From Furniture to Fortune: How Client Experience Fueled Jeff Peterson's Growth

Freddy D: 00:02:32

Hey there, superfan superstar Freddie D. Here in this episode 133, we're joined by Jeff Peterson, a seasoned entrepreneur and real estate investor whose journey began in rural eastern North Carolina from working in the tobacco fields and driving a school bus at just 16, Jeff went on to launch his first upholstery business on his 21st birthday. And he hasn't slowed down since.

Over the last three decades, he has built and managed a diverse portfolio of businesses and properties spanning real estate development and retail, all while making family a cornerstone of his success by involving his children as both employees and co owners along the way. Jeff's story is one of grit, vision and legacy, capturing not only his thriving ventures, but also in his book, Are We There Yet?

A guide to conquering Every twist and turn on a journey to Success where he shares real world lessons and practical tips to help others chart their own path of success.

On top of all that, he's a dedicated community leader, a lifelong athlete with Boston Marathons and Ironmans under his belt, and an avid outdoorsman who thrives in adventure.

We're thrilled to welcome Jeff to the podcast to share his inspiring journey, his entrepreneurial vision, and the life lessons that continue to guide his work and family.

Freddy D: 00:04:08

Welcome, Jeff, to the Business Superfans podcast show.

Super excited to have you on the show and prior to us recording, we had talked that we've had the kids go to ecu, so we've got a little something in common and glad to have you here.

Jeffrey Peterson: 00:04:25

I'm glad to be here today, Freddie. I really looked forward to this last time and now hopefully the signal's better on my side so we can do it. Yep, of course. Children going to ecu.

I went to ECU as well. Go pirate.

Freddy D: 00:04:36

There you go. Yeah, I still have the Pirates T shirt. I got Pirates dad T shirt that she got me. So yeah, keep it as a souvenir. Good stuff.

So, Jeff, let's go back to the beginning. I know you do a lot of real estate stuff and whatnot. How did that all get started?

Jeffrey Peterson: 00:04:52

Well, I bought my first property when I think I was 21.

I just started my business on my 21st birthday, which was a small reupholstery shop in the front bedroom of a two bedroom house I was renting and that's where I started. And when I say that was shoestring, I mean that redefined shoestring.

If you look in the dictionary, you'd see a picture of my front bedroom upholstery shop there going like, I can't believe this. Guy's doing this. This is ridiculous.

Well, it started out pretty good and there's some pretty funny now stories weren't funny at the time, the story starting that business. And one of them was trying to figure out why I couldn't get business. I'm 21 years old and people weren't trusting me to do the reupholstery.

So I finally put an ad in the paper. And I was going to put an ad in the paper, but I had enough money to either pay my electric bill or put an ad in the paper. It was either or.

So I was like, well, I don't think they'll cut off my electric bill right away. So let me put the ad in the paper because if I don't put that in the paper next month, I won't have anything. So I did that and it worked out.

So that's, that was the business part of it, right? High flying business decisions, the real estate.

Not too long after that, the landlord where I was renting the house came to me and she said, you can't do that. I said can't do what? She's like, you can't run a business out of your house. This is supposed to be rental residential.

p out of. So that was back in: 1981

And I just read that book, how to buy real estate with little or nothing down, which is right up my alley. All I had to do is, was erase the little part and say how to buy a real estate with nothing. Exactly, exactly.

Freddy D: 00:06:46

But I got the same stuff in my book.

Jeffrey Peterson: 00:06:49

It's good to break it out sometimes because the, the concept, it still works. So that's how I kind of started. I talked to the gentleman. He's an old retired gentleman that lived right down the street.

And I just kept talking to him until I finally convinced him that I would be a great buyer for his property and that I might have used one of the lines to get him to sell to me was that he wouldn't have to pay capital gains right up front because he wouldn't take all the money up front so he could delay his capital gains, which is a big benefit for him. And nobody was going to buy it at 21% interest anyway. I went on and on and on. Of course, I just rambled.

But he went with it, and it worked out to be a great deal for me.

Freddy D: 00:07:29

Wow, what a story. You remind me of some of the things I went through a little bit.

t in the computer industry in: 1980

And I had a Corvette, so I was like, I can deal with being in a mobile home. But you're right. Back then, interest rates were pretty steep. I think it was either 15 or 17% interest on that place.

