Luke Peters
Appearances
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
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 don't even think there were paid ads at that time, 2001. There may have been, but early on, the paid ads were super cheap.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Creativity - Uncommon Leadership - Profitable Pivoting - Luke Peter’s Path to $600 Million in Revenue
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 able to, I don't have all these connections and know all these buyers.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Creativity - Uncommon Leadership - Profitable Pivoting - Luke Peter’s Path to $600 Million in Revenue
Let's say if I'm hiring a salesperson or if I'm hiring like 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, Brian. And then the other one is just during the interview process, references. So first of all, it's like,
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Creativity - Uncommon Leadership - Profitable Pivoting - Luke Peter’s Path to $600 Million in Revenue
Well, believe it or not, we are in like the sanest coastal city in California. So it's a very, very patriotic city. We have a huge 4th of July parade, American flags everywhere. So we lucked out where we are. But hey, South Carolina is beautiful too. We have a warehouse distribution center out in Spartanburg. So- I know the area. I've been out there.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Creativity - Uncommon Leadership - Profitable Pivoting - Luke Peter’s Path to $600 Million in Revenue
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.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Creativity - Uncommon Leadership - Profitable Pivoting - Luke Peter’s Path to $600 Million in Revenue
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 say, who did you report to? You get the name of the report. And then later on, you've written down all these names.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Creativity - Uncommon Leadership - Profitable Pivoting - Luke Peter’s Path to $600 Million in Revenue
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 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.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Creativity - Uncommon Leadership - Profitable Pivoting - Luke Peter’s Path to $600 Million in Revenue
They know that now, oh shit, he can call Jennifer. So 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?
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Creativity - Uncommon Leadership - Profitable Pivoting - Luke Peter’s Path to $600 Million in Revenue
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.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Creativity - Uncommon Leadership - Profitable Pivoting - Luke Peter’s Path to $600 Million in Revenue
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.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Creativity - Uncommon Leadership - Profitable Pivoting - Luke Peter’s Path to $600 Million in Revenue
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 what the market is offering. I guess I'd say it like that. 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.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Creativity - Uncommon Leadership - Profitable Pivoting - Luke Peter’s Path to $600 Million in Revenue
I've been out to Lowe's, of course, and it's in the area, right? And then Spartanburg, we opened up over there.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Creativity - Uncommon Leadership - Profitable Pivoting - Luke Peter’s Path to $600 Million in Revenue
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?
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Creativity - Uncommon Leadership - Profitable Pivoting - Luke Peter’s Path to $600 Million in Revenue
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.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Creativity - Uncommon Leadership - Profitable Pivoting - Luke Peter’s Path to $600 Million in Revenue
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
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Creativity - Uncommon Leadership - Profitable Pivoting - Luke Peter’s Path to $600 Million in Revenue
How do you make more people feel a certain way about you, you know? And I think that would be a good one. 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.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Creativity - Uncommon Leadership - Profitable Pivoting - Luke Peter’s Path to $600 Million in Revenue
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 Jaeger Meister. Okay. Everybody hated Jaeger Meister.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Creativity - Uncommon Leadership - Profitable Pivoting - Luke Peter’s Path to $600 Million in Revenue
But you haven't forgot it. So I would do that at the year-end party because it was fun. It's like everybody would be complaining, ah, Jaeger. No, why did you choose Jaeger? So it's making the fun memory stamps in people's heads. That's what I want people thinking about.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Creativity - Uncommon Leadership - Profitable Pivoting - Luke Peter’s Path to $600 Million in Revenue
