34: How Travel Transforms Business & the Collective Perspective (w/ Peter Witte)

Peter Witte, you’re with 360 Universal Solutions. That’s your business. We were put in touch by Maggie Brazil, who is engaged to Doug Jackson, who’s been on the podcast before. He was episode number two.

Yeah, yeah. So he was an early supporter. He’s been a partner.

Same with Maggie. They’re just. They’re great.

So when. When a referral or a connection comes from them, you know, it goes to the top of the list. You know what I mean? And meeting you last Friday, I was like, oh, okay, I get it.

I see why. And we vibed well. So I appreciate you coming on.

The person who’s was going to record today, Erica Holland, she’s going to be on a future episode. She got called to go to Columbia, as a matter of fact, to do some flower workshops that she couldn’t pass up. And so I appreciate you coming in and filling her seat until she can get back on.

But that’s kind of funny, actually, because your wife is from Columbia. My wife’s from Columbia, yeah. Absolutely.

And you’re from Venezuela originally. So we’re going to hear a nice accent through it. At least people will enjoy one of the voices in this episode this time.

What’s cool is we discovered that you lived in Indiana and you went to iupui, which. I am from Indiana and I went to iupui. Small world.

Yeah. So we’re brothers from that. Absolutely.

That alma mater, as they say. So that’s. That’s pretty cool.

You know, you are in merchant services and payment processing and several other industries, which we’re. We’re going to kind of COVID I thought it was really interesting. Popped out because I’m a traveler.

My wife’s a traveler. We love. Everybody in this room’s a traveler.

And you said that you and your wife has. Have visited four, or, excuse me, 24 countries in the last four years. That’s right.

Which is wild. So we’re going to dive into that really quickly to set it up. Some things that Maggie, Doug, people who have endorsed you on LinkedIn, from what I’ve seen, have said really nice things about you.

That you have high energy, good energy, that you’re dedicated, committed, super driven, and that you’re extremely hardworking and go above and beyond. From what I’ve gathered so far, that’s all true. And I don’t think that the amount of things that you do could be done without those qualities.

And so I want to unravel that through this conversation because I feel like there’s a lot there you Know, how do people go above and beyond and do all these things compared to someone who doesn’t or doesn’t know how to juggle so many responsibilities and ventures? Yeah. And so I maybe, maybe we start with what you do in a nutshell, the things that you do. So you’re in merchant services, you’re also involved in other ventures.

Maybe just give us some backstory on the business side of things and we’re definitely going to talk about those travels. Let’s do it. Okay, let’s do it.

So let’s talk about the businesses. So about 11 years ago or so, my sister in law and her husband, who happens to be my best friend, they started an insurance agency. I was their first employee.

I was a contract insurance agent at the time. I was also in banking. I’ve been a branch manager, regional manager for different banks throughout the country, really Indiana and here in Florida.

And we started looking at different kind of businesses. Myself and my wife and I, we started an insurance agency a few years ago and then we ended up having a unfortunate situation with a software provider who engaged in some fraud, unfortunately. And so we had to start looking at different ways in which we could reinvent ourselves a little bit.

And a conversation we started having a couple years ago is with a company out of Michigan called Deezers. And so Deezers has been doing credit card processing for 23 years. They’ve never raised rates, they’ve, they’ve never sued anybody, they’ve never been sued or never seen anybody.

Collections were like, all right, that’s the kind of people we like to do business with. So let’s see if we can kind of partner with them, learn the ropes a little bit more of the industry, grow it and make this kind of a nationwide business. And so I’ve always had a loan business.

I do commercial lending, I do residential mortgages, equity raises, things like that. But on the credit card processing side, we’ve been growing it now for the last three months. We have folks in the field.

So these are people who are visiting a bunch of businesses. We have folks who are closing business. We have people who had a call center and we are training somebody up in New Jersey, soon somebody in California, soon somebody over in Fort Lauderdale.

So we’re excited to grow that business. And part of my role is to help train people, close business and, and grow the business myself. So in terms of everything else, the other part of the business is lead generation.

So we help insurance agencies since that’s a way that we were able to grow our agencies over the years. Was the purchase, acquisition, aggregation of leads. And we now do that for other insurance agencies.

So high quality leads that are exclusive to them and, and we help them strategize on how to train their staff to deal with those leads, call them up, close the business, things like that. So, all right, did everybody get all that? I was taking notes. I barely could.

I mean, you’re in banking, you’re in commercial loans and loans, lending, credit card processing, call center, you do training, you’re focused on business growth, lead gen. It’s, in a way, you know, you can think of a business owner and a lot of those things, if you’re doing business right or. Well, a lot of those things are part of it and, or you maybe have to explore like, oh, do I need a loan? And how do I go about that.

So your experience really caters itself well to empowering you to really thrive. Now, I, I’m kind of curious, what, what led you to all of these ventures? Was it, was it a passion for banking? Was it a passion for credit card process? Just business and entrepreneurship in general. So I think business and entrepreneurship is a big part of it.

So in banking, branch manager for a number of years, business banker, I ran residential mortgages for three counties in Florida. And you realize there’s a whole lot of business owners, or maybe individuals who want to be business owners who have no idea what they’re doing. And sometimes they get themselves in trouble, sometimes they get the wrong advice.

Sometimes they just don’t have either a mentor or somebody who’s able to help them start that business or know how to, how to kind of structure the ideas a little bit. You and I were talking a bit about before the, the podcast started about how cool it is to see a business that has been able to persevere for four years and grow for four years and. And you look back at the early days and he’s like, man, I had two pennies to rub together or barely that.

And now I’m thriving and growing and, and to be able to help other business owners achieve something even remotely close to that is one of the most rewarding things that I’ve ever had in my. So we are able to kind of grow ourselves, but at the same time advise business owners, whether that be on the merchant services side, the lending side, the lead side, on how they can responsibly and quickly grow their businesses as well, and how we were able to share some of our experiences with them is, is
kind of a cool process that I enjoy. Yeah, so that seems to be your Fuel is growth.

Watching others grow. Yeah, for sure. For sure.

That’s what I like about what we do at Naming Creative, because we have a business that’s growing, and our business is helping other businesses grow and thrive. And it’s really empowering when you watch that unfold. And they’re.

They’re super stoked, and we’re stoked to be working with them. It’s like, it barely feels like work sometimes. Sometimes it’s hard, and you’re in the.