Jeffrey Peterson: 00:08:01

It's amazing. At the time, that seemed normal, right?

Freddy D: 00:08:05

Yeah.

Jeffrey Peterson: 00:08:05

So now interest rates are on the 7%, 6, 7, 8% range, and people are complaining. It's that bad. You know, it could get worse, right?

Freddy D: 00:08:15

It could get worse. Yeah. I ended up getting a couple roommates in the place, and that's how I helped pay for it because I was traveling, basically. So I started similar.

But you've had a much more unique story of getting kicked out of the rental place because you're doing a business.

Jeffrey Peterson: 00:08:32

Yeah, well, she didn't kick me out. She pretty much said, either stop doing it or you're gonna get kicked out. But she was a very nice, nice older lady.

And she was one of those totally 100 by the rules, even though nobody cared, but she was just by the rules. I didn't blame her at the time, though, when I did it, I didn't even consider that. I wasn't trying to slip anything by her.

I was, like, seeing if she wanted anything to upholster. Where are you doing it? Your front? Well, right here. She's like, you can't do that. It was sheer panic on her part, so.

Freddy D: 00:09:04

Sure.

Jeffrey Peterson: 00:09:05

Anyway, worked out. And I think that was the last. Yeah, that was the last house I ever rented. Never rented after that.

Freddy D: 00:09:12

Wow.

Jeffrey Peterson: 00:09:12

So I was fortunate that way.

Freddy D: 00:09:16

Let's continue the story. What took place from there, once you have your first house?

Jeffrey Peterson: 00:09:20

Well, from there, I had the first house, and I was doing reupholstery there, of course, in the garage. And eventually I expanded and moved into a building. This is in Aden, just outside of Greenville, Eastern North Carolina. Small town.

And that's where I had the shop. But after a few years, I really wanted to get into a bigger town, and I'd met somebody up in Raleigh, so I moved the business up to Cary.

nd I've been there ever since: 1985

Freddy D: 00:09:56

And how did you evolve into the real estate? Let's, let's talk about that a little bit.

Jeffrey Peterson: 00:10:00

Yeah. How I started, I was literally always interested in real estate. I mean, I just was enamored with it.

I just wanted my own place and for the investment part of it. I knew even early on with the reupholstery shop that if I wasn't upholstering, I wasn't making money.

So if I wanted to take a day off, I wasn't making anything. If I wanted to go on vacation, I wasn't making anything. If I got hurt, I couldn't make anything. So I knew I needed some kind of passive income.

And of course, we both know that that's the other part of that story, because there's nothing passive about real estate. It is where you can actually build and create wealth without physically having to do the work. And it's going to come month after month.

So my first foray was buying townhomes in Raleigh and Cary, just trying to find any townhome that I could buy with, again, limited funds. But it was more those fha, no qualifying assumption loans. So it was very little money up front.

I figured if I could cash flow it, even the smallest amount, that it would be a good deal that would pay off later on. So that's how I started.

Freddy D: 00:11:10

Oh, interesting thing. We have some similar backgrounds because.

Yeah, from that townhouse that I had, I was actually looking to sell it and then buy a bigger house and do the same thing, rent out the rooms because I was basically paying for the place. And the realtor told me, why don't I just look at buying a 4 flat? And so I said, hmm, never really thought of that.

So I bought a 4 flat and I took my computer money kind of and put that in there. And then of course I got a roommate because I'm a cheap guy.

Jeffrey Peterson: 00:11:44

Yeah.

Freddy D: 00:11:44

Into the place. So, you know, and then we lived there. And then about six, seven months later, I ended up buying a 14 unit building in downtown Chicago area.

Jeffrey Peterson: 00:11:54

Yeah.

Freddy D: 00:11:54

And I did some remodeling and turned it into a 16 unit. And unfortunately in 87 was involved in a tragedy and ended up getting sued. Unfortunately, I didn't get the right advice.

And so I had everything in my name. I didn't have anything in LLC. I didn't know any better. I'm in my 20s and so I had no shield, no protection, no nothing. And so I Lost everything.

But today I'd probably be worth at least 10 million just because of the things I was doing back then. Both cases, I got the owners to subsidize the loans, and so I had them put the upfront money.

So took all the stuff out of Cowlton Sheets, put in and applied them just as you have.

