[00:00] Luke Peters: So I’d say have an organizational structure where you have a strategic plan. Everybody should have a plan and, and it doesn’t need to be very complicated. So for me, I use it just a simple framework. I use OKRs. Anybody can create an OKR, and then real simple, I’ll do an MIT most important things. Wake up.

[00:19] What’s your MIT? So if you have your MITs clear, they should only be, say three or four, MITs most important things. It actually really clarifies your decision process.

[00:31] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Welcome to another episode of Success for the Athletic Minded Man, real talk on harnessing your athletic drive for clarity, consistency, and focus in business and life.

[00:41] This is your host, Jim Harshaw, and today I bring you Luke Peters. Today’s guest is living proof that the entrepreneurial journey is anything but ordinary. Luke Peters who we’re talking to today, he went from earning 25 cents an hour in his family’s donut shop growing up to orchestrating an eight figure exit from his own business.

[01:01] And along the way, he learned a ton of crazy things from building his business out of his garage up to $80 million in revenue. And, and he shares a lot of the chaos and the failures and the triumphs in our conversation here today. And he shares, you know, a lot of lessons that were learned the hard way, you know, school of hard knocks from.

[01:17] Almost losing everything when he was actually moving from one warehouse to another. He shares a story about meeting a customer in a parking lot because he didn’t even have a business location. And he talks about how to avoid competing with corporate giants, like carving out your niche for whatever business you might have or be thinking about, and he shares.

[01:35] Why he believes every American can and should start a business, even if it’s a side household, and even if it breaks, even just breaks even, doesn’t even, isn’t even profitable. So it’s a fascinating exploration of that. And we also talk about the one thing that he says really saved his company and the framework that he uses to stay focused on the things that really matter in his business.

[01:54] And we’ll give it into even. You know how he talks about surfing and mountain biking played a, a role in his entrepreneurial success. So whether you have a business you, you know, don’t know where to start with, you starting a business, maybe you’re scaling a business, uh, and you’re just kinda looking for what’s next for you.

[02:10] This episode has something for everyone. So let’s dive into my interview with Luke Peters. But first, think about that one entrepreneur in your life, or the person who wants to become an entrepreneur. Give this episode a share. That is how this thing grows. That’s how the word gets out about podcasts in general.

[02:28] Is word of mouth and sharing with others. So if you give this, uh, you know, give a, shoot a text message to a friend, or, uh, give it a share on social media, even a comment or a like on LinkedIn helps the algorithm find it even more. So thank you in advance for your support. So let’s get into my interview with business coach and founder of Apex, CEO.

[02:47] Luke Peters. So you grew up in the family business, a donut shop started at making 25 cents an hour. I know maybe you grew up in the depression. I’m not sure exactly it was, but on the other extreme, you. Sold your own business later for an eight figure exit. What was that like? What was it? Take us to the day when you signed the papers and you had an eight figure exit.

[03:08] Luke Peters: I kind of stayed like right down the middle, of course. I was very grateful and it was very relieving to be at that. It was more relief to be at that point because when you go through. A sale of your company. It’s very taxing. I would’ve never done it if I didn’t have a great team. It was a great feeling.

[03:23] I wasn’t super emotional or anything like that. It was just very relaxed. I guess. I, how about this? I slept good the

[03:29] Jim Harshaw Jr.: next day. Yeah. It’s not something, it’s not like you won the lottery. You didn’t, it’s not like you didn’t see this coming and one day all of a sudden you, you, you get an eight figure exit.

[03:36] It’s, it’s something you work towards and you built towards and, you know, all the ups and downs in building a team and all the successes and failures and, um, it led to that moment. So congratulations. What a, what a cool thing. So what kind of business was it for the listeners?

[03:49] Luke Peters: Yeah, so it was, uh, consumer goods.

[03:51] We were doing, uh, compact appliances. Okay. So wine coolers, beer, ice makers, some HVAC stuff, some fans. So just think of compact, unique appliances in the home. We’re usually not going head to head with like an LG or a Samsung. They’re doing the big fridge, okay, we’re gonna do the countertop, or we’re gonna do the wine fridge, or we’re gonna do a specific, uh, licensed beer fridge or some, something, you know, like Stone Brewery.