We don't even bother with GSP, man. Just flying to Charlottesville. Oh, come on.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Creativity - Uncommon Leadership - Profitable Pivoting - Luke Peter’s Path to $600 Million in Revenue
winning eyeballs so it was about dominating seo right it was like how do i you know and that that's that's that's what it was of course it was 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
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Creativity - Uncommon Leadership - Profitable Pivoting - Luke Peter’s Path to $600 Million in Revenue
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 I really wanted to focus on the brand and that's where we got deep into, uh,
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Creativity - Uncommon Leadership - Profitable Pivoting - Luke Peter’s Path to $600 Million in Revenue
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 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
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Creativity - Uncommon Leadership - Profitable Pivoting - Luke Peter’s Path to $600 Million in Revenue
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.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Creativity - Uncommon Leadership - Profitable Pivoting - Luke Peter’s Path to $600 Million in Revenue
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 an influencer marketing campaign. And we were one of the first to do it for appliances.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Creativity - Uncommon Leadership - Profitable Pivoting - Luke Peter’s Path to $600 Million in Revenue
Tiny airport.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Creativity - Uncommon Leadership - Profitable Pivoting - Luke Peter’s Path to $600 Million in Revenue
Yeah, well, we're fortunate. I mean, we do have in-store placements. We're in Home Depot. So we so we did a little bit of the, you know, the online, you know, the in-store, the direct consumer that, 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, well, we were lucky.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Creativity - Uncommon Leadership - Profitable Pivoting - Luke Peter’s Path to $600 Million in Revenue
Um, so not every, it's different for different categories, right? And you know, this 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 2020. 17, maybe 20, you know, it was early for influencer marketing.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Creativity - Uncommon Leadership - Profitable Pivoting - Luke Peter’s Path to $600 Million in Revenue
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 system, 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.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Creativity - Uncommon Leadership - Profitable Pivoting - Luke Peter’s Path to $600 Million in Revenue
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, it was all these other things I could do. I could I could write blogs. I could do PR. We could do lots of paid ads.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Creativity - Uncommon Leadership - Profitable Pivoting - Luke Peter’s Path to $600 Million in Revenue
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 ad or something like that.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Creativity - Uncommon Leadership - Profitable Pivoting - Luke Peter’s Path to $600 Million in Revenue
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.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Creativity - Uncommon Leadership - Profitable Pivoting - Luke Peter’s Path to $600 Million in Revenue
You know, you know, what's fun is that everybody's got a different challenge. So it's it's I think sometimes like CEO coaches, I don't want to call it an oxymoron, but it's like it's a 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, like I want to work with a founder CEO. I can kind of share the same experience.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Creativity - Uncommon Leadership - Profitable Pivoting - Luke Peter’s Path to $600 Million in Revenue
uh, learnings and I, 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. Like that's a big one because, you know, people are in their business. They're, they've, they've gotten to a certain level of success probably. Um, but it now it's hard for them at that, at this point to be super creative.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Creativity - Uncommon Leadership - Profitable Pivoting - Luke Peter’s Path to $600 Million in Revenue
Now they just got to keep double down, triple down on what their act, what they currently are doing. And so I can kind of come in and be like, okay, 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.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Creativity - Uncommon Leadership - Profitable Pivoting - Luke Peter’s Path to $600 Million in Revenue
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?