Jeffrey Peterson: 00:12:38

Right. That's interesting. It's funny how you get into that kind of stuff where you didn't think that's what you do.

And putting it in your own name way back then. I'm sure that that was a very expensive lesson to learn. You don't realize that you're still very young, so you're going to recover now, today.

You don't have that Runway.

Freddy D: 00:12:58

There's no road. There's not enough road left.

Jeffrey Peterson: 00:13:00

No, there isn't. There isn't. I've been working on this project in. Well, in Holly Springs, which is outside of Cary, for the last 15 or so years.

Literally 15 years, and it's my biggest project ever. I remember I was joking with a friend of mine, and he said, well, what are you going to do? I said, well, I'm in it for the long game. And.

And he looks at me and he says, you don't have a long game left. And I won't tell you what I said to him, but it wasn't quite as polite as what I would say here. But. But it was funny. It was a very funny line.

I said, yeah. I said, I'll never make a dime, but the grandkids are going to do very well. So there you go.

Freddy D: 00:13:31

Sure.

Jeffrey Peterson: 00:13:31

But to me, it is always. You always have to plan for the future. You always have to keep running it, keep moving forward. If you're not moving forward, you're moving backwards.

So you need to do that.

Freddy D: 00:13:41

Yep. You got to fall forward.

Jeffrey Peterson: 00:13:43

Exactly. Exactly.

Freddy D: 00:13:44

And then the other thing is, you got to pick yourself up, slap yourself around a little bit. Said, okay, that was a teaching moment, and put some band aids on and keep moving forward.

Jeffrey Peterson: 00:13:55

That's right. But, you know, I will look back at some of the mistakes I've made. Well, let me just say, if I ever made a mistake, I was sure I would look back.

That's a definite joke.

I've made tons of mistakes, but I will analyze a little bit of what I did, and I'll try to say, okay, let me recreate this and see if I made a bad decision and. Or if it was just the way it played out.

And sometimes there's things that I missed early on or sometimes I'll look back and I'll say, no, actually, I would do the same thing all over again. So I can, you know, either way, it's a learning experience. I mean, if you look back and you say my big.

Well, I'll tell you, my biggest mistakes have been made.

When I made a deal that I shouldn't have made, meaning that I saw the opportunity, I looked at it, and I spent more time figuring out how to, how to get the deal and ultimately getting it, but never going back to that very first step and saying, should I do the deal?

So sometimes you'll do a real estate deal or a business one as well, and you'll figure it all out without going back and deciding whether it was even worth doing to begin with. So you'll spend a lot of effort for maybe a minimal gain or no gain, and you've just wasted a lot of time. That's a big learning curve for anybody.

It was for me.

Freddy D: 00:15:10

No, sure. Totally, totally agree with that. So let's go back to the upholstery place. And how did you grow that business?

Jeffrey Peterson: 00:15:18

Back in the day, wanting to be in real estate, but I was in the upholstery and I knew I had to. The upholstery business is what funded my real estate days early on. So I knew I had to do it. And I work morning, noon and night.

If you think that you're going to be an entrepreneur and work 9 to 5, you might as well just stay at the 9 to 5 because it doesn't work like that. How I grew it though is I expanded into doing fabrics.

So selling the fabric with the upholstery and prior to that we were just doing most of the labor, would work with interior designers, they would bring us customers, they'd bring us the fabric and we would just were labor based. But I knew being able to sell the fabric would be a big income revenue for us.

So we started going up to High point, different warehouses and buying in bulk. And that's how we expanded into the fabric business along with the upholstery.

And ultimately the fabric was much bigger part of the business than the upholstery was. So we would have five or six upholsterers working and keeping them all busy.

But the bigger part of the business was the fabric, interior design, draperies, things like that.

Freddy D: 00:16:23

But let's, let's go further than that. And that is how did you really grow it with customers? I mean, you started out in basically, so you had to get some word of mouth business.

You had to create Some kind of advocates that were saying, man, Jeff does a killer job. If you need upholstery, you need to go see him. I mean, there was something that you got going to get that momentum going.

Jeffrey Peterson: 00:16:45

I'll tell you, with reupholstery, it's like a trade. Well, it is a trade, of course, and it's a little bit different than that.

When I first started in the second bedroom of that house and started getting upholstery, once I ran that ad and started doing upholstery, I never ran out of work. I've never run out of upholstery work since it's not getting it in, it's getting it out.