In the thick of it. But overall, it’s very enjoyable to be part of that process. Yeah.

And you’re definitely a connector. You’re involved in networking and things like that. And so when I meet people like you, it tells me a lot already when you’re in networking, when you’re caring about connecting because you’re giving in a way, you’re giving.

You. You emailed me very shortly, and I owe you a response because it’s a little heavier on, like, trying to connect me to resources for my business. And, like, immediately after one hour of meeting, or maybe it was an hour and a half, I time.

Good call. Yeah. But, you know, it’s like, that says a lot about what you’re trying to do for me.

I didn’t even ask you for that necessarily. We might have, like, touched on it, but you saw that, like, hey, I could help them in this way. How powerful is that? That, you know, the community that we’re in.

Doug. Doug and Maggie are in the same boat. Right.

A lot of our partners are just like that. Where I want to help you, I know it’ll eventually come back, and even if it doesn’t, I’m helping you, and that helps the greater good. We talked a lot about this even before the podcast.

Part of the key to a business growth is their perseverance. Right. Especially at the beginning.

Am I able to get through that initial stage of maybe uncertainty, of not everything working out? And a key part to that is surrounding yourself with great people, surround yourself with the right people. Right. And so if somebody comes into my network somehow, and that person has a need or there’s something I think that I could help them out with somehow, I will do that, because it’s not that I have an expectation that person will then return that favor, but I know that as I grow my network and I
improve my network, they will improve me in turn.

Right. So to be able to be one of those people who were able to early on, help a business persevere and help a business grow is a really cool thing. But it also helps you with your own personal business.

Imagine, in your name of creative, right? So if you grow a business that automatically tells another business, hey, he could do the same thing for me, right? If you are not successful at your business, nobody else is going to believe in you. And you’re like, well, my business is going to fail because I just can’t do what I’m doing. So the more successes, the more times we would help somebody else out.

I think that’s just good energy out of the world, number one. But two, if I can’t dedicate all of my energy to everybody, but the people that I meet and the people I come in contact with that I think are doing the right things, I can dedicate a great deal of energy to them and help them grow and help myself grow. Yeah, I love that.

And you know what’s. What’s helpful with determining where your time goes and the people that you interact with is your connections that you’ve made, the strong partnerships you’ve made. For instance, Doug and Maggie, trusting them, having a partnership with them.

And then you can just like I do, and they send me to Peter and they connect us. I. It’s already vetted. You know, I can take their word for it that this is going to be a good connection.

It’s worth my time. I don’t have to question it. And it works out that way.

So even connecting with the right people over time also helps with your time and your commitment level to directing your energy in the proper channels, because there’s only so much to go around. One of the things I wanted to ask you about is you’ve got a lot going on, plus your travels, which I want to dive into. It’s like, how do people like you, how do you juggle this efficiently without watering down your energy, without getting burnt out, without, you know, dropping the ball on relationships,
whatever that may be.

What are, what are some of the techniques and methods that you use to just stay on top of it? So, number one, I have an amazing wife, Right. So she always helps, right? So if ever somebody who is constantly encouraging me and, and encouraging us to grow our business, because we don’t see the business so much as just this amorphous thing that’s in the middle of nowhere. We see this as, this is an extension of our family.

This was going to allow us and our kids in the future to be able to travel more, to have a better education, a better healthcare, whatever the case may be, and our. And our growth of our business and our growth of our Family are interconnected one with the other. So I kind of view it that way.

But the second thing is we have an amazing team. We have five people in Colombia that help us with our support staff, some of our website design, things like that. We have other folks here in the US and if you don’t have a good team around you, whether that be an outsourced service, whether that be a full time staff, whether that be a contract person, it’s very hard for you to grow just yourself and do that because at some point if you are doing everything yourself, you just run out of time.

Right. But if you’re able to delegate to people that you trust, you can take on more. And if you don’t have those people, then yes, you are very limited in your business.

And I would say if you don’t have a team that you can rely on, then don’t expand your business too much. Focus on one thing that you’re going to do yourself until you can get to that point, because otherwise it’s impossible and you’re going to do a very poor job at all of those things and you’re going to give a very poor accord of yourself. Yeah, yeah.

You only can do so much. And that’s why, like I happily pay our bookkeeper, Adam Morris of Be Smart Accounting. Yeah, I am glad to pay him.

Or we have a business coach. Right. Like these are all things where he’s, he’s part, those, those two are part of our team.

I’m, I, I don’t want to do those things. You know, I have an accountant. I don’t want to do that and I’m not good at it.

So it is, it is an investment in my team or my direct team where I love to be audio editing all these podcasts, but there’s no way. And Jordan is stoked about that. He’s great at it and better at than me at this point.

So why not have him do it and bring someone on? And that also forces us to step into that role. When we started the audio division, we had zero audio clients and so we had to make it happen. Okay.

We’ve decided that we have an audio division now. We have to make this a reality and it kind of forces you to scale up too. So there’s that aspect, but I love that point.

That’s really good. Yeah, one, one person can’t do it alone. So having people that are dedicated that you can delegate and you can trust them.

Yeah. And that’s, that’s also a difficult thing. But over time you probably Get a lot better at figuring out who those kind of people are.

Yeah. And. But you mentioned this just a second ago, right? If.

If the people that you’re partnering with, you involve them, you treat them well, you pay them well, you could probably count on them to do something good for you. But if you are nickel and diming them all the time, you’re not treating them well, then then you probably not going to attract good people. You’re going to have a horrible reputation out of the market, and you’re going to struggle with attracting top talent for forever.

Really. So. Yeah.

Yeah. And then what are you doing? Yeah, what are you doing? Yeah, yeah. It’s really hard to scale a business that people do not aren’t stoked to be a part of it.

Oh, yeah, you know it. And it doesn’t always come down to dollar and cents, although it’s so important. But all the other benefits.

Do you have a flexible schedule? You know, we have a business coach for our team that we’re formalizing. You know, so all of our team has a dedicated business coach to work with them. Yeah.

It’s not just me, you know, and each other. We have a. Like a coach, like a hockey team.

When I played hockey as, like, it was important to have a coach, you know, And I’m kind of trying to like, level up my business in different ways and also seeing how with. With. Instead of.