[04:15] We had a license deal. So we’ll do fun projects, which is great for company culture and also not go head to head against the biggest names and sort of create our own niche. And we did create a great brand. Yeah. How did you get into that? How’d this business idea come about? So what happens is I actually made it through college.

[04:34] I barely graduated high school. Okay. Made it through college. I love science, so I did study microbiology and did, did decent in college. And got a job and worked for, uh, I was a hazardous waste scientist for Department of Toxic Substances Control. Okay, so this is sort of like making sure dry cleaning shops aren’t dumping their chemicals into the, uh, groundwater, stuff like that and cleaning up and, and pg e Aaron Brockovich, I had actually had that, uh, one of the pg and e cases, if you remember the movie Aaron Brockovich and, and Chrome Six.

[05:04] So that’s what I was doing right. But I’m driving a beat up pickup truck to LA and my little brother is like driving a sports car. And he didn’t go to college and he’s selling stuff online. And I’m like, wait a minute. Something’s going on here. You know, I, I went to school, I did what I was, thought it was the right thing.

[05:18] And you know, come to find out, this is right around 2000. He’s selling laptop batteries online. And I just learned SEO. And one day I saw in the rankings at the third most searched topic was portable air conditioners. And I’m like, wow, I have no idea what they are, but people want ’em. And that’s where the idea started.

[05:39] Wow.

[05:40] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Interesting.

[05:40] Luke Peters: Yeah.

[05:41] Jim Harshaw Jr.: So what were the early days like? Was it just, you just fired up the web, you created, built a website, started selling them, and it was, uh, a few years later you just sold it for an eight figure XI mean, give us some of the gory details in some of the challenges that you faced in the, in the early days of that experience.

[05:54] Luke Peters: Sure. Well, remember I didn’t study business. I mean, I grew up in a, in a very entrepreneurial family. Okay. I always had newspaper routes and you know, donut shop and all that kinda stuff. So we’re always working. Work ethic was, you know, everybody had a work ethic, but I didn’t know what I was doing. I didn’t even know what an invoice was when I started this business.

[06:10] So we started calling Grainger and buying stuff and selling it, and then all of a sudden I, you know, met people and met people, and now we’re buying from China and bringing containers in. After a couple of years, I was able to quit my job in six months. So right off the bat, we were cash flowing. We had no.

[06:23] Investors, you know, uh, just retained all the shares. And right off the bat, uh, we were cash flowing. ’cause SEO worked out really well for us. And, and, you know, it took a liking for marketing and building the brand. This is what year? Approximately. Okay. So start in 2001 and then by 2004 we brought our own container in.

[06:41] So I would say by 2005 or six were probably five or 6 million. Something like that, you know, so, so it went from zero to five or 6 million. Then in 2012, maybe we were 12 million in sales, and then we moved warehouses six or seven times. So we started in a garage and had a, you know, a few other actually had to go into my mom’s garage because when we bought a house, we couldn’t move in, so we had no house.

[07:06] So my wife and I and the kids had to move into my mom’s house with the business. Then we, you know, and so we just kept scaling and eventually, you know, at the end we had 200,000 square feet of warehouse, east and west coast, you know, doing about 80 million, and that was in 2021. So started in 2001 and just grew, you know, with all kinds of problems along the way, but we just figured it out.

[07:28] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Yeah, I, I remember in the research and you know, your background and preparing for our conversation today, there was some. Pretty crazy stories in terms of stuff that you had to do in the early days. I think there was a story about, uh, a bunch of heaters got dropped off and you had to go pick them up the next day.

[07:44] Give us a couple of instances where you had to do crazy. Things to just to, to survive and keep the business going.

[07:52] Luke Peters: Oh yeah. I mean there, there is a couple of ’em, but at the beginning we didn’t have a warehouse. I’ll share like a couple, but one of them was okay, well, at the very beginning we didn’t have a warehouse and we were really just arbitraging Grainger.

[08:03] So we were buying from Grainger at a discount and then selling, you know, say for retail online, and they delivered the wrong product to a customer, and the customer wanted to come back. And this is in the old days, right? This is like, this is 2001 or two. They wanted to return it, so they wanted to come to our business.

