347 - From Fiddles to Fulfilling Business Needs: The Symphony of Entrepreneurship with Peterman Design Firm's Ian Peterman

Welcome to Listening with Leaders. I'm Doug Noll, lawyer turned peacemaker. I teach executive leaders how to listen to emotions rather than words so that they can become the leaders everyone wants to follow. And I teach those same leaders how to be authentically present, available, and connected to their families despite being insanely busy. I have learned that we are 98% emotional and only 2% rational. Learning how to listen to emotions is, in my experience, the foundational skill of life. Stick around to the end of the show and I'll reveal how you can be on our next guest in 15 to 20 minutes. So let's get started.

Ian Peterman, welcome to Listening with Leaders. You are the founder of a design firm in Phoenix, Arizona called Peterman Peterman Design, and welcome to the show.

Thanks for having me, Doug. Excited to be here.

Thanks. I know that in, in reading about you and learning about you, your entrepreneurial journey started at 12 years old.

Yes, I started young.

So let's start, let's just give me the backstory.

Start there. My, I grew up, my parents have always had at least one small business kind of going on the side. And so I had that growing up. And then when I was about 12, my— I and my brother, we decided we want to make some money and we came up with the idea of making greeting cards. And so my parents were like, all right, we'll help you, but you got to do— you got to do the work. We're not just going to do it for you. So we found a store that was willing to let us put a little— those card racks on, borrowed money from our parents to buy a card rack because the store is like, we're You're not going to buy a card rack. You gotta, you'll have a square foot. You can put something there. And so then we did that and then we had, we worked, we had to manage the relationships. So the store owner, we worked with them and saw which cards were selling, which ones weren't, inventory management. We had a, we created serial, our version of SKUs, which was just like 1, 2, 3. It was just numbers, the kid version of SKUs to track all of that. And we did that. I think it lasted about a year or two. Just making cards and selling those. But yeah, started—

it sounded like you learned all the basics.

Yes, it was a great way. I'd say the step up from a lemonade stand and that you have to deal with a retailer and you have to manage and keep them happy, make sure you deliver your inventory on time and all that kind of thing.

Yeah. What do you think the biggest lesson you learned from that experience as a kid?

Oh, I feel like there's probably a few lessons there, but I think just understanding kind of how business works on the backend. Because when you think about it, you just walk into a store and you go, oh, there's inventory here. There's stuff. Or you complain, why isn't there product here? And when you're on the backend and you're the person supplying the inventory, you realize, oh yeah, that all of that card's gone. What do you What do you— now it's on me. I gotta do this now because the retailer is, hey, we're out and people want this, you gotta give us inventory now. So just see, understanding that there's this back end and, right, our supply chain was very small, but just having that learning of, oh, behind the scenes there's so much that goes into it that you just, you walk in, especially as a 12-year-old, you go, I don't know, there's candy, there's Legos, there's clothes, my parents buy food here.

It's—

you don't think about any of that stuff. So it was a very eye-opening kind of peek behind the curtain.

Wow.

So how'd you get into the design work?

That has always been something that I really wanted to do. So I was— I love drawing stuff, I love that kind of thing. My dad was a designer, so I got to see what designing actually looks like. And then I really Right about 12, 13, I really wanted to learn how to do some design work. So I got to learn some CAD, worked with my dad on some projects, did some basic learning and loved it. So I just got hooked starting from the CAD drafting side and then moved through. When I was about 16, I got into an internship at— it was a telecommunications laser company. I worked with them. They liked me enough after my 6-month internship that they kept me on. And so I ended up working there while I went to college.

Wow.

And yeah, I just liked it. Never left.

So when you talk about design work, I mean, there are all kinds of designers, right? We're talking about product design more than—

Yes, product design.

And that's what your dad did too?

Yes.

So if I'm going to try to describe it in my own layway, so product design, somebody comes to you with an idea. I want to make a gizmo. And they have no idea how to make the gizmo. They just got this idea in their head of what a gizmo could do and how it could save the world. And then your job is to help them take that idea and turn it into a physical reality that becomes a marketable, saleable, hopefully profitable business.

Yes. Yeah. So we do product design. It can be an inventor, it can be a company like any physical product you've ever seen had a designer attached to it at one point during its life. So yeah, it's really that designing, and you can break it down. Like there's design engineers, industrial designers is usually the category. You start to separate it all out, but they all fall under that product design category where it's turning, yeah, that idea into something that you can actually hold in your hand.

And what does Peterman Design do?