Because we’re still. Yeah, we’re four years young, because that’s a lot of time and we’ve done a lot since then, but we don’t have crazy salaries yet. So what are other ways and methods that I can offer benefits to my team that empower them and make them super stoked about what’s ahead.

On top of that, their investment early on, they’re at the tip of the iceberg or bottom, however you want to put where they’re foundational. And if the business grows, then they’re right at the bedrock of this foundation to grow the team. So it’s all exciting because now it’s not my business, it’s ours, which is also fun.

It’s harder because now I manage like five people’s schedules rather than just mine, but I’m okay with that. Would you say that selling that vision to, especially at the beginning, to early employees is perhaps one of the biggest challenges you see in a lot of the businesses that you work with, I would imagine. Yeah, because it’s just like trying to take on an investor.

If you’re trying to tell that investor, like, look like I have this vision and this is where we’re going, we’re not there. So getting people to see what you have. Absolutely.

I’ve taken a route where I scaled very slowly as far as bringing people on. And so I used contractors a lot to get started. People who were in my networks, who I had previously worked with, who I knew were talented designers and artists and animators who I knew I could count on.

One was a former student of mine, he taught one of my classes because he was so good and I was like, one day I’m going to hire you. And so I’ve had him on several projects and he crushed it animating, but I couldn’t scoop him up full time at that moment. But at least I was able to use that talent.

And I knew that once I got to a certain point I’d be able to start to bring people on full time. But I did it very slowly and methodically. And also for me, it’s very important to get people who I really like to be around, who like to be around me, see the vision, are stoked about it, love what they do.

Those don’t come as frequently. And so I maybe have been a little more picky. But yeah, that’s of course a difficult part of scaling your business because the big part for me was when do I hire somebody when I need them and I’m over capacity or before I reach capacity because I there’s this awkward spot where you don’t have the money to hire somebody on, but you need to hire somebody on to get to that next level.

So when do you do it? There’s no great answer. In my opinion. It’s, you got to hire before it gets way too out of hand for sure.

And it’s just an investment. You take a hit, figure it out. Maybe you get a little loan just to bridge that couple months and you pay it back and now you’re thriving.

That’s right. You got to take that next level, otherwise you’re alone and you’re a freelancer. Absolutely, you’re capped.

Yeah, well, we talked about this a little bit when we were having coffee a couple of days ago and we both came from larger companies, we ended up starting our own businesses. And for me, a good turning point for me was surrounding myself with other business owners. So when I was in the corporate world, I dealt with business owners, but almost just only as customers, never as peers in many ways.

And the more self employed peers I had, the greater that reality was that I was going to be self employed myself. Right. I was also Going to have a business myself.

And I think just being able to see what their lifestyle was, how they came about it, what their struggles were, things like that. You’re like, those are all surmountable struggles. The benefits outweigh the costs.

It’s worthwhile. And I look back at some of my. My friends in banking, and some are doing great and some kind of hate what they do, but they’ve been there forever because they’ve never been able to kind of bridge that fear and.

Or get rid of that fear to be able to start their own thing. And it’s. And it’s kind of a crazy thing.

How did you transition from working for a big company to your own is. It was. What was the biggest kind of challenge there for you, boy? The turntables.

Oh, the turntables. I love it. Yes.

You got it. Am I allowed to do this? Ask you a question? Yeah. No, I love it.

Well, number one, at that big company, underneath my production sheet, I had another sheet underneath it, my plans for my business, because I was taking notes on when I get an idea, when an idea hit struck me, or in that toxic work environment, what I didn’t want to do with my business in a way, you know, Covid is such a dark cloud, and there were heavy layoffs in my business that I was in. And. And it was for the better because it led me to a payment processing company where I became a digital
marketer.

And it kind of was like the last gap in creative production, business marketing design that I didn’t have experience in. And once I was like, a year and a half into that role, I was like, that was the last puzzle piece to where I was like, I felt really empowered to start my business. Plus, they, Kyle hall, the.

The owner of that business, and my marketing director, Dustin Capper, they were super supportive of me starting my own business. They knew that I was going, that’s awesome. And.

And we’re friends to this day. Dustin’s work with me. We’ll have them on the podcast.

But ultimately, it was like it was just a matter of time. I always knew it. I was.

I’ve been involved in startups and in smaller agencies. I just always had the bug. And I think that you were talking about, like, some people just don’t take the leap.

And it’s not for everybody because it’s really a lot, but once you’re in it, there’s, like, nothing more fun. But, yeah, I think it was just. It was just a progression.

It was a progression of passion that I knew I was going to do it. And finally feeling empowered to know the process of all these different aspects of what I wanted to start, which is a creative production, marketing agency. So that was my transition.

It’s a lot more nuanced from that. But what. What about yours? Yeah, so I was in, I think, especially banking.

I kept on meeting business owners and I’m thinking, man, that guy’s dumb as a box of rocks, but he’s doing great. Or not that. But I almost kept on thinking, what is the skill that person has that I don’t have? Or what’s.

What is it about them that I don’t have? That that’s maybe either keeping me here and not starting my own thing. And I always kept on trying to leave banking. I became operations manager for a metal recycling company.

I bought a bar that didn’t go well, all these different things. So I kept on trying to do something to get out of it, and it kept on dragging me back. And I said, well, maybe I don’t leave it entirely.

And I have some of the same functionality I had in banking, which is credit card processing, loans, things like that. That’s still banking, but I have it. I do it on my own.

And so it kind of allowed me to think about self employment without having to do such a big leap from a skill set, if you will, Because a bar is completely different. A metal recycling was completely different. And you were in metal recycling.

Oh, that was the craziest thing, man. That is the wildest industry on the planet. I am so fascinated with trash.

Oh, I don’t know why. Like, where does it go? What can we do with it? How can we use it? It’s wild to me. What can.

Can you talk about a little? Yeah, so. So we have three plants. 45.

I was over like 45, 47 people. Geez. People would come in with tons and tons of trash one time.

You’d have people who were trying to steal like markers on graves, people trying to steal like manhole covers. So we all constantly had cops picking people up for stealing metal. Right.

You’d have to report them. They have a man, they’re trying to sell me a manhole. But then you’d have people who worked at like some of the cable companies bring in tens of thousands of dollars a month in cable that they had taken from a replacement that they did that just came over to recycle it.

So we would have inspectors from China, we’d have people from Latin America coming in and just buying shiploads, entire shipping containers full of metal Whether this be aluminum, whether that be copper, or we’d have very, almost like medical grade gold. It would be all these different components. And so we would have tons of different things that we were doing.