[08:19] Well, our business was a condo at that time. Yeah. So we’re like, we’ll meet you over here. And, and so we met ’em at Anaheim Stadium. You know, this is where the angels play. Okay. Which is, uh, you know, like 20, 30 minutes. And, and it was, it was like, you’re doing a drug deal. You know, they’re, and they’re, they’re thinking it’s kind of weird too.

[08:35] What are these guys do? We’re like, yeah, we’ll meet you over at this corner. It’s like in the parking lot. I’m like, I don’t know who they are. ’cause you meet some. There are some interesting customers. I mean, so that was one funny story. We had another story where a customer, maybe their product didn’t work, whatever, they had a return and a bad experience, which, which unfortunately happens with appliances.

[08:53] They can, you know, break and damage during shipping. And they wanted an apology from my customer service rep and she ended up working for, with me for like 10, 12 years. I mean, she was a. Really great person. They wanted an Apolo. They wanted me to send her out there somewhere in the Midwest and apologize to ’em.

[09:11] And then they, yeah. And then they’re calling me and I’m having, and I’m like, you know, at that time I was worried about, whoa, this is some weird, what? What do you do when you got a crazy person? So I had to make up aliases. Okay. So I had a nickname that I had to use for some of those situations. We were just trying to do the best we could and we always, you know, serviced our customers as good as we could.

[09:30] Yeah.

[09:30] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Yeah. What do you say to the person who is listening who says like, gosh, I, I, I have a business idea. I’m thinking about starting it. I don’t know where to start. I mean, you started something, it’s, it worked for you. You know, before we hit record, you said, I think everybody should start a business. Like, why, and, and how do, how do you recommend people go about that?

[09:51] Luke Peters: Okay, everybody should start a business. Um, the first reason is that America is made for business. And what I mean by that is the tax
[10:00] code and the corporate setup, it’s a, it’s everything is made for business. Just think about how these laws are put into place. I. It’s the wealthiest, the billionaires, every law is there to favor them.

[10:08] I’m not saying this in a conspiratorial way, I’m just saying they have the lobbyists. Right. So I, I’m gonna go out on a tangent, but if you go further on into, uh, what do you call it, like wealth planning, all, all of the vehicles for transferring wealth from generation to generation. And these are all put into, into the legislation for certain.

[10:25] Advantages and reasons. Okay? And that’s fine. America should be made for business because that’s the most productive way that an individual can add to a society, you know, on an economic side of things, okay? Because your own skin is in the game. So with that being said, a lot of people, I think that’s the basis that I would tell people to think the, the countries made for business.

[10:45] You actually have an advantage if you start a business and you. I’m not saying you have a disadvantage if you’re W2, but you’re not getting the write-offs and the advantage as soon as you start that business. If say, I love cameras, okay, and I use, you know, I got the nice mic and cam all of this stuff I can write off with the company I.

[11:03] That’s a very simple example, right? But imagine if you do something else. If you like to travel and you do trade shows and you wanna buy an RV for that, or, or boating and your business fits into boating. So everybody should, even if you’re breaking even, you’re going to be writing these things off. And that could be done in a side hustle.

[11:20] So that’s number one. Number two is that if you start a business, there’s certain sort of obvious things not to do, and most of those are, don’t get into a commoditized type of business. Well, it sounds like you were in a commoditized type of business. Yeah, not really. Great point. So I’ll tell you why I.

[11:36] Now it’s more commoditized, but when we started it wasn’t. So now we were buying directly from the factory and adjusting the product and the look and feel and making adjustments to its functions, you know, as we learned maybe from, uh, damages and mishaps. So we’d improve the product, right? But if you’re just drop shipping, so if someone goes into business and they’re like, okay, I’m gonna drop ship.

[11:58] You have no competitive advantage. Your only competitive advantage is. You know, showing up higher in marketing and, and that used to be more possible 10, 15 years ago. It’s very difficult now for a number of reasons, you know, that, that we can get into later, but probably not that interesting for the audience.

[12:12] So as long as your first thing you do is you think about a very niche business. So don’t try to appeal to everybody. Think about something that you’re really good at and then don’t have a commodity. But what a lot of people don’t understand is that your business is gonna change. So they never start it.