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Creativity - Uncommon Leadership - Profitable Pivoting - Luke Peter’s Path to $600 Million in Revenue
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, that's an area that I, and cause you know, I sold my company and, 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.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Creativity - Uncommon Leadership - Profitable Pivoting - Luke Peter’s Path to $600 Million in Revenue
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, 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, you know,
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Creativity - Uncommon Leadership - Profitable Pivoting - Luke Peter’s Path to $600 Million in Revenue
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 and I'm understanding their company. And I'm like, you know, the best employee development is just let's set up goal. Every one of your employees should have a goal.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Creativity - Uncommon Leadership - Profitable Pivoting - Luke Peter’s Path to $600 Million in Revenue
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.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Creativity - Uncommon Leadership - Profitable Pivoting - Luke Peter’s Path to $600 Million in Revenue
In mini, also in wine. So we do like just- That's it. 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 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.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Creativity - Uncommon Leadership - Profitable Pivoting - Luke Peter’s Path to $600 Million in Revenue
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.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Creativity - Uncommon Leadership - Profitable Pivoting - Luke Peter’s Path to $600 Million in Revenue
Well, I'll tell you, I'll tell you. Yeah. I don't know if I can even tell. Okay. Something's happening.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Creativity - Uncommon Leadership - Profitable Pivoting - Luke Peter’s Path to $600 Million in Revenue
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 we show up for work.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Creativity - Uncommon Leadership - Profitable Pivoting - Luke Peter’s Path to $600 Million in Revenue
At that time, we probably had 35. There's probably 35 at the Christmas party.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Creativity - Uncommon Leadership - Profitable Pivoting - Luke Peter’s Path to $600 Million in Revenue
Everybody knows everybody at that point and everybody knows what happened that night. And, uh, okay. That, that was one. I can't, another one, uh, another funny one. I can get more into more detail was, uh, 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 going to get sued.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Creativity - Uncommon Leadership - Profitable Pivoting - Luke Peter’s Path to $600 Million in Revenue
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 visiting Wayfair. And I'm like, hey, There's MIT. Let's go visit your son.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Creativity - Uncommon Leadership - Profitable Pivoting - Luke Peter’s Path to $600 Million in Revenue
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. 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.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Creativity - Uncommon Leadership - Profitable Pivoting - Luke Peter’s Path to $600 Million in Revenue
First off, what he does is he immediately writes me back this thing on how I'm, you know, I'm ageist because he was like over 50 or something. And I was like, I was like 45. We're like the same age, but he's like five years older, right? Yeah. And then he writes me this thing. this really well-written email about how I had been making fake claims to them. They're all fake.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Creativity - Uncommon Leadership - Profitable Pivoting - Luke Peter’s Path to $600 Million in Revenue
Then he walks out the door and he's yelling to 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 got to settle these lawsuits.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Creativity - Uncommon Leadership - Profitable Pivoting - Luke Peter’s Path to $600 Million in Revenue
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 arbitrary 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.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Creativity - Uncommon Leadership - Profitable Pivoting - Luke Peter’s Path to $600 Million in Revenue
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 and, I'm never going to talk bad about anybody, you know, behind them. It's like he really just screwed himself.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Creativity - Uncommon Leadership - Profitable Pivoting - Luke Peter’s Path to $600 Million in Revenue
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.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Creativity - Uncommon Leadership - Profitable Pivoting - Luke Peter’s Path to $600 Million in Revenue
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.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Creativity - Uncommon Leadership - Profitable Pivoting - Luke Peter’s Path to $600 Million in Revenue
Yeah, definitely. Well, I'm pretty new. I'm only a couple 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 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.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Creativity - Uncommon Leadership - Profitable Pivoting - Luke Peter’s Path to $600 Million in Revenue
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 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.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Creativity - Uncommon Leadership - Profitable Pivoting - Luke Peter’s Path to $600 Million in Revenue
But in this particular case, I mean, this guy's got a great product idea. So just helping them 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,
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Creativity - Uncommon Leadership - Profitable Pivoting - Luke Peter’s Path to $600 Million in Revenue
Dude, 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.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Creativity - Uncommon Leadership - Profitable Pivoting - Luke Peter’s Path to $600 Million in Revenue
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, you know, hopefully get, reap the reward of some success in the future.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Creativity - Uncommon Leadership - Profitable Pivoting - Luke Peter’s Path to $600 Million in Revenue
Well, I got six kids. So, you know, we were talking about kids before, and you got four, you have four boys?