But I always felt, I was like, I would tell my wife, I was like, I think the FBI is going to raid us someday. This just feels so dirty because a lot of the business owners that own those metal recycling companies have been around for, seems like 100 years. And they would make some comments about maybe somebody disappeared in my yard one day, maybe my machinery was used for this.

And I’m like, I don’t know if I want to know about that. So there was another division company that would take cars apart and we’d sell, I don’t know, engines to Mexico or used car parts for F150s. The doors, for example, would go to somewhere else.

And so you didn’t melt it down or. No, we never did it. We collect it and then disperse it and we would either smash it together.

We’d have a machine that would turn a car into something the size of a microwave oven, for example. No way. Yeah.

And so. And then sometimes if you didn’t take all the fuel out of the tanks, there would be an explosion that was always exciting. We were running out of fire extinguishers every month.

It was, it was crazy. So that’s why. Yeah, but it was a very different kind of world and, but also a good world to see.

And I think that you can be kind of isolated about what everybody else does for work. And you say, man, this is, this is good work. This is hard work.

I mean, it’s nothing I’ve ever experienced before in my life. And this is a completely different industry that I have very little experience in. I know management.

But we, we brought in a consulting firm to teach the. The management team Lean Six Sigma Concepts. We got everybody.

Green six Silma. I’ve got my yellow belt. Yeah, we got the green belt.

So that was kind of cool. Yeah. How did you get into that? The metal recycling was.

One of my biggest customers at TD bank. Said, I like the way that you’re managing your branch. I’d love for you to come over and be my operations manager at my plan.

Whoa. You made that big of an impression. And apparently so.

Yeah. So then I was like, oh, that’s cool. So I’m interested.

Let’s talk a bit about salary. Talk about what that looks like. And I only lasted there for about seven months.

It was just too different an industry. I went back to banking after that. But it was.

You couldn’t like vibe with it, like your passion wasn’t in it or. No, I mean, it was the. The nature of the industry is one that.

It is very gruff and it is one that. I’ll give you an example. We had.

We would have radioactive material show up sometimes because parts of Florida have radioactive material in their metal. Right. So the process of getting rid of that, half the time you’re thinking, I don’t know if this is the right way to do it.

Is this legal? I just. There were so many things that I didn’t know about that I was like, man, this is going to get myself or the company into trouble. I don’t know if I want to.

I want to continue to approach this. I understood banking very well. I understood all the risks of it.

This was just a very different. It’s a different world. Different world.

I think that’s fascinating, though. First off, it’s so cool to be involved in other worlds. That’s why I love what I do, because I work with all sorts of different businesses and we have to get a pretty good idea of what they’re doing in order to help them grow.

But you know, like, trash recycling, you know, the process of what. Where things go in the world. Sometimes we just flush the toilet, throw out the trash, and absolutely forget about it.

And I constantly. When I bring out the trash, we recycle. I think about like, where’s this paper going versus this can? Like, what is the process? Eventually I’ll like, go down that rabbit hole.

But it is an absolute, completely different world. I’d recommend also, if you haven’t seen it, but to people out there, there’s an amazing, super powerful documentary called Wasteland. And there’s a huge.

One of the biggest dumps in the world in Rio de Janeiro. Yeah. I believe.

And there are trash pickers and this artist go. It’s a document. This artist who goes to that.

That area and works with the trash pickers. And then they create pieces of art from that trash. And then he sold those pieces of art to help those people.

It is. I mean, if you don’t cry during that documentary at least once. Yeah.

You know, you got to check around for your soul. Yeah. But it was like super powerful.

And you just see these mountains of trash and it’s like, what do we do with that? There’s gotta be better ways. Luckily, like, recycling’s a thing or, you know, how can we power things? I don’t know. If I didn’t have this company and I had Some connections to that.

I would be very interested in that. I can get you some connections to that, at least. That world.

For sure. Yeah. All right, we’re shutting her down.

Yeah. Thanks, Peter. Because there’s a guy in Tampa, his job was to take old computers and separate them.

Take the gold pieces out, take the other metals out, and he would sell pallets full of these little metal pieces that were taken out of computers. I’d love that. Yeah.

Yeah. He was a really interesting guy. Yeah.

We have a junk hauler in our networking group. That’s why I love networking. I have connections to particular people.

But it sounds like that guy’s maybe more deep in it. But I still, I want to have him on. Like, you know, when you go to the trash, what’s the process of like demoing a house and then bringing this trash and all this stuff that’s like not useful anymore? How can you make that useful? You know, how can you like grind it up and then make a house from it? As long as it’s not radioactive.

Yeah. Or if it is radioactive, what is the process? Yeah. Because there’s got to be.

Or you just bury it. Yeah. We just pulled on a thread here.

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Well, that brings up an interesting point about the Latin America. Right. So for Brazil, for trash picking.

So I grew up in Venezuela and I would say that a big differentiator between a lot of third world countries and the US is if I graduate from, I don’t know, University of Michigan, University of Indiana. I did well in my studies. I could get a good job.

I don’t need a connection necessarily. My uncle doesn’t have to be the president of the company. My mother doesn’t have to be the owner of the company, whatever the case may be.

And in a lot of countries That’s a big differentiator. I could have graduated top of my class in Brazil. And if I didn’t have the right connections, it’s possible I didn’t get a job that paid very well.

So when I think about documentaries like you mentioned, I said, what drove a person to have to pick through trash and make art and sell it? What was the opportunity was missed or what opportunity did not have that I have that didn’t require me to do that? Right. I don’t have to pick trash. I make enough money that that’s not a necessity for me.

So whenever I go and I travel somewhere else, I think about, okay, what was it about their current situation in life that they didn’t either have the support necessary to get a job that paid enough that they would have to be the person selling, I don’t know, shoes on the. On the side of the street kind of a thing, or picking through trash to make art or whatever that job may be that I thought, wow, that’s, that’s crazy. So I, I’m very grateful to have traveled to the point where I can see some of
those differences that I. That I can then appreciate the opportunities available in the US for example.

So I was wondering that what is your, you know, okay, because that’s a wonderful mental exercise when traveling. I think there is so much power to traveling. And here’s a segue to it, you know, when you’re, when you are thinking about those things also, are you thinking about how can I apply this to what I do, Whether it be how I can hire on or scale a part of the business to then hire people who might have missed those opportunities or provide opportunities that otherwise wouldn’t be missed.