[12:26] Yeah. Right. They’re like, they overthink everything. So what I found is I’m pretty naive and I look at a lot of my friends who are good entrepreneurs and they’re sort of like, you know, they don’t have that break that’s on them. Whereas like really smart people, and I’m not putting myself in that category, but like the engineers, they think of everything, you know, and it’s like they never get started.

[12:44] It’s everything.

[12:44] Jim Harshaw Jr.: It could go wrong and try to Yeah. Edge against everything. Yeah. I think

[12:47] Luke Peters: got it. Figured it out like five years in advance and in a sense it’s a bit of a hindrance.

[12:51] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Yeah. Yeah. It’s where you gotta be a little bit of ready, fire, aim, what kind of businesses? Do you recommend if you’re, if you’re sitting down talking to, uh, a room full of my listeners and they’re saying, okay, I love it.

[13:00] I wanna start a business, what kind of ideas might you propose? Obviously, you’re, you’re not gonna say There’s this one business and everybody should do that, but I mean, I don’t know what any, any suggestions or advice or somebody who’s thinking about it. Sure. Yeah. So, so you still, I love product businesses.

[13:15] Luke Peters: I’m doing one right now. I’m making an air purifier and the technology hasn’t changed in 50 years. They’re all hepa. So separate to the consulting I’m doing, I still love product because it can scale, but I’m controlling the design, I’m controlling the engineering and it’s application is different, but I’m not gonna rewrite the science on it.

[13:32] So I think do a, you know, products are great if you can start super niche. And do something that’s unique. Maybe you trademark something. Some people are scientists or engineers or doctors and they, and they get some IP around it. It doesn’t have to be crazy IP by the way. Like people think like, wait, how am I gonna succeed?

[13:50] I’m just doing this. A lot of the simplest products had really. Simple protection. So that’s a good one. There’s a lot more, uh, focus by the way in America of manufacturing. So if you don’t let it out to China, ’cause work can be copied and reproduced, you can kind of start here and you can get a couple years out in front before all the copycats come in.

[14:09] You can not launch an Amazon, try to build up your own audience so you’re not having to deal with all the copycats. So products are good. Just make your own product is basically my advice there. And then as far as services go, there’s a few different ways that that can work out. Building a personal brand is difficult, but I think that can be a long play.

[14:26] There’s a lot of strategic, uh, services that are great, you know, from like the marketing services. Of course there’s a, you’re gonna have a lot of competition, but it’s very easy to find a niche. So just using myself as an example, not that I have everything figured out and, and Jim Consulting is new to me, right?

[14:42] I’m, I’m a product guy now. I’m, I’m coaching CEOs, right? And, uh, to give an au the audience an idea of what I’m doing, not for my benefit, but to say how I’ve. Created my competitive moat. I’m consulting in a way where I’m focused on getting the client. To a a, a business exit to a sale. So, okay, so now I’ve already narrowed my focus and I’m only gonna take on certain clients because I want to be very engaged in their business.

[15:07] So my fees are, are pretty high versus somebody who might work with 50 clients. I’m only gonna work with 10. So I’ve already narrowed, you know, people may not wanna cut a a that check that they’re gonna have to, uh, cut for me. They’re gonna say, okay, that service is too expensive. So I’ve narrowed it down to that, and then I’ve narrowed it down to people who are interested in.

[15:25] You know, they’re not, they don’t have to sell their business, but build it so they could sell it. And so by doing that, there, others are doing it, but I’ve, I’ve sort of got my own little competitive moat where I’m not competing against everybody. And, and that would be another example.

[15:39] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Yeah. You’re not selling everything to every kind of coaching, to everyone.

[15:43] You’re, it’s a very niche area that you’re coaching in. You can charge more frankly when you do that.

[15:47] Luke Peters: Mm-hmm.

[15:48] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Right,

[15:49] Luke Peters: but a lot of professionals can still do it. They, I think people just underestimate themselves. So if someone has a job, they can start a business. They don’t have to quit their job. I didn’t quit my job.

[16:00] So you just start it and be very patient. Give yourself a year or two, especially the consultant route. The consulting route takes a long time to kind of. Build your credibility and figure out what sales pitch works. So any professionals who want to go that route and they don’t wanna do a product, you just have to be patient.