So we do that entire process. We, we categorize it, and generally speaking, there's, I say, two halves to that process. There's the innovation side, which is coming up with the stuff. So if you're a company, you don't always have the idea yourself. You might just go, hey, we have a category, we need to come up with a product that goes well with our products, or our customers are asking for a solution to this problem. We don't know what the product is, but we know what the problem is that we're trying to solve. So The innovation side is figuring out how do you solve the problem, right? What is the solution that could actually solve a problem there? And then you have commercialization. And so we work on that end as well, which that is, are you got the idea, you figured out how to solve it, how do you turn it into something that you can actually sell and someone will actually buy? And that's doing work with design for manufacturing. So making sure it can actually be made, making sure it can be made at the cost that you need it to be, because if it's It's too expensive, no one will buy it. So you gotta— that process is getting it ready for commercial use, basically. And so we work, we have teams on both ends, and we work a lot of times, we work with our clients end to end, where we'll help create the solution, or they'll have a solution, we kind of refine that looking because we always are looking at the, okay, if you want to invest the money, we should make sure that it's a product you can sell.. And so we always keep the end in mind and we'll oftentimes make some changes to what the solution is and then we'll help move it through the commercialization process.

So before you had your own firm, you worked in corporate for a while, didn't you?

I did. So I worked at that laser company. I worked at HP. I worked at a few like cabling manufacturers. I spent quite a bit of time in corporate. About 10 years doing corporate work and then launched— this is actually my second design firm. I was a partner at one before we launched that. That was a learning experience. That was a good way to crash course learn how to run a company, right? I learned about HR and all the other things, and we—

all the backend stuff that nobody ever thinks about.

Yeah, all the other bad— the backend to the backend stuff that no one ever tells you about. And so that was really good because we had a few different designers together in that group. So I got a learn a lot more about branding and packaging. And we did, as a team, we did basically everything. We call it business in a box. So we would help startups launch websites, SEO, social media marketing, back when it was easier. It's been more than 10 years. It was a lot easier back then.

What drove you out of corporate into becoming an entrepreneur?

Pay.

Really?

Pay and boredom. Those are the two. I— there's only so long.

Yeah.

There's only so long that you can— for me, I did the cubicle world. I sat in a cubicle. I did the same. I worked on the same printer for a year and a half. I worked on the same— it's really just working on the same stuff over and over again. And I got bored and there was not enough money for me to just be bored. I'm sure there would have been if somebody offered enough money, I could have been bored longer, but The combination of not having, not being paid enough to be bored, it really just lent it to working. And I'd already been, I'd been doing contract work on the side anyway, partly because the boredom. I really wanted to work on other things. So I'd been, I've been consulting since I was 18. So I've done it almost always had something on the side. And so. It made sense once I met the people that we started that first firm with. It was a pretty easy jump over because I saw, okay, there are, there is plenty of work out there. I'm doing contract work. If I jump over there, I definitely won't be bored. I won't make as much money at start, but I can work on making more, but I'll be excited about the work that I'm doing.

So what is it today that gets you up in the morning? And get you excited to go to work. You got what, 20 or 20 people working for you? Different types of people?

Yeah, we have a full team. We have, it's still the same stuff. So it's, I'm excited to work on new ideas.

Do you get to do the design work yourself or are you too busy leading the team?

I do it at a high level. I have now, I have industrial designer, mechanical, electrical, all under our team. And we even have a branding team as well, because we handle packaging and things like that as part of the commercialization. Phase. And so I work at a really high level, which I enjoy that strategic thinking and how does it actually solve the problem and making sure we don't forget the part where it actually has to sell. I really like putting that high level of how do we solve it? And from a business standpoint, how can we make sure that what we're doing makes actual business sense? And solves a problem. And I've, I can, I say every now and then I'll jump in and I'll do something just because I want to keep doing it a little bit. Yeah. Get my hands dirty a little bit, but my team is honestly, they're better than me now at this point.

So in terms of your team, are you mostly remote or do you have people that have an office in person staff?

So we're 100% remote. My first agency, we had, we did a whole office thing and Well, honestly, with technology and what we do, and in office, it just makes overhead more, and it's not really—

not needed.

It didn't really add enough value for us to keep it. And turned out that doing that was really great because when COVID hit, our team was able— already working remotely, we were Zoom ready. I vividly remember like the weeks before everybody else learned that Zoom was a thing, I was still training. I would do phone calls to a client to teach them how to install and start up Zoom and be their tech support.

Wow.

For their video and audio, and then get them on a call. And everybody liked it, like once I got it up and running, but I basically was providing free tech support to get them going. And then 3 weeks after lockdown started, I didn't have to do that anymore.

Everybody got it figured out.

Everybody else learned.

So how dispersed is your, how dispersed is your team? Are they all over the world or are they North America?

The world.

So we have our core team is in the US and we're all over the US, honestly. And then we have team in Europe and Asia depending, because we have, we work with a lot of manufacturing, having boots on the ground closer in, in Asia is good. And we're expanding with Europe.

Wow.

So how do you guys ever bring everybody all together?