So I would get more business than we could possibly handle all the time. People were always looking for good upholsterers and they're hard to find. It's a dying trade.

Even when I was doing it, you didn't see too many young and upand cominging upholsterers coming along. So it was more about getting it out than getting it in. So maybe that's a little bit different than a lot of businesses.

But the challenge was, was actually producing.

Freddy D: 00:17:31

Sure. But at the same time, customers got to be happy with the end result. And that's the key thing.

So it's one thing to get business, but it's another thing to get it out the door and deliver a quality product. And that's clearly what you are doing, because otherwise you wouldn't be growing.

Jeffrey Peterson: 00:17:48

Well, I'll tell you what, my byline or the way I would sell customers or what I would say to them when I talk to them.

I said, if I bring this piece of furniture back to you and your friends or neighbors say, I see you had your furniture reupholstered, we did a bad job. They should be saying, I see you got a new piece of furniture. And if they can tell the difference, then we did a bad job.

So it should be as good or better than new when we finish it. And that's what we always did. So we always did quality work. Yeah.

Freddy D: 00:18:17

And so that's how you start creating super fans of the customers. Because now they're looking at their first furniture and all of a sudden they go, man, this thing looks new. And they start telling their people.

And so that word of mouth momentum goes as well in there. And that's how you start scaling without spending a lot of money.

Jeffrey Peterson: 00:18:37

That's true. That's very true.

Freddy D: 00:18:40

Because you know, if you run the ad and you didn't deliver a good product, doesn't matter that's going to spread like wildfire. You had to deliver above and beyond to keep that momentum going.

So that the word on the street, because the street word is really the important part, is that this is a great, well respected, that delivers quality product. That's the word on the street.

Jeffrey Peterson: 00:19:07

That's right.

I'll tell you, early on in my career, doing upholstery and hiring upholsterers to work for me, I was very young and a lot of these upholsterers had much more experience than I had, and they'd be working at different shops and they'd come in and want to work. So I had to have credibility.

But what I would tell them, and a lot of them have egos, of course, so I would ask them to do a piece for me, test it out in a piece.

And if they did it and they thought it looked good and I didn't, I would ask them, I said, is there anything you see on this that maybe you couldn't quite get or we could, we could get better on it. And I'd show them a couple things, but if they didn't have that eye, if they didn't notice that there was something wrong, then I couldn't use them.

If they didn't know how to fix it, I could teach that, but I couldn't teach them the eye of perfection. And that's true of anybody in the trades, like we do contracting now, too, building. And if they can't see what's wrong, you can't fix that.

You have to have an eye for detail and willing to excel, willing to get better.

Freddy D: 00:20:05

Well, you brought up a great leadership thing there, Jeff, and that was the way you handled it. You didn't start telling them, hey, look, you made this mistake and you screwed that up.

And this is wrong and everything else, because right off the bat, you put somebody immediately on the defense. So the way you explained it was you put it on them to see, hey, you take a look at it. So that gives them the ownership of the project.

And then if they still can't spot it, and I totally agree with you, they can't make the team.

Jeffrey Peterson: 00:20:36

Early on, when I had upholsters in there and I had a lot of upholsters working for me, and it's all piecework, I would learn from every upholster, there's always something you can learn from another upholstery. Even if I knew that ultimately I was a better upholsterer, a lot of times I was, sometimes I wasn't, but most of the Time, I was better.

But I don't say that in ego way. I just. I just know my talent on doing that. But I learned from every upholsterer I would see a technique that they were doing.

I was like, wow, that's really cool. Show me how you did that. And you'd save time, you'd be a little bit better. There's just different ways and better ways of doing things.

And you have to let your ego go and learn from other people. And I'll give you an example of somebody that did not have. That is, I had one upholster work for me years ago.

And every time I try to show him something or suggest we could do it this way, he would ramble on about. He goes, I've got 25 years experience. And finally one day I'd had it. I'd lost my patience.

And I said, no, actually, you have one year of experience 25 times. You haven't learned anything new in 25 years. You refuse to learn. So once you think you know it all, you do.

You absolutely know everything you're ever going to know. When you think you know it all. I mean, I know less now than I knew back then.

Freddy D: 00:21:48

That's a great way of wording it, though. I like that you've got one years of experience repeated 25 times. That's a great way of wording it.