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Creativity - Uncommon Leadership - Profitable Pivoting - Luke Peter’s Path to $600 Million in Revenue
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.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Creativity - Uncommon Leadership - Profitable Pivoting - Luke Peter’s Path to $600 Million in Revenue
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 someone to bounce ideas off of.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Creativity - Uncommon Leadership - Profitable Pivoting - Luke Peter’s Path to $600 Million in Revenue
So I got the free call offer on the website, apexceo.co.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Creativity - Uncommon Leadership - Profitable Pivoting - Luke Peter’s Path to $600 Million in Revenue
Thank you, man. I really, really appreciate it. Thanks so much for having me on the show.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Creativity - Uncommon Leadership - Profitable Pivoting - Luke Peter’s Path to $600 Million in Revenue
No, we, 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 had, we've done different, you know, licensing and partnership deals with different beer brands. And so we'll do cool wraps. It, it, it just, you know, different events that the products will be shown in.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Creativity - Uncommon Leadership - Profitable Pivoting - Luke Peter’s Path to $600 Million in Revenue
So it's, 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.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Creativity - Uncommon Leadership - Profitable Pivoting - Luke Peter’s Path to $600 Million in Revenue
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?
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Creativity - Uncommon Leadership - Profitable Pivoting - Luke Peter’s Path to $600 Million in Revenue
Right.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Creativity - Uncommon Leadership - Profitable Pivoting - Luke Peter’s Path to $600 Million in Revenue
And we did 80 million the last year. Yeah. Over the course of, 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 a 12 people in my family. Okay. 12 siblings and, uh, growing up here in Orange County.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Creativity - Uncommon Leadership - Profitable Pivoting - Luke Peter’s Path to $600 Million in Revenue
And, um, it was always just, if you want something, you had to go make it, buy it, uh, 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, um, but I got excited about science. I became a hazardous waste scientist.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Creativity - Uncommon Leadership - Profitable Pivoting - Luke Peter’s Path to $600 Million in Revenue
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.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Creativity - Uncommon Leadership - Profitable Pivoting - Luke Peter’s Path to $600 Million in Revenue
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. And I'm like, wait, something's wrong. So I just start burning the midnight oil, uh, I see that HVAC is actually an untapped category. Okay.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Creativity - Uncommon Leadership - Profitable Pivoting - Luke Peter’s Path to $600 Million in Revenue
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 were selling Ram computer stuff, but this is like 2000 and 2001. Right. But nobody's selling, uh, Anything semi-commercial or HIV, nobody. And the people who were selling it, they sucked.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Creativity - Uncommon Leadership - Profitable Pivoting - Luke Peter’s Path to $600 Million in Revenue
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. And just from the beginning, we were just cashflow in it. It was the search. It was super easy to show up and search
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Creativity - Uncommon Leadership - Profitable Pivoting - Luke Peter’s Path to $600 Million in Revenue
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, you know, all the typical, um, things except social media wasn't that big back then.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Creativity - Uncommon Leadership - Profitable Pivoting - Luke Peter’s Path to $600 Million in Revenue
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
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Creativity - Uncommon Leadership - Profitable Pivoting - Luke Peter’s Path to $600 Million in Revenue
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,
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Creativity - Uncommon Leadership - Profitable Pivoting - Luke Peter’s Path to $600 Million in Revenue
you know, 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. 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?
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Creativity - Uncommon Leadership - Profitable Pivoting - Luke Peter’s Path to $600 Million in Revenue
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.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Creativity - Uncommon Leadership - Profitable Pivoting - Luke Peter’s Path to $600 Million in Revenue
And we're going against guys who are real slow because they're just, they have no idea how to reach customers. 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.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Creativity - Uncommon Leadership - Profitable Pivoting - Luke Peter’s Path to $600 Million in Revenue
And, um, you know, that's kind of what kickstarted the growth is selling into these large retailers.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Creativity - Uncommon Leadership - Profitable Pivoting - Luke Peter’s Path to $600 Million in Revenue
And, 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, it's a metric game.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Creativity - Uncommon Leadership - Profitable Pivoting - Luke Peter’s Path to $600 Million in Revenue
That's true. That's a great parallel actually. Yeah. 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.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Creativity - Uncommon Leadership - Profitable Pivoting - Luke Peter’s Path to $600 Million in Revenue
Yeah, for sure. So we ended up selling in 2001. Okay. And for me, you know, personally, that was a big thing, you know, cause 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 was, and then I, and then, you know, I've got a great new CEO running it now.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Creativity - Uncommon Leadership - Profitable Pivoting - Luke Peter’s Path to $600 Million in Revenue
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.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Creativity - Uncommon Leadership - Profitable Pivoting - Luke Peter’s Path to $600 Million in Revenue
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, to lead. And there's a lot to it that I learned, but I'm just simplifying it here.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Creativity - Uncommon Leadership - Profitable Pivoting - Luke Peter’s Path to $600 Million in Revenue
And stoked to be here. Thanks for having me. Looking forward to it.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Creativity - Uncommon Leadership - Profitable Pivoting - Luke Peter’s Path to $600 Million in Revenue
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, yeah, they're gonna just run through walls. There's a huge, because everybody's motivated by money, okay?