No, never have.

Never have. Wow.

Never have.

So tell me about how you manage and lead people that you've never met physically that are all Zoom faces.

Yeah, it's really, I think it ties into what you've talked about before is listening. So really making sure when we hire, it's really about making sure that everyone has to be self-driven. They have to be able to communicate. And so we set really clear guidelines of, hey, you got to talk to us, but also I shut up and listen. And that there is, it's, we've created the culture of if there's a problem, bring it together. Don't wait to have it. And we put the tools in place. So like we use Slack and we use Zoom and we, all the instant communication you can have that around the world. So there's no reason to delay. And we really, we've really eliminated, I know we're working in person. I feel like there's a lot of those standing meetings where you're like, I got to show up for 15 minutes at the beginning of the day and just stand there and listen to somebody talk about something, probably nothing you care about or about the lunch they're bringing or it's nothing that's actually productive usually. And so having this more kind of instant communication, we We rarely have meetings. Like we may, we will maybe have a meeting a week if we need to.

Wow.

But it's a design review. Usually it's a review meeting and going, okay, here's what we've done. Here's what the client needs. We need design feedback, approvals, that kind of thing. But we've tried to make it so it's less about a meeting and more about, oh, you need it now? Let's do it now.

So when a client approaches you, how does that, how does the business flow? Does it come to you or do you have business development people that client goes to?

So I have, it's been me. I've just brought on someone actually to help on the business development side, doing a lot of outreach and relationship building, but I do the primary, I'm primarily the first meeting. So I will review and I like to do that. That way I have an idea what we're bringing on, make sure there's a good fit. So I'll do, we'll do a 30-minute discovery call where I just sit and listen and just go, hey, tell me what your stuff is. Really let them tell me what's going on. Maybe ask a few questions, get a real clear understanding of what their problem is. And then we'll present an option to how we can solve that. And then from there, I do a lot of PM. I like to be involved. I do the strategic side. And then I have one other project manager that will help depending on our workload.

But yeah, how do you charge for your work?

We try to— we do what we call fixed hourly. So we'll put in basically as an hour cap, we'll scope out very thoroughly what's going on and then we'll, we'll give an hour cap to it.

I'll say it's going to cost you, it's going to cost you, it's going to take 150 hours at X number of hours, dollars per hour.

Correct.

Might be less, but we're capping it at 150. So you know what your max is.

Yes. Yeah, we— I tried when we were first starting, I tried a lot of different models, tried true fixed where it's, I don't track any hours. We just do the work. We tried just pure hourly. We tried retainer. And ultimately what we found is if we did fixed, it was really hard. And our clients would like to change it because there's so much that changes through a process.

The scope of the work changes.

There's something, there's a lot of things like if you get into like web development and stuff like that, you can do more fixed work and we'll even on like packaging and branding, we can do more of a fixed. So it's more predictable, much more predictable. Whereas when you're developing a product, you might get to a point where you go, hey, we just got an idea. We've been developing, here's a prototype. You got an idea. And the one thing that no one likes to do is sign a new contract to sign off new hours and sign off on it. Like the more paperwork you add. The less people like it.

Exactly.

So we just, by doing that fixed hour, we're allowed, basically allow the scope to be 100% flexible. And we go, okay, if we get 20% of the way through and we change directions and take a hard left, we don't care. We're gonna, we're gonna go where we need to go. And so it really helped build in speed because that's our, one of the things that we to do is how can we cut this time down? Cause that's a whole other cost.

Exactly. So tell me about listening. We've talked about it a little bit. How did you learn how to listen?

Oh, having kids, having siblings.

Starting at a young age and then having young ones yourself.

Yes. And then also I had a few really good bosses that I was able to—

Oh, good for you.

That they, through being good bosses, I was able to understand when I had less good bosses, be able to recognize, okay, that's— and listening was was one of those things that came across as, okay, I really liked this boss. Why? And listening was always at the top of the list. So that kind of ingrained that, so to speak. So by the time I opened my own team and was managing other people, the listening component was pretty well ingrained. I don't want to be the boss that I hated. Let's at least start with listening.

How do you inculcate that culture of listening into your group, especially with multicultural organization around the world where there are a whole bunch of different rules around listening?

Yeah, it's with our team and I feel like in general, yeah, there are a lot of different cultural rules, cultural norms, cultural rules, and dealing with having team in Asia, US, Europe. Those are three just broad categories, not even going down culture to culture, but continent-wise, right? Very different. And we work with Latin America as well. Very different attitudes towards things. But I will say that listening is a pretty across-the-board universal— you show that you care, you are listening, they're gonna— even if you have the other cultural differences, if you show the respect of listening You're going to get that at least back. And that's a good start. So I would say it's one of those things that kind of cuts through what might otherwise be potentially have some awkwardness to it, listening and really trying to understand. Because ultimately like these, you mix different cultures together. The biggest thing is that you want to be heard. You want to be understood. So if somebody is at least taking the time to try to understand. How you do what you do, you're going to instantly like that person a lot more. That's right. And you're going to be willing to listen to what they say. So I've always done it as a, I do it. And that so far we've had really good success with it trickling down. And we have people interacting daily that are in different cultures, different time zones.