Jeffrey Peterson: 00:21:56

He didn't really know what to say, but I said, it's true. Look, you have to. And I pointed at the other guy. Do you know how many pointers I've learned from him?

And he wasn't as talented, but I said, he has some really great way of doing things. He learned that from somebody else. You have to be able to open up your mind to new ideas.

I mean, that's true with upholstery, it's true with business, and it's definitely true of real estate and anything else you're going to do in life. Right?

Freddy D: 00:22:17

Yeah.

One of the things I realized over the years in the tech world and in other industries that I've been in is good leaders empower their people and get out of the way.

Jeffrey Peterson: 00:22:26

It's hard for me to do. I struggle with that all the time, but I try.

Now, most of my children work in the different businesses that we have, and they either work for me or we're partners. It's been very fulfilling having them involved in the different businesses because a lot of ways they do things better than I do.

And the empowering part is not to try to solve the problem for them. Or not to say, well, I would do it this way, or that kind of thing.

Because normally we may come about it at a different way, but we wind up with the same solution.

Freddy D: 00:22:59

So it doesn't matter. Yeah, right. Because you can get yourself in your own way because it's not the way you're doing it. Well, so what? The end result's the same.

Jeffrey Peterson: 00:23:07

I tell them, I said, I'd rather you make a bad decision than no decision. Make a decision most of the time. Trust your instinct. Trust what you've learned. Make the decision. Don't call me up and interrupt my day.

If you really need help, let me know, but don't do this on every turn. You have to figure this out. And you can, you can figure it out. And they normally they come up with a better way and they do it and it's fine.

It's just getting that confidence to make the decision. I can't tell you how many bad decisions I've made, but I'll make a decision.

Freddy D: 00:23:37

Right, because not making a decision is a decision in itself.

Jeffrey Peterson: 00:23:40

That's right. That's absolutely right. That's a non decision is a decision.

Freddy D: 00:23:44

A couple years ago, I was working in a company as a language interpreting and translation business. And there was a person there that had some emotional challenges.

They were dealing with some depression days and so they couldn't make it to work on certain days. I'll keep the story super short. I ended up taking over that company and I empowered this person. I completely treated them differently.

There was a fatality. Basically, the husband passed away and I stepped into his general manager and took it over.

So my management style is completely different than the owners. I started empowering her and giving her more responsibility and telling her exactly that.

You make the decision, I'm putting you in charge of this department. And her whole demeanor completely changed. Her whole mindset changed.

Her days of having a bad day and I can't make it to the office, those became far and few between. And she ended up growing that department from under 100,000 in a year's time to over $225,000.

Wow, that's impressive because again, we talk about this and so I'm just reemphasizing what you're talking about is I made the decision to empower her and then same thing. It was like, you handle it and if you can't handle it, then it's a situation, come see me. But you're in charge.

And that completely changes a person's mindset. And she's still today A super fan of me. She's given me a phenomenal review on LinkedIn and et cetera.

And we're still friends, and we've gone in different directions because that company got acquired. But it's really amazing what good leadership can do to transform a whole team.

Jeffrey Peterson: 00:25:21

You're absolutely right. One of my youngest son, I just see him going leaps and bounds.

I was kind of referring to him in the recent ones about make a decision, make a decision. And he's gotten better and better and better at just making the decisions. And as a dad, you're very proud.

When you see your children taking the reins, and then I see them doing things that I think they do better than I do, they definitely manage better than I do. I'm not patient enough. I'm more of, once I get something, then I'm looking at what else we can do and somebody else really needs to manage it.

They're better managers. I think you need to recognize that in yourself. That's probably not my strongest point. Maybe at one time it was, but I don't think so now.

Freddy D: 00:25:58

You bring back memories.

When I was in the software and I was in charge of global sales, and I grew a product from zero to several million globally and set up a bunch of resellers. And one of the guys came up to me, software manager, and he goes, dude, you got a lot of lighting up, man. You got some sharp corners.

Jeffrey Peterson: 00:26:17

Yeah.

Freddy D: 00:26:17

And that was exactly how he worded it.

Jeffrey Peterson: 00:26:20

Yeah.

Freddy D: 00:26:21

And I still remember that I was like, okay, I gotta put some sandpaper on those corners a little bit. And, yeah, round them off a little bit. Because I was just, you know, football. Just clobber them and move forward.