[16:17] No, it’s not gonna take three months and, and build for the long time. And it’s not expensive. That’s the benefit of the consulting and advisory or marketing. You know, like, uh, if you put up a marketing shop, you can do these at for a very small upfront cost.

[16:33] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Yeah. And so back to your business, you got to a point where you knew that you had to build a professional leadership team, and you said that was a game changer for you.

[16:43] What made you realize that you needed a professional leadership team in place? Well,

[16:48] Luke Peters: two things happened. Okay. So one, it was sort of a big failure on my part, and that was when we moved to warehouses, maybe on our fifth or sixth time we moved to warehouses. We went from 35,000 square feet, but we only had two docks.

[16:59] Anybody running a warehouse, it was like that one dock was in constant and we had trucks waiting to use the dock, you know, to a beautiful warehouse. That was, we took 85, but the whole building was. 15 and we eventually took all one 15, but it had 10 dock doors. So that was a dream for us, you know? And as we moved into it, we had to continue shipping and we’re shipping to Home Depot and you know, a lot of big clients, right?

[17:24] And they have expectations and rules. And if you miss these rules, you could lose the accounts or, and or have expensive chargebacks. Well, we totally blew it. And at that time I had the Hawaii vacation planned with my family. Okay. And they left. We did the transition and stuff wasn’t shipping and it was a complete disaster, and it was, and it was our own software.

[17:46] We had written all of our own code, we had all of our own systems, and we almost lost those accounts. We ended up figuring it out, but it was like a two week setback, hundreds of thousands of dollars or more. It taught me a lot of things, but right. Around the corner right from that time. And then like a year or two later, I’m talking to some m and a advisors and they’re inquiring about the business and they’re telling me they liked the company, but they said, Luke, in order to be appealing to private equity, this is what you need to look like.

[18:14] And part of it was you need to have the professional management team, if you leave that private equity needs to know this company is in good standing and has it a professional team. And then they gave me other things like, your, your EBITDA needs to be at this percentage, et cetera, et cetera.

[18:29] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Talk to me about the first hires.

[18:30] Like for me, in my business, I was working full-time when I started this business coaching and speaking and, and with the podcast and I, so my first hire was very early on. I built some systems outsourced ’cause I was working full-time, you know, I was working a. 50, 60 hour week job where I was traveling and working nights and weekends and had a growing family, and I, I couldn’t be editing my own podcast early on, and, and so I hired a guy 10 years later, he’s still with me now, and, you know, runs all kinds of things behind the scenes.

[18:59] Zain is his name. Give him a shout out. He’s amazing. What was it like for you to make your first hire? Well, well,

[19:05] Luke Peters: my first hire was my nephew who’s still at the company, so even after the PE sale and everything. But yeah, no, I hired other people in. Uh, I learned a lot and even know how to explain it. Again, I definitely explain what I learned, but I guess at the beginning, I.

[19:19] My style definitely needed improvement as a, as a leader, let’s put it that way. I was, I was a bit of a micromanager at the beginning and, you know, had to learn and grow, but that’s how I started.

[19:29] Jim Harshaw Jr.: When it came time for private equity, what was that process like? What surprised you about the process? What did you learn about the process of preparing for and then executing your exit?

[19:40] Luke Peters: So, private equity, they, they get a bad rap, but I’m sort of a hundred percent accountability guy. Like, uh, Jocko or you know, if you ever listen to them. And so I think they, they get a bad rap. But remember, private equity, they do these deals all the time. And for any person doing a deal, it could be your only time, your whole life, you’re doing the deal.

[19:59] I
[20:00] basically just retired after this for a couple of years until I got back into this. So it was, this was it for me. So they’re doing it all the time. So of course they’re going to be able to take advantage of. A seller who’s not ready for it In my group, this group was like an amazing, very trustworthy, really good people.

[20:15] And I think a lot of them are tr you know, they wanna maintain a good reputation. So I just learned that it’s sort of up to the seller to make sure that you represent yourself. Um, in my case, my first hire was the attorney, so that was really important ’cause the attorney then helped me structure the agreement with the banker and so on and so forth.