You’re like, yeah, the power of traveling is get you out of your bubble and out of that, of your normal, you know, lens. It’s so, so powerful. Anybody that I’ve ever met who’s well traveled has this much greater scope of what actually is going on in the world.

Nobody could ever know all of it, but having a greater appreciation, a gratefulness for it, because I feel that I’ve traveled a lot. Yeah, maybe not as much as you, I don’t think, but nonetheless, it has made me who I am. It literally, I wouldn’t be where I am, who I am.

I wouldn’t be married to someone who I am. I wouldn’t have the family, this business without traveling. That’s where I put all my money and it is worth every dime.

And, and I just, I just. Sometimes I’m wondering And everybody has their own thing, but it’s like you aren’t even curious what’s out there. Luckily now you could watch a documentary and get a good feel for it.

But I’m, I’m kind of curious at a higher level, you know, do you feel that about your travels, where it’s made you who you are? 100%. And so I’ll give an example. So we lived in Panama for a year.

So in 2003, my parents were still in Venezuela. My parents are missionaries. And the army showed up because there was some spat between Venezuela and the US at the time.

And the army knocks on the door and they tell my parents they have two weeks to leave the country. All Americans are getting kicked out. The U.

S. army was the one knocked on. No, the Venezuelan army knocked on all Americans doors to kick out.

Okay. Ah, so then you realize, okay, that’s, that’s a crazy situation. So then my parents went to Panama.

So while they’re in Panama, my mom would help indigenous women in the, in a. It’s a tribe called the Kuna native tribe in Panama, and they are the largest Indian population there in, in Panama. And they would, she would help these women make.

Well, they knew how to make these traditional clothing and garments and things like that. And my mom would help sell them in the US My mom wouldn’t make them, but she would sell them in the US that additional income meant that these women could now keep their daughters in school until they graduated. Pregnancy rate goes down, divorce rate goes up a little bit.

Because a lot of these women realized my lazy husband, who does nothing and is kind of abusive, I don’t need him. Right? And so you start to think about on one end, what difference can we make in the world? And it might not seem like a big deal, but just taking some of that kind of authentic art and selling the US Send the money back for them was, was kind of transformative in terms of like travel. The first trip I went on with my wife, we went to Cuba.

And Cuba is, is for somebody who’s never traveled outside, it’s a, it’s a crazy place too. And for me to be able to see how we travel together and how when we came to the country, our mind wasn’t clouded with prejudgment about it. We just came 100% clear.

Let’s figure out what this place is about. No prejudgment. I know I, I knew a decent amount about Cuba, but I didn’t want to go in and say, okay, this and that.

That’s the way to go in any place, any. Honestly, any situation. Yeah, but.

Yeah. And so you say, okay, what did I learn from this? What did I take out of it? What’s. What are some good things, some qualities? And a lot of times you say, man, this place could have been this, or I could tell this place Was this before, etc.

We recently were in Cambodia, and Cambodia had a recent civil war, and they’re still under a dictatorship. And our tour guide, he’s probably in his 60s or so, spoke really good English. But he said, listen, when I was growing up, there was.

Pol Pot was there. He was killing people left and right. And one of the reasons they would kill people if they spoke English.

And so he said we had to learn English hiding under the brush. And we had one lady in our village who spoke English, perfect English, and she taught a lot of us. So a lot of the tour guides that are my age, that’s how we learned English, hiding in the jungle, basically.

So he was still very nervous about speaking about the government in many ways. And in Cambodia, we were there for only a couple days, but we went to Angkor Wat, and there’s still some bullet holes in Angkor Wat from their civil war and people kind of shooting at each other. And so you realize this is a place that still lives as if people lived 70 years ago.

80 years ago. And the infrastructure is so poor in many areas of the country. And that’s kind of what happens.

You have such a big concentration of power, and not everybody gets access to it. And what happens. And so that, to me, is, once again, you learn a lot about it.

You put your life in perspective, you become more grateful for it. And if you take anything out of traveling, it is my life problems are likely very insignificant compared to life problems of people all over the world, 100%. So I’m losing my temper over taking three extra minutes in the McDonald’s wait line.

Right. Why is my life really that easy, that this is what’s making me upset? Then shame on me, right? And so I think with travel, it helps you kind of put things in perspective, gives you an appreciation for people elsewhere. We’ve seen and hired some amazing talent in other countries as well.

And you realize, man, if these people lived in the US or lived in England, for example, they’d be millionaires. They’d be crushing it. They’d be crushing it.

Yeah, totally. So I think it’s a humbling thing as well. And you realize, man, that person, if we had switched lives and I had been born where they’re born, and they were born where I’m born, they probably would have been more successful than me.

Right? Yeah. And I think understanding that sometimes Even I’d say 75% of who you are is completely out of your control. I was born in Venezuela to American parents, so I got dual citizenship.

I have no control over that. That alone is interesting. We would go to school in Spanish.

We’d come home. My parents would homeschool me in English. I had two parents who were well educated.

Both have their master’s degrees. Not everybody’s born in a household like that. Not everybody’s born with a full household of both parents still there, who are awesome parents who are willing to teach their kids English in the afternoon.

And we learned English, Spanish, and then we had physics classes in English and physics classes in Spanish. Right. Cool.

I got the opportunity to come to the US to go to college. Not everybody has that opportunity. And so.

So don’t be so arrogant about where your current situation is in life. Travel some more. Understand that in the grand spectrum of the world, you are not going to say an insignificant piece, but don’t take yourself so seriously.

Don’t take some of your more insignificant problems so seriously. It could be much happier in life. Much better husband, much better boss, whatever the case may be, man.

100%. We’ll snippet lots of that to just put out there. For me.

I feel like what things that you were just saying would be solutions to a lot of the problems here, you know, in the US where there’s such, like, tribalism going on, whether it be politics or, I mean, even down to, like, sports, where it’s like, if you traveling. One thing that has taught me is that I am. We are very much alike.

We all love to laugh, and we want to be healthy. We love our family and friends. Music is universal, and there’s talent everywhere.

And our differences are actually so small. And when you travel, you see just how small it actually is when you come home and you’re even more in common with people. But people extrapolate one difference of disagreeing with the number of how much tax should be.

Whatever. And now your enemies, they’re. They’re literally against you when we actually should be on the same team.

And it’s like, you know, if there could be, like, a little prescription for everybody, just like, okay, for a month, you got to go to, like, a couple different places out of these borders. And that’s just. We need you all to get recalibrated as far as your perspective.

I think. I think that would be a really big game changer as far as our collective perspective, you know. And what’s cool is it even if you can’t travel physically, you can experience a lot of that, like whether it be connecting with people from other countries online or learning about it in a documentary.

But also I think the focus is elsewhere. So, you know, it’s, it’s kind of a shame that that’s not more. Taken more seriously that, that, that would change the world in a way.

And I’m not trying to be, you know, idealistic or grand or whatever it is, but I really, you know, this isn’t a new thought. No. I felt it early on when I taught in Poland for a month.

And in the middle of that, I went to Auschwitz. And that was more powerful than ever. I get shivers right now thinking about that day and I’ll never, ever forget it.

And the people in Poland were so fun, so friendly, great food. I mean, it’s smart and it’s just a different place. And I just, I, I taken so much from the, the similarities and any differences ever.

You and I met last Friday. Yeah. I feel like we’re similar.

Absolutely. You know, and we have plenty to talk about. I knew that when we hit record, there’d be no problem.

Like, okay, what do you want to talk about? So it’s just a very powerful thing and like, for you. So the last four years you have traveled to 24 countries. So if my math is right, that’s like two countries a month, six a year.

Yeah, right. One every two months. Yeah.

Right. So, I mean, do you bundle it? So you, you go like on a trip for a month and you hit a few countries, like, what’s your, what are your goals? Is it for, for business, for pleasure, for both. So there was an experience I had.

I was in Yellowstone national park and there was a traffic with a bunch of bison. Right. I couldn’t move my car.

But while I was in that car, I closed a loan. And I was thinking, okay, I can do business being remote. This is the way to be.

So no matter what it is, that’s a key component. So we. My wife is a producer for iHeartradio.

She’s an on air talent. So she takes her mini recording studio with her as we travel. So we’ve recorded in Thailand, she’s recorded in Australia, she’s recorded in Europe, she’s recorded in South America, et cetera.

And so we’re able to work as we travel. Sometimes there are experience that we say, you know, what let’s shut off all the equipment. Let’s just enjoy this.

If you don’t have to work while you travel, your travel could be a lot cheaper. Because sometimes if you need good Internet, maybe your hotels have to be a little bit more and stuff like that. Yeah.

But we go in there kind of without a preconceived notion of what the place is. But we like to pack our days. So when we were in, in Thailand, I think we had something scheduled from 7 in the morning till 4 o’clock in the afternoon every single day.

Right. So it was tours, going, seeing elephants, going, seeing temples, whatever the case may be. So we love to travel, we love to kind of immerse ourselves in the culture every time we try to get a local guide.

Yeah. And so when we were in Bali, we went to one of the water temples there and our guide, he is, he’s Buddhist and he had a little temple in his house. Every morning he brought a little like offering that he put right on his car.

And this is an offering to nature, he’d say, and to see somebody who was that immersed in his culture, loved his religion kind of a thing, it doesn’t mean that I’m Buddhist, but I could appreciate his affinity to that culture, his sincerity with it. And he explained the different traditions and we were very, very conscious about asking, hey, listen, we would love to participate in this ceremony at the water temple. Would you be offended if us non practicing Buddhists are able to do this? He’s
like, no, that’d be fine.

This is how you do it. This is how you are respectful. Don’t do this.

This would be disrespectful. I was like, cool. So for us to be in that world, appreciate the world, but not be arrogant enough that we say, okay, we can’t respect and appreciate these differences.

And so we ask a lot of questions. We love to explore different places. If there’s a suggestion for people on traveling to Asia, don’t take as much clothes.

They have a lot of good places that you can just do laundry there for cheap. And so I would have probably taken half the amount of clothes that we took. We, we scheduled the last one in, in Asia, we did Turkey, Cambodia, Thailand, Philippines, Indonesia, specifically Bali.

We did it in about a month. In a month. Well, if you’re packing your days like that, you can be really efficient.

Yeah, yeah, that’s cool. So you flew into Turkey. That was.

Yeah, I went to Turkey. It was like a nine hour layover. If you’ve never been to Turkey, Istanbul’s Airport is amazing.

Istanbul itself is amazing. You’ve been there before? Yeah. Actually you’ve been to much more in Turkey than I have, but, but it’s, it’s a beautiful place.

Just the history of it. Yeah, it was, it was really cool. So.

Yeah, 100%. I, I couldn’t agree with you more on local guides. I volunteered at a computer graphics conference called SIGGRAPH since 2008.

And in traveling they have a Siggraph Asia in the winter of every month and then a Siggraph normal in North America somewhere. When I go to Asia, it’s cool because the, the, the people who are from there take us out or you know, after the, the conference in Seoul, Korea, me and four buddies traveled through China for three weeks and you know, went Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Macau, and back to Hong Kong. And our buddy, my buddy, he speaks all sorts of languages and knows a lot.

And we had a guide and every. A friend who would take us to the Great Wall of China. And he was a journalist.

So we went past where you’re supposed to go. Yeah, it’s just magical. Yeah.

In Cuba, me and my wife went on a cruise and we got to go to Cuba for one day. Very cool. But we made the most of that one day.

It was really cool because we just were like, let’s just go and we’re gonna find someone who can bring us around. We’ll find them. And we walked out.

There’s like all the old cars lined up and one of the guys is there. He looks nice and his name’s Shrek. And so he takes us on like a two hour car ride and he’s like, like, you guys wanna, you guys wanna keep hanging out? And we’re like, yeah, how much is it? And he says an amount.

We’re like, oh my gosh. Yeah. And so we continue to.

He keeps taking us to all sorts of places, places he loves, you know, places where it’s like this hidden spot in like a wooded area. And there’s this bar and they give us. When you order a pina colada, they give you the bottle and just the juice in your cup and you just pour however much.

And then they just let us have the bottle. And he was driving. He took liking to us so much that he just took us through the whole day.

It was the whole day with him. He took us to a museum and everything. We just hung out.

He stopped on the side of the road. He’s like, you guys mind if I stop really quick? He had seen someone at a fence working on their car, got into his trunk, got his tire iron out, went and helped him real quick. Came back, he’s like, thanks a lot, guys.