Jeffrey Peterson: 00:26:32

That's me. It's a few sharp corners. Yes. I haven't heard it said like that, but that's. That's pretty true.

Freddy D: 00:26:38

So kind of funny. So let's get into. Back into the real estate stuff.

How is it that you're building the things that you're doing and really building a real estate empire?

Jeffrey Peterson: 00:26:48

In a sense, it didn't say, I'm going to build a real estate empire. It just kind of eventually just see more and more. And if you're a reluctant seller like me, you wind up keeping more.

So it started off small, of course, doing the townhomes and things of that nature. But then my first commercial property was downtown Cary. And this is an interesting story. So a lot of my real estate is renovation work.

We build new, too. But if I look back over the course of the projects that I think I'M most proud of. It's the renovation ones.

There was an old, dilapidated cookie factory downtown Cary. It had been vacant for maybe 10 years, maybe longer than that, but it used to be Austin Foods.

And I forget what was before then, but anyway, it was a warehouse building and had been sale for years. My fabric and upholstery business had gotten bigger and bigger, and I needed more space. But I can't afford a shopping center.

I can't afford retail rates. It has to be somewhere reasonably priced.

Well, I saw that space, and I drove by it every day for five years before one day the light bulb goes off, and I see that and I go like, oh, my gosh. I know what I can do with the space. I know exactly. I can do this. I can chop it up. I can. I could rent out part of it. And it's.

It had no parking, no windows you step down into. It was just dark. It was. It was terrible space, but it's right in a great location. I thought it was.

Anyway, so I made the offer on the building, and I talked to the guy. It was an older guy that owned it. And I go home that day, and I start telling my wife at the time what a great opportunity this was.

Oh, my gosh, we could do this, we could do that. I just talked for like an hour, and at the end of it, she said, well, I just have one question. I said, what's the question?

She goes, well, for such a great deal, how come it sat there for so many years and nobody else has bought it? And that's a recurring theme if you really run up on something, right? That's what everyone says. I did not answer so favorably.

I was like, well, because I'm the only idiot in carry. That's why. So I made the deal, and it wound up being much harder than what I thought.

I got the initial estimate to renovate the building, which is like $50,000, and I closed on the building, and the renovation was half million. So it was 10 times.

Freddy D: 00:28:54

Wow.

Jeffrey Peterson: 00:28:54

What? They estimated the same contractor. And I remember going in to see him, the whole team in there and the estimators there.

I said, how do you go from 5,000 to 50 on the electrical? He goes, it was dark when I went in there, and I was like, okay, done. That was a very hard lesson to learn. So basically it was me and my son.

We couldn't borrow the money. There was no lenders that were going to loan to us. And we would go in the weekends and we would do all the demo.

We were cutting in windows, cutting in doors. We did everything we could without a license, without a trade license.

And then of course, eventually we were able to borrow the money when I had a lot of it done. But we did most of the renovation ourselves and then we hired out the trades event and got it done.

But that was the biggest project I had done and I still have my offices there. We chopped up the rest of the building. We rented out the rest of it to.

I think now there's six tenants that are in there in addition to our business is still there as well. That was my first foray into commercial and a lot of them have been very similar to that.

Freddy D: 00:29:50

It never looked back from there.

Jeffrey Peterson: 00:29:52

years. It was: 1995

I said, I can't believe that much time has gone by, but it has.

Freddy D: 00:30:03

But I did the same thing with the apartment building, that 14 unit building.

I hired a crew to remodel a unit and I went in there to check on them and the guys were drinking in the place and I was like, okay, this isn't going to work. So got rid of them and I started doing the work myself.

Basically remodeled several of the apartments, turned them into two bedroom places, doubled the rent, all that stuff. So I can appreciate rolling up the sleeves and getting it done.

Jeffrey Peterson: 00:30:32

That's happened a couple of times in Cary, Raleigh, but down here at the beach we've done that. We've rinsed and repeat on that several times. And every one that we've done like that has worked out really well.

And then I had my son, and now my other son definitely involved heavily in that. My son ran the construction. Those projects are the best deals that we have done.

We build stuff from the ground up, but when you can find something like that that nobody else wants to touch and everybody's scared of and you're like, let's just do it, let's just get it done. And the town loves it here in Surf City.