[20:34] So typically when you sell your business, you it. You do need a great attorney and you need a good accountant, and then you’re gonna need, typically a banker, which is gonna be, they would be representing you and taking you out to market. A lot of people hire the banker first. I hired the attorney first and the attorney.

[20:51] Is they’re all in for you. And then at the same time, I had other advisors as well. So I just learned that it’s up to you to protect yourself and learn as much as you can. Uh, about the different terms. ’cause there are a lot of interesting terms, by the way, Jim. It’s like, it makes sense why it’s that way, but it doesn’t make sense the first time you hear it.

[21:08] You’re like, things like working capital and stuff like that. At, at first it’s like you’re thinking, oh, there’s gonna be a working capital adjustment. I mean that, that could sway a couple million dollars each way. And, but it makes sense why they do these things, so you have to be prepared for ’em.

[21:22] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Sure. Did you learn any frameworks along the way for decision making or kind of how you went about maybe building your business or, or making decisions in high stakes moments or high stakes pivots?

[21:34] Were there any, any frameworks or decision making kind of approaches that you have or that you learned or that you were coached to use? I would say two things for

[21:44] Luke Peters: that. So I’d say have an organizational structure where you have a strategic plan. Everybody should have a plan and, and it doesn’t need to be very complicated.

[21:52] So for me, I use it just a simple framework. I use OKRs. People can look those up, but I like those ’cause they’re simple. That’s objectives and key results for the listener. That’s right, ob you just state your objective and then what the results look like and, and it, it’s really simple to do. So anybody could do that.

[22:07] It’s, this is not a big company formula. This is anybody who can create an OKR and then real simple, I’ll do an MIT most important things. So I even tell my kids this, you know, it’s like, tell my, you know, my 20-year-old, he’s working out, he’s, you know, he’s into MMA and stuff and so wake up, what’s your MI t?

[22:23] So if you have your MITs clear, they should only be. Say three or four, MIT’s most important things. It actually really clarifies your decision process because stuff’s gonna come at us all the time. Whether you’re big business, small business, anywhere in life, you’re gonna have those things. So for me, that helped.

[22:39] And then the second part was having advisors. I always had, at least at the end, I always had advisors. I. I could bounce ideas off the advisors and, uh, I got some great advice along the way.

[22:50] Jim Harshaw Jr.: And for the listener, this is, you know, the, the OKRs. The MITs, like, you have to hit the pause button to do this, right?

[22:56] You have to step back, evaluate, ask questions, or have advisors, as Luke talked about, asking you the questions so that you’re creating the strategic plan. The OKRs, the MITs, and that requires a productive pause. And Luke, the listeners know this. I repeat this just about every episode. It comes up in some way.

[23:12] But there’s a concept that, that I coach called the productive Pause. And the productive pause is simply this. It is a short period of focused reflection around specific questions that leads to clarity of action and peace of mind. And for the listener, you know, this is what Luke’s talking about. Take to develop these O OKRs, the strategic plan, the MITs, it takes a pause, it might be a daily pause.

[23:34] You wake up and you identify what are the things I gotta work on today and how, you know, what are the big rocks? What are the. The wind things I’ve gotta do to win the day today, or it might be strategic for the next year, two years, three years, something like that. Um, and that requires a hitting of the pause button.

[23:48] Look. How do you avoid burnout? I mean, you know, I, I, I know that whenever I was working full-time tr like I said, traveling nights, weekends, and building the business and fitting in my coaching calls, literally on my lunch breaks early in the morning, I get to the office early and do a coaching call or two and you know, squeeze them in on Saturday mornings.

[24:06] I was just. Burning the candle at both ends, how do you avoid and how did you avoid burnout?

[24:13] Luke Peters: Well, I did burn the candle on both ends. I, I think it’s okay. I know there’s a tendency, especially if you’re like on LinkedIn, everything’s a positive, you know, emoji. But let’s face it. I mean, if you’re gonna grow something, I, you know, even people I’m coaching like, you gotta grind.

[24:26] That’s awesome. You gotta grind. It’s not bad they have families, but my workaround on that is, so my answer, because I don’t want to make it a negative, my answer is sort of along the lines of what you just talked about, the focus pause. Uh, sort of that philosophy. There’s an author Cal Newport, uh, and he talks about deep work.