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Creativity - Uncommon Leadership - Profitable Pivoting - Luke Peter’s Path to $600 Million in Revenue
It's like, sure, you want people who are just gonna always do the right thing, but you gotta show them that this is what it's gonna look like for you, and they're gonna 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.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Creativity - Uncommon Leadership - Profitable Pivoting - Luke Peter’s Path to $600 Million in Revenue
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 know, you can still work. prioritize getting the best people over saving a few dollars is how I would say for most companies. Um, and then, um, just another quick one is just focusing on margins.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Creativity - Uncommon Leadership - Profitable Pivoting - Luke Peter’s Path to $600 Million in Revenue
The waves are right here. So yeah, love it.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Creativity - Uncommon Leadership - Profitable Pivoting - Luke Peter’s Path to $600 Million in Revenue
You know, too many companies are, um, they're, they're churning, they're churning revenue, they're churning top line. They're, they're, they're, they're, they're building in lots of, uh, 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.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Creativity - Uncommon Leadership - Profitable Pivoting - Luke Peter’s Path to $600 Million in Revenue
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.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Creativity - Uncommon Leadership - Profitable Pivoting - Luke Peter’s Path to $600 Million in Revenue
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, like make money from day one, because the problem, 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 enough,
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Creativity - Uncommon Leadership - Profitable Pivoting - Luke Peter’s Path to $600 Million in Revenue
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 market's telling you like, this is all we're gonna pay for your brand, you know? And so you wanna figure that out early on. What do I need to do with my product or service? How do I add more value?
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Creativity - Uncommon Leadership - Profitable Pivoting - Luke Peter’s Path to $600 Million in Revenue
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.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Creativity - Uncommon Leadership - Profitable Pivoting - Luke Peter’s Path to $600 Million in Revenue
How do I, you know, stretch these margins? And so that's a huge one. You know, right now I do CEO coaching and that's like one of my main focus is like, what are your margins, okay? How can we get creative and really think about your product and big focus on the product?
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Creativity - Uncommon Leadership - Profitable Pivoting - Luke Peter’s Path to $600 Million in Revenue
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, if you can afford it, work with an executive recruiter for your C-level positions. Okay.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Creativity - Uncommon Leadership - Profitable Pivoting - Luke Peter’s Path to $600 Million in Revenue
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%. 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
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Creativity - Uncommon Leadership - Profitable Pivoting - Luke Peter’s Path to $600 Million in Revenue
that you would never be able to attract because they're gonna soften up their ear a bit and they're gonna pull them in, right? Because you want people that might be hard to, frankly, hire for your company, okay?
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Creativity - Uncommon Leadership - Profitable Pivoting - Luke Peter’s Path to $600 Million in Revenue
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 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.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Creativity - Uncommon Leadership - Profitable Pivoting - Luke Peter’s Path to $600 Million in Revenue
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?
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Creativity - Uncommon Leadership - Profitable Pivoting - Luke Peter’s Path to $600 Million in Revenue
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...
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Creativity - Uncommon Leadership - Profitable Pivoting - Luke Peter’s Path to $600 Million in Revenue
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?