We’re just like, this is awesome. Yeah. And he was so nice.

Gave me a pack of Cubans to take, a bottle of rum to take. Like, just, here’s a gift. And it’s like, that was.

I’ll never forget that experience, even. Even though we were pretty drunk by the end of the day. Yeah, sure.

And it was like, it was just a beautiful day and. And we learned a lot about Cuba. He showed us his little ledger that had like, he got three bags of bread, you know, a carton of eggs.

Because it’s just a different world. And it was neat because we were able to, like, share in a day where we were so different and so same, so, so similar in that. In that same day.

And yeah. Just never forget that kind of stuff. So I wanted to, like, kind of tell that story because it’s just so powerful.

You know, I can think back on that moment and it’s just so vivid and so important. And my wife listening to this, she’ll. She’ll be able to picture that whole day and how important it was to us.

Yeah. And how special it was. And then we got back on a cruise ship and, you know, got in the pools and saw comedy that night, but, you know, got back into our world, which was not Cuba.

And like, you know, switching gears, how funny it is that you can just go from 10 miles an hour to a thousand like that. Anyways. It’s just.

It’s incredible what’s out there. And you just have to take the step to, number one, get a passport. It’s like 150 bucks or whatever.

You go, take your picture. I know there’s a huge majority of Americans who don’t have a passport. What is your ticket to the world? Yeah.

And we are so privileged that you just have to get like a visa that’s automatically approved, maybe. And. And you’re.

You can go anywhere in the world. Not everybody also has that privilege that we do. So I’ve road tripped to 47 states in the US and I would say for people who are fearful about traveling overseas, California is as dissimilar to New Orleans as Belgium is to Germany.

Right. So if you are fearful about doing a big leap and going to Asia, for example, you want to dip your toe into the water. Start with experiences in the US There are small towns in Vermont that people speak French and they have amazing fresh maple syrup that they put on Fresh pancakes, which are amazing.

And they’re completely different than people who are in Houston, Texas. Right. For example, and appreciate some of your own dissimilarities in the US And I think it can give you a really good insight into how to navigate dissimilarities in other countries.

Right. So people in Minnesota are very different than people in New York. And I’ve done sales all over the world.

I’ve sold software for a number of years. And calling somebody in Minnesota, they’re very polite and it’s very likely they’ll ever tell you no because they’re kind of embarrassed to. Whereas you call somebody in New York, it’s very abrupt, you know, if exactly where you stand, it’s yes, no.

And so people might confuse that with rudeness, but it’s just a different way of doing things. And California is different as well. And so it helps you prepare for the huge differences somewhere else.

Now, you mentioned earlier resetting yourself by traveling to other countries and your travels. What would you say are two or three countries that people must visit in order to be reset? That you’d say is a must? Oh, man. Well, I mean, I’m biased because my wife’s from Turkey, but Turkey has been eye opening because the people are great and it’s weird that they’re going backwards in as far as the progression of their country and it’s sad to see.

But what’s beautiful is the people are still so warm. They really care about family and there’s amazing history there. Istanbul’s really cool.

Huge. However, spending, if you go there for a week, spend one or two days in Istanbul and then go along the coast, you know, go to Cappadocia and FS and Butterfly Valley, these places. My wife took me on a one week birthday tour through Turkey and I, I mean it’ll never, I’ll never forget it.

And so that’s cool. That’s like Eurasia. Okay, so then I would recommend going to Asia.

Asia. China was really cool because I, you, we took a train from, from, you know, Beijing to Shanghai to Hong Kong and those even just those three spots that gave us a really good flavor of Asia, you know, of China and, and that was really cool. So Vancouver has a very special place in my heart where it’s like, it’s.

I think that’s more, that could be more comfortable. It’s like, oh, that’s out of the country, but it’s not so, so different, you know. And Poland for me was really cool because of the, the history again.

And I would, I Would just recommend doing something that is like going to make you really uncomfortable. Like going to Auschwitz. We weren’t, our crew was not like, yeah, woohoo.

It’s like that drive even there. We watched a documentary to like prep and it was, it was in the bus ride home. It was silent and our eyes were all puffy.

I mean it was, it was very important and very moving and very uncomfortable. And I feel like it’s really good to get outside your comfort zone. So honestly, anywhere, spin a globe and put your finger down and go.

Because one thing I’ve learned is that we’re similar all over the place. Also, most people are super nice and want to help. It is the bad apples and the crap going on in the world that make the news that give people this perception of oh my gosh, there’s such disarray.

And like even Ukraine, a Ukrainian company just gave us a lead. Yeah. And they’re super nice and they’re conducting business and followed up formally and are so nice.

It’s crazy. And they’re in the middle of a war. Referring me in America business, it’s, you know, that’s not, it’s just, that’s not everything that we see in the scope.

So just go anywhere. Yeah, doesn’t matter. The places to me now are, it’s just, it’s just what resonates with me personally because of those personal experiences.

And that’s all I can speak about. I also recommend an easy way to travel is book a cruise for a week. Because you go to three or four destinations, you get a taste, you’re brought right there, you go back on the ship, you’ve got your, your lodging, your food, your entertainment taken care of.

It’s super good investments. Not great for the environment. And I’m working on figuring out how I can do my best next.

I am, yeah. Just sail. But how about you? How would you answer that question? Top three? No, I, I, I think the way you answered is great.

And, and I, and I think places like even so Canada, Mexico. I would say that of some of the places I’ve been to in Mexico, especially Latin America, people are perhaps the proudest of being Mexico Mexicans than almost any other place. If you go to Oaxaca, for example, a lot of people don’t even speak Spanish.

They still speak, speak old Mayan languages. Right. So which is really cool.

And you get a really good example of how Catholicism and animism kind of clashed. Right. And what happened and how were these things built and how this happened.

Another one, I would say Was really kind of eye opening, was to see, like, Panama and you see how the canal impacted the culture. Another one was Berlin and Germany. So in Berlin, you still have where the wall was, the Berlin Wall.

And if you look on one side, you see the Russian side, or what used to be the Russian side, and on the other side, you see what the German side is. And you can see the architecture is different, the personality of the people are different. From one side of that wall to the other is incredible.

Southeast Asia for sure. And my brother and his wife, they live in Africa. I haven’t made it there yet, but they think that’s a good place to go.

So, yeah. Yeah, we’re all from there. We’re all from there.

For sure. For sure. Yeah.

That’s amazing. I mean, we could. We could sit here and talk all day.

We have reached a point in our episode called the Rapid Fire. Oh, let’s do it. Let’s do it.

So essentially, I try to ask the same similar questions to all my guests to see what similarities there are and what differences there are in these questions. And it’s just a good way to get some extra juice out of you. Let’s do it.

So number one, I got to start with, where’s your number one top place that you’ve ever traveled in the world? I could live in Bali. And top big city would be Sydney, Australia. Okay.

Yeah. Gotta make it out to both of those. Then adding to the list.

You hear that? Hyundai. That’s my wife’s name, by the way. Make a mental note.

There you go. Do you have a favorite book? So there are two. One is called Guns, Germs and Steel Heal.

Great book about kind of the history of the world and why we have these differences and why we have these similarities. And the other book is. I’m big on philosophy, so I think anything from.

From Aristotle. I did my dissertation on. On the difference between a good person and a good citizen.

So just look up Aristotle’s thoughts on that. Him and Socrates go back and forth on that. So that’s cool.

Love it. Oh, that’s great. Yeah, yeah.

What is your biggest source of inspiration? The need to make sure that. So I had a conversation with my grandfather before he passed away, and he tells me, peter, remember that your last name is my last name. So everything that you do now, future, in the past, also impacts who I am now in the future, in the past.

And so for me to make sure that I do the same thing for my family, for my wife, et cetera, that everything that I do Is. Is to make sure that we grow and become better human beings and a better family. Strong family.

Wow. That’s my inspiration. That’s great.

I love that perspective on it. Your grandpa seems cool. Yeah.

You could listen to one album or artist, musical artist, on repeat for the rest of your life. Who is it? Oof. I know.

That’s like the hardest question of the episodes for some reason. I like Kygo. He’s more like electronic music.

Oh, yeah. Another one. His rendition of IC Fire There is gold.

Amazing. Amazing. Another one that I listen to on a pretty regular basis would be one that I. That I kind of have on repeat.

And I think John Legend, I could listen to pretty much on repeat for quite some time. Evolvers. Oh, album.

So good. Oh, yeah, yeah. I’ll put those two right now.

Okay. Okay, I’ll accept it. You’re doing well.

You’ve got full points so far. One person, dead or alive that you could hang out with for one day, who would it be? I love hanging out with my wife. So alive.

I would say my wife, if it would be lucky you. Yeah, I know, I know. If it was somebody that was dead, man, I think I would say just ask Jesus and just ask him a bunch of questions.

Or somebody that I think was like a long term. Maybe like Buddha or one of those guys, which would be, I guess his name was. Those two guys.

Okay. Yeah. Someone who’s just like, yeah, yeah, yeah, in history.

Yeah, yeah. Good deal. Good deal.

I’ll allow it with a dead and alive to answer. Because you, you were creative with your answer on that last one. Yes.

What’s your definition of success? An approximation to the maximization of your potential, whether that be financially, whether that be emotionally, would that be intellectually, etc. And fully understanding that you will never 100% maximize that potential. But getting close to it, that’s something you should strive to become.

The best version of a husband you could be. The best version of a father you could be. Maximize your potential as a business owner.

Maximize your potential as an intellectual. That’s my definition of success. And if you’ve been able to approximate that you’re successful.

I love that. That’s a great way to put it because perfection is just not a thing. But you can strive for it.

That journey, you know, it’s not that destination, which isn’t even a thing, is so important. Huge on that. Well, it seems like you’re doing that from everything we’ve talked about and.

And future conversations, because I look forward to our ongoing partners at this point. It’s been a. It’s been a real pleasure.

Real quick for people. What are your plans for 5, 10 years? What do you. Where do you see yourself in 10 years? The business.

So on the credit card processing side, we want to be in every state in the US and we also want to be in multiple countries, being able to have business there in terms of the loan business, similar. Just. Just growth and on the.

And the lead business, maybe expanding to other markets on the lead side and not a monopoly. That. That’s a good word.

But we’re just growing our. Our team to the point where everybody’s successful, making good money. So.

Yeah, I love that. Yeah. And I guess you could probably put up, if you keep your pace of traveling 24 countries in four years, by the time you’re, you know, for.

In 20 years, you’ll have traveled the entire world. Yeah, that’s the goal. Is that a goal? That’s a good goal.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I’d love to, like, go as many places as possible.

Some maybe aren’t, like, possible, but. And that’s okay. I want North Korea right now, but then that.

Yeah. Fun fact, I have a North Korean stamp in my passport from Dorsan Station. So I was like, at a.

At a train station. That’s like a safe spot. But.

Yeah, wild. Yeah, it was wild. The dmz, like, learning about that.

You just outside your comfort zone for sure. Yeah, that’s my goal now then, to get the DMC passport. Okay.

Yeah. Yeah. I’ll give you some pointers, connect you with some people.

Well, cool. Wrapping this up. I always like to ask anybody listening, whether they’re an entrepreneur or a traveler or young or old, what’s your biggest piece of advice for someone to leave them with? So take that.

Leave. It doesn’t mean that you quit your current job to 100, start a new entrepreneurship kind of venture, but get going, do it. I mean, if you think you’re too old to start something that’s never true, you think you’re too young to start something that’s never true, get out of your comfort zone.

Like we mentioned a bunch of times. Go travel. There are pairs of shoes that cost more than flights that you can take to other cool places, road trips somewhere, check out new places, expand your horizons and surround yourself with better people than perhaps you’re surrounded with now.

And if you haven’t been able to find good people in your life, maybe expand that a little bit too. Maybe you find those in your travels, maybe you find those in books. Maybe you find those in conferences and networking groups, et cetera.

But surround yourself with better people. Travel to more places, make that leap. Start more businesses.

That’s it. I don’t think I could have said it better myself. So.

Mic drop on that. Don’t. Don’t drop this mic.

It won’t drop. It’s connected. I see it.

I can do it. Unplug it. I really appreciate your time.

I mean, it’s been really cool to get to know you. Obviously, our connections and the people who we trust, it. It’s.

Obviously, it works. But congrats on where you are. Love your perspective.

I look forward to following you as you grow. You too many more conversation in the future, for sure. Thanks, Peter.

All right. Thank you. It.