[24:42] I’ve got him on. Yeah, he’s been on. Oh yeah. Yeah. Oh man. Cal’s incredible, right? So

[24:46] Jim Harshaw Jr.: yeah. List, I’ll link that episode into the show notes. I don’t know the episode off the top of my head, but go ahead.

[24:50] Luke Peters: Yeah, that, that would be a great, yeah. Cal’s Cal’s incredible. And so anyways, the idea is so what I always think now, so now, now that I have all this experience, I look back and I think that what we did in 10 hours, we probably can do in about five hours of focused work.

[25:04] Maybe even four hours, honestly, because if you’re really focused and you all only work on the important things, we’re getting hit by all these things. If you actually just work on the things that, I mean, to be selfish, if you’re something for your business would be a revenue opportunity, let’s say, right?

[25:19] For uh, something actually gonna lead to revenue versus something that looks good, but I don’t know if it’s really gonna do anything. So if you focus on those things, and of course run your business, I even tell the people I coach, you can get it done about five hours a day. It’s all the slack and all the messaging and texting, everything else that adds up,

[25:36] Jim Harshaw Jr.: man.

[25:36] For the listener, please like hit rewind and go back and listen to the last 30 seconds or a minute of what Luke just said. I mean, you’ve gotta have these focused blocks of time where you’re pushing away all the distractions. You can get so much done, you can really advance the ball. Matter of fact, yesterday was a day like that for me.

[25:53] I had a full day. Blocked off and I just, I advanced the ne I moved the needle. I advanced the ball in, in so many areas and it, it’s just so helpful to have that clear blocks of time. You’re a sports guy, fitness, you know, you’re very fed, you’ve got your surfboards behind you. Were you able to. Keep working out.

[26:10] Did it play a role? And how does it play in your role, a role in your life now?

[26:14] Luke Peters: You know, for better or for worse? I just had the attitude that I just did it anyways. I mean, sometimes, I mean, for lack of a better word, the chips were just gonna fall where they’re gonna fall. Uh, I would do my best in the company.

[26:24] I was really into mountain biking for a while, uh, for about 10 years. So, but mountain biking does take longer than surfing. ’cause where I live, you, you gotta, you gotta go about. 30 minutes at least to get to some decent trails. Um, so it was more of a time commitment, but I did it. I guess that’s my answer.

[26:39] If, and for waves, it’s opportunistic. When there’s waves, you sort of have to go, I don’t know what to compare it to. I, I’m not saying it’s an addiction, but it’s a calling and if it’s good and you don’t go, you really don’t feel good that day. Actually, it’s, I don’t know. I mean, I don’t really know how to explain it.

[26:54] I’m sure there’s other sports like that, that are very dependent on circumstances or weather, and so if it was, if it’s, and, and it, you know. It may only be good, you know, 10 times a month, you know, in a good month. But also if you don’t go very often, especially with something like mound biking, sort of need to maintain a certain fitness to be able to do the sport, how you want to do the sport.

[27:13] So there are good reasons to keep doing it, but it’s good for mental clarity. It’s actually now. Now people are learning, you know, with all the biohackers. It’s good for your brain, it’s good for your memory, it’s good for all these things.

[27:23] Jim Harshaw Jr.: There’s a pill that they could, that you could sell that, that would give you all the benefits of exercise.

[27:28] You’d be a billionaire overnight. You know, I, I’ll give you another, here’s an example of another sport that’s weather dependent. I used to be a whitewater kayaker, and so whenever, whenever it would rain, whenever the rivers would come up, you know, we’d, we’d grab our boats and, and head out and, you know, into the mountains sometimes, and go steep creaking and, and find the river.

[27:44] Some of them would only run fur. Six hours or 12 hours or something like that, you know, ’cause they were like up in the mountains and it would just be a flood and you’d run it and then it would be down in a few hours. And then, you know, obviously a lot of rivers that are much bigger that would stay up for, you know, days or a week or something like that.

[28:01] So if you could go back, Luke, and talk to yourself when you started your business, what advice would you give? And I’m thinking of the listener right now who’s sitting there thinking, okay, Luke says everybody should start a business. And I’ve got, you know, some ideas here. I mean, for yourself, if you were to go back and talk to yourself in the early days.