Right.

And yeah.

So I call it listening other people into existence. I think the one thing that people want more than anything else is they want to be heard and understood. And it happens so rarely because most people are, when they're listening, they're focusing on their own agenda. What you're telling me, how does it help me? Rather than listening to re-understand where you're coming from and make sure that you feel heard and understood from your perspective.

Yeah, empathy.

Empathy. In fact, my fifth book is coming out next year called The Empathy Edge, all about leadership empathy.

Yeah, it's amazing what a little listening and some empathy, throw that together.

It's powerful, isn't it?

It's great. It works on me. I know it works. It works on me.

Yeah.

Just use that.

I know. You're thinking about it and you start to glow. It's like, wow, yeah, this is really fun. Feels really good to be heard.

Yeah.

Right. So where do you see, where do you see your company going over the next 10 or 15 years?

Yeah, we've, we've worked in a lot of industries, partly because I want to make sure that my team and I don't get bored because we have low turnover. And I'd like to at least think part of that is that we don't let anybody get bored sitting there doing the same thing over and over. We're just really focused right now on growth, working on larger projects, so We've, we had a big transition back in 2020. COVID hit, we lost 90% of our clients because we were almost 100% startups. And so it was not a good time to be a startup then. And so we've transitioned, we work more evenly split across the range. And the thing that I think we just want to keep doing is we've always, we learned early on as well. We wanted to have sustainability. At one point we were like, oh, we will be a sustainable product-focused company. And we figured out it. Yeah, some people want to do that, but there's not enough of a market to be just that. And so we've integrated that. So we just do it anyway. We just don't market it as our primary, but then we basically tell our clients, hey, we've made these changes. It's more sustainable. Finding more ways to get that in as we're doing things and bring people on board, because Yeah. Now we don't have to have conversation of, do you care about it? Do you, are you interested? We just do it.

Right.

And then we go, hey, now your marketing team has some extra points they can, they can bring up that you didn't think about before. So it's things like that. I'm sure we'll come up with some more, some other.

It obviously excites you a lot to think about it.

Yeah, we love it. It's really important. I run a podcast where all I do is basically talk to sustainable brands and about what they're doing. And there's so much new technology in that space. It's a really exciting space to to look at. So yeah, anytime we can sneak it in with our clients, we do it.

Making a difference in the world. One more question, I'll let you go, Ian. What's one thing about yourself we would never know about unless you revealed it to us?

Let's see. I won regional fiddle competitions.

You're a fiddle player?

I am. I did Scottish fiddling. I still— oh, you have it right next to you. I don't play it as much as I used to, but yeah, I did Highland Games.

I did I, yeah, I play.

Wow.

So I started off as a self-taught Southern Appalachian Irish Celtic player.

Okay.

About almost 20 years ago, I started taking up jazz and blues. And so I play jazz and blues. I still play old-timey and Irish and Scottish music, Gaelic music, but mostly jazz and blues these days. Oh yeah, I've got it right here. When I get bored, I pick it up and—

Nice. That's awesome. Yeah, I did. I played a lot. I really like playing like Cajun.

Oh, that's fun.

Yeah, yeah, that is really fun to play.

Oh yeah, good dance music, get the crowd going on all those double stops.

Oh, I know. Yes, it's—

I—

I— Cajun music's good. I did lots of Irish-Scottish fiddling. I did orchestra as well. I did that for years.

Um, see, there you go. You'd never know unless I asked the question.

Yeah, love it. So you did it too? That's great.

Well, Ian, thank you so much for your time today. I really appreciate it. Great conversation.

Thanks for having me, Doug. Appreciate it.

Absolutely.

Doug Noll here. Thank you so much for listening to Listening with Leaders. If you are a successful executive leader who would like to be on this program, please visit podcast.dougnull.com/podcast. If you got something out of this interview, you, would you please share this episode on social media? Just do a quick screenshot with your phone and text it to a friend or post it on the socials. If you know someone that would be a great guest, tag them on the social media to let them know about the show and include the hashtag #ListeningWithLeaders. I love seeing your posts and guest suggestions. We are regularly putting out new episodes and content. To make sure you don't miss any episodes, go ahead and subscribe. Your thumbs up ratings and reviews go a long way to help promote the show and mean a lot to me and my team. Want to know more? Go to my website, DougNoll.com, or follow me on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram. That's @DouglasEnoll. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you on the next show.