'm like, yes, mini fridges. Yeah.
Yeah. I remember them.
Were you guys like one of the first, were you one of the first like big names in mini fridges? In mini, also in wine. So we do like just, yep.
It's the wine, the beer, the cigar. So we cover the fun, portable refrigeration categories.
Okay. And you put all those together and it's fun.
You know, the employees love it. People love like, like now we've got a whiskey ice maker that makes the ball ice, you know? So these are the fun categories that people can get behind.
Fun refrigeration. I like it.
You know, we put the fun in business, you know, like, like to let our hair down a little bit on our show. So I like, you know.
You don't naturally go refrigeration and fun necessarily, but hey, the wine coolers, the mini fridges for your Cokes, I mean beers, I mean Cokes, all that stuff. I always think back to Chris Farley.
He was doing Tommy Boy. He's like, oh, he got a mini fridge and everything.
I can put all my beer. I mean, Coke.
He talked to his dad. No, we, no, we had it.
It's part of the culture. I mean, everybody's responsible, you know, but we had Keggerators in there.
We testing those out. We had, um, we've done different, you know, licensing and partnership deals with different beer brands.
And so we'll do cool wraps. Um, it, it, it just, you know, different events that the products will be shown in.
So it's, uh, listen, when you show up 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 loaded question.
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 is 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, you know, fight for it, whatever.
You had to kind of, you know, 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, 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 got to get out in the world. Meanwhile, my little brother was selling stuff online.

Okay.

And at this time I'm probably, you know, 24 maybe. And he's, you know, I don't know how 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, you know, 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, 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 got into this business.
And, um, just from the beginning, we were just cashflow in it. It was the search.
It was super easy to show up and search. Um, I didn't even think there were paid ads at that time, 2001, there may have been, but you know, early on the paid, paid ads were super cheap.
And so we just, it was all DTC up until like 2012. And, and 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 maybe need a fridge and an nice 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. Okay.
And they got big freaking marketing departments. I don't, you know, and I, and I'm thinking, okay.
And then of course, you know, your, your paid ads starts getting more expensive and more competitive. And I'm like, Whoa, this is, this is going to be a problem going forward.
You know, as it is today, D2C 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 and 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, you know, kind of blend of that.
We were actually back, you know, back around 2012 to 2018, we were very unique in that respect. And, you know, 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 the end. And then they let, they know, oh, I can sell a million dollars a month in pay-per-click ads to Home Depot.
Yeah, exactly. 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 whole different game. The metrics are so out of whack.
They got to'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 couple years ago.
Up until a few years ago. Then all of a sudden they got wise because, you know, 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 marketing that you did and having the growth that you had, when you reflect on 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, and if we do, this is what it looks like for you. Like they're going to just run through walls.
Like there's a huge, because everybody's motivated by money. Okay.
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, you know, as far as like getting the right people. I realized early on that can be hard.
Like if companies don't have enough scale, like they can't hire in, you know, 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, they're churning, they're churning revenue,

they're churning top line, they're building in lots of expenses into their business system. Okay.
And they're saying one day, you know, one day I'll get scale one day I'm going to get leverage. Uh, and that does work for some companies.
Okay. 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, it doesn't work. It's like make, it's like before you go build like a 10 or $20 million company and then try to figure out how to make money, 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.
If you're not profitable when you're a couple million dollars at the transaction level, there's a good chance that as you're 10, 15, 20, you still may not be that profitable because the market's telling you like, this is all we're going to 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 I do CEO coaching and that, that's a, that's like one of my main focuses, like, what are your margins? Okay. What are, how can we get creative and really think about your product and big focus on the product? Talking 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, mental notes while you're doing it.
Luke, tell me. I want to go back.
There's a lot to unpack. There's a lot of good stuff there.
My ears perked up like four to five times. My radar as a host went off a few different times.

And this is why, you know, I do this

because I just take so much from like 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, like,

you got to give them skin in the game 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 that 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, 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, um, if you can afford it, work with an executive recruiter for your C-level positions.
Okay. Because a re 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%, 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, they're going to soften up their ear a bit and they're going to pull them in. Right.
Cause you're going to, you want people that might be hard to frankly hire for your company. Okay.
Because maybe they have the, 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, so that's one idea. The other idea is, um, 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, um, win best place to work awards because

great people want to work for great companies.

They don't want to go work at, you know, 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, you know, when we're hiring, you were saying, okay, well, I think they have the aptitude.
And now trust me, like that is, 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.
You know, it's like, dude, I'm just putting a team together. I haven't done all these things.
I'm not, I'm not, 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 like a, you know, a marketing exec, sure.
I know my marketing, but you know, can they, maybe they've got some skills I don't have. And that's what I'm, that's why I'm bringing them in.
So I want someone who's already done it. So those are the things, Brian.
And then the other one is just during the interview process references. So that first of all, it's like very detailed on their track record in their jobs.
Super detailed. Put, 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 going to, well, they're going to 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, 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? Cause they just didn't.
And you say, okay, you know, you, you worked, 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're, they, they know that now, oh shit, you can call Jennifer. So they're, they're going to 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 want to 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 going to do the legwork and you put all this together and your odds are improved.
Hey, thoroughness. I mean, at the end of the day, and I've been guilty of this, you know, like never time, well, there's an old saying, an 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 because he wants more time.
But's like never time to do it right always time to do it over that's true and it's like that with 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 i love what would you call that last tactic has a name you name. You said there's a book.
Yeah. Top grading.
Top grading. Yeah.
That's interesting. Yeah.
I like that. I like that.
Talking with Luke Peters, former CEO of New Air. Luke, you know, my, my, 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 going now I'm going where the brand, you know, like your differentiation, like it is amazing. Sometimes, you know, I've worked with a lot of companies, good, bad, and ugly, um, 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.
Seems like there's a lot of people that, you know, do things that a lot of other people do and they just assume that like, I mean, 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 errors 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, put, have some way to measure your competitive advantage over, you know, what the market is offering. Um, I guess I'd say 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 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 if 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, you know? 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, you know? And I think that would 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, um, partnerships and stuff like that.
And the guys, and every year though, I, 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.
Flashbacks of you say that, like, Oh, that was like, I don't, it just come out when I was in college. Like, you know, mixing Red Bull with Jaeger.

Like, oh, good idea.

But you haven't forgot it.

See, so I would do that at the urine party because it was fun.

It's like everybody would be complaining.

Ah, Jaeger.

No, why is he choosing Jaeger?

So it's making the fun memory stamps in people's heads.

Like, that's, you know, what I want people thinking about. Yeah.
I think with head, people think with their head and they buy with their heart. That's one of my all time sayings with 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 purse strings, uh, in the wallet. Uh, 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 and all that. That's a very functional thing, but you brought the fun in somewhere.
Yeah. Well, early 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? I did with my wife. See, I've had a, we have a houseboat and, you know,'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 wanted to focus on the brand and that's where we got deep 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 not even sure how to inhale properly, you know, and they're making fun of me, but people love those categories, okay? It 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? Cause 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

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, um, 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, somebody's gotta be aware of you. They gotta consider you.
They gotta have intent for you. And then they buy.
That's so true. And it's 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 T-O-P-A top or T-O-M-A top of mind awareness uh 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 because 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'd that's where i associated you guys because if I went into a store and I saw the new air logo, I would know that that better 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 were in home Depot. So we, so we did a little bit of the, you know, the online, um, you know, the in store, the direct consumer, the, you know, show up on all the retailers, but now everybody's doing that.
Right. So everybody's like in, you know, they're doing the quote unquote multi-channel.
Um, but I, I think what we were lucky, um, so not every, it's different for different categories, right? And, 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, uh, 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 stuff's worth, yeah, send them a fridge and they're like, okay, cool. You know, we'll do an unboxing and I'll show how it looks.
And you just do, every time you launch a product, you know, we're like, okay, find 25 influencers. And this is what we 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, you know, 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, 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 a podcast advertising is the number one trusted medium in advertising.
There you go. 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 I think sometimes, like CEO coaches, I don't know if you want to call it an oxymoron, but 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, that's one.
The other one is a lot of, especially now, a lot of clients want to exit their business. Okay.
And, uh, they want to exit, but they're not ready to exit or they, they, 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, 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, they don't have a system they run off of.

They don't have, they're not, their team is not built around goals and metrics which is you know like one client asked me you know hey i need to do employee development okay and so i start working with them i'm understanding their company and i'm like you know the best employee development it's just let's set up goal you 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, 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.
Those are a couple examples. Luke, what's the craziest thing you ever saw at your company? Like, tell us a fun, like, or anything crazy, like, or funny or just out of the box that, that people would get a kick out of, you know, running a multimillion dollar company.
Like shit happens, right? I mean, so 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 at Christmas. That means that's the ones we want, Luke.
Yeah. You know, when you have two employees at a Christmas party get friendly with each other.
Yeah. Oh, boy.
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 it like at that time we probably had 35 there's probably 35 at the christmas party that is pretty obvious that's pretty that's not a big number i mean like no yeah it's sticking out everybody knows everybody at that point and everybody knows what knows what happened that night. And that was one.
Another funny one, I can get into more detail was, I'm in California, right? So this is the land of the stupid lawsuits. It's like, you open a business here, you're going to get sued.
It's like, as soon as you hire an employee, you're ready to get a lawsuit, right? So I had this 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, um, his son is going to MIT. And one time I was right next to MIT because we were visiting Wayfair and I'm like, Hey, there's MIT and 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've been telling me about your son, man.
Let's go visit him. Anyways, he pushes off and I'm thinking, okay, whatever.
So, we go on, do 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'm, 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 learning this thing about how, how I made, 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 to everybody, Luke, 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 got to settle these lawsuits. Like this is, I'm like, wow, this is just, you know, of course I have insurance, but I was pissed, man.
I'm like, I went to the arbitra or to whatever it was arbitration or some, some, you know, hearing. And I'm like, this is complete bullshit, but the judges know it's bullshit and they all got to just settle.
And, uh, 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, 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, it was definitely a giveaway when he didn't want to visit his own son 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 just, or if you really just caught him like in the moment, he's like, uh, uh, he's on a, he's on a botanist journey.
He's in a, he's doing a sabbatical in, uh, Brazil. Uh, 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. Um, any success stories or, uh, you know, maybe not naming names, but like with your coaching and stuff, like some transformations or things that you've seen or, you know, things that you're proud of.
Yeah, definitely. Um, well, I'm, I'm pretty new.
I'm only a couple months into it. So this is, um, it still is a new thing that I'm, you know, cause I sold the company then took some time off and then now I'm starting this, but, um, yeah, it's actually really exciting.
Um, 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, uh, I'm not, I'm not even charging, but you know, for this one, cause it's like I'm not going to I've 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 and 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 were talking about kids beforehand. You got four boys? Yep.
Oh, yeah. I need deep in coaching.
I'm coaching. I got basketball practice tonight.
Oh, there you go. Yeah.
I coach them all. I coach 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 going to 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, you know, 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.
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, like practical side, but then there's like this fun, like 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 have highlight clips, the full episode, and go over there and subscribe on YouTube. We're growing like gangbusters over there.
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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.

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