[28:18] What would you tell yourself?

[28:20] Luke Peters: Okay, so what I would tell myself, so you know what, you know, I didn’t actually have strategic plans and budgets and forecasts till later on. Now for the listeners, like the first two years, none of this applies. First two years. You should actually, you’re just trying to do product market fit and it’s a, it’s, it’s a wild west.

[28:36] Totally fine. You know, just, just go at it and figure out what works, right? But once you have something that works, uh, I don’t know, once you’re making steady, if you’re selling a product, you know, once you’re making 500,000 maybe, ’cause remember your, your margin is a lot, is a, is a fraction of that 500,000.

[28:51] The, the, the advice I would say is button up the finances. It doesn’t cost that much. It’s like even right now, QuickBooks Online is actually impressively good, what you can do with it, and too many companies don’t button up their finances and not just finances, but don’t have strategic planning. And what happens is they’re not.

[29:10] Getting very good margins. So I’m a big believer that your margins need to be as high as possible. That forces you to come up with a competitive advantage and a good differentiation on your product. Too many companies have, they’re, they’re making 5 million, 10 million, but they’re not making any money. I.

[29:24] Oh, so, so I want the mindset different. I would tell myself, I want a different mindset. I’m gonna come in and I’m gonna make 15% on a product, which is, which is really good. If you can do 15% in a lot of consumer products, maybe it’s, uh, 10% is the average. 15 percent’s a good company, 20 percent’s like an outstanding company.

[29:41] 5% is what a lot of people are making. So they’re making 5%, $10 million sales. They’re making 500,000. So I would, I would flip that and focus more on creating a. A business that’s making cash, not revenue.

[29:55] Jim Harshaw Jr.: For the listener who is buying into what you’re sharing here today, and they want to take
[30:00] action here, what’s an action item that you would recommend, Luke, that they can do in the next, let’s say, 24 to 48 hours to start moving on the advice that you gave here today?

[30:09] Okay, so

[30:10] Luke Peters: what, what I would say is it might take a little longer than that, but what I’d say is start writing down your ideas. And what I’ve noticed with, uh, planning and ID and ideation is oftentimes we’ll have a great idea, but we are not writing ’em down. Then we have other great, but we don’t have a formal process, right?

[30:25] So, so create maybe a formal process every day you spend. Instead of 30 minutes on YouTube, it’s 30 minutes thinking about your business idea and writing it down. And if you’re really serious, you do that. And after a couple of weeks, the, if the best ideas are still there, ’cause typ, typically what happens is you’ll have a good idea.

[30:42] Then a couple days into it, you’re like, ah, okay, that’s why it’s not a good one. Then you go to the next one, but keep at it and oftentimes the good ideas will hang in there. And when you keep staring at that same idea after about, I would, for me, I think about three weeks or so. It’s still there and it still seems viable.

[31:00] Maybe you’re onto something and then you could take the next steps to, uh, move that forward.

[31:04] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Yeah. Excellent, excellent advice and something simple to do, easy to do, easy not to do. You know, and, and so for listeners, you know, if you wanna take action, this is something that you can start, you know, maybe could just be open, open a Google Doc or a note on your phone, or some just, just get started is what, what I’m hearing Luke, uh, hearing you say, uh, for a listener who wants to find you, follow you, maybe even sign up for some coaching, check out your website.

[31:26] Where can we direct them? Luke? Yeah,

[31:28] Luke Peters: just find me on LinkedIn post there quite often. And, uh, happy to help anybody. If you got any questions on your business, uh, no charge. You can just go to my website and schedule a, a free 15 minute conversation. I, I’m not, I won’t sell, I talk to, you know, young entrepreneurs or people just starting out all the time.

[31:44] And that’s over@apexceo.co. And, uh, happy to give your idea, look

[31:49] Jim Harshaw Jr.: excellent. And we will have that link in the action plan. So for listener, you can. Grab that action plan jimharshawjr.com/action. Luke, great meeting you. Great talking to you. Thank you for sharing your wisdom with us today. You got it, Jim.

[32:02] Thanks a lot. Appreciate it.

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