They love us being able to take a property and without just clearing it and putting up some big project, but just really cleaning it up. It's worked out really well down here.

Freddy D: 00:31:13

Yeah, because you keep the character, you keep the character of the place.

I mean, that's the thing that's like when, you know, in Europe, that's one of the rules, especially in the cities is the facade and stuff like that has to remain because it keeps the uniqueness and the historical aspect of it, the inside.

ces and the front is from the: 1700

Jeffrey Peterson: 00:31:47

I was thinking about this this morning on my walk here at the beach.

The big conundrum is everyone's building these mega houses on the beach and a lot of the locals who have been here forever, they don't really like that and I definitely understand that. But there's two sides to that. So of course you'd rather have the quaint little fishing village which what it's been forever.

But the price of the real estate has gone up so high that you can't just put a small little house on there because the math doesn't work.

So if you're paying X amount of dollars for just the bare lot, you know, you have to put a house that matches that price on there or you're never going to come out as far as financial decision. Right. The last oceanfront lot that I bought was, it was most expensive I've ever paid for a lot on the beach.

There's no way you could put a small house on the there. There's no way. You have to put a 10 bedroom. It's going to have to be a short term rental. And that's just the model, that's what has to be done.

And it works out very well. But I do kind of miss having some of those smaller houses. Like we do have one here at the beach that's it's older, it's probably in the 40s, 50s.

We renovated that one that sits right on the dune. Literally on the dune. If we tore it down, we'd have to move back, we'd have to do a lot of things. But it's really quaint and as nice.

But I didn't have to put that much money into the renovation so I was able to keep it. And that's probably my favorite property here.

Freddy D: 00:33:09

Yeah, it has its unique charm.

Jeffrey Peterson: 00:33:11

That's right, that's right. But people love it so they come back.

Freddy D: 00:33:16

I can relate in a multitude of different ways.

My mom's house back in Detroit area, all the houses around her are much bigger and larger, but it's still a unique little place that has its own charm to it.

The backyard is probably one of the best backyards in the neighborhood because that's all she loves to do is take care of and fix and replant and trees and shrubs and flowers and all that stuff. So.

Jeffrey Peterson: 00:33:40

Right. I'm sure that's very pretty.

Freddy D: 00:33:41

Yep. So as we kind of get closer to the end here, how can people find you? Jeff?

Jeffrey Peterson: 00:33:45

Well, of course I'm on LinkedIn and Facebook and Instagram. I think that's all I'm on pretty much.

And I did just come out, I wrote my first book and it was kind of a memoir and it's got a lot of things I did throughout life. But also it does have some nice tips and ideas and therefore I think it's geared more towards young entrepreneurs, people just starting out.

I want to say it's a rah rah, but it kind of does have some of that feel to it. Don't give up hope. This is how you can start. These are some tips for you. This is how you can keep going. That's on Amazon.

It's called Are We There Yet? I wrote that a lot for my children as well because course they're too young to remember how it all started and what we do now.

They see what we're doing right now, but they don't really know some of the background. I think it's an interesting read but they can find me on any of the social medias.

Freddy D: 00:34:32

Yeah, we'll definitely make sure that that's in the show notes. But that's kind of what I'm doing with my second book is I'm going back into some of my historical aspects and the things I've gone through.

Same thing with, to pull some lessons out of numerous missteps and positive steps. Steps and everything else.

Jeffrey Peterson: 00:34:50

So I have started on my second book or I'm doing the outline for it right now and I think what I'm doing is a deep dive into my biggest project, biggest for me anyway, which is Peterson Station and that's the high density mixed use in Holly Springs, which has taken over 15 years. But it's really, it evolved long before then because I bought it 25 or 30 years ago as a trailer park.

So when you mentioned trailer parks before, that was one of the first properties that I bought that I said down the road this is going to be nice, I can do something really nice here. But I bought it because it was income producing at the time and that I knew that in the future I could do something more.

But to look at that place now and know that it came from being a trailer park, you would not recognize it. And so there's been so many twists and turns in that and I think that there's enough in there for just that one project to be a book, I believe.

Mistakes in there, too.

Freddy D: 00:35:45

Sure. There's a lot of stories.

That's what I'm kind of going back through, is finding out, remembering things that I've gone through and how did that position me for life and sales and marketing and all that stuff. I've gone. One of the few people you'll meet that's actually gone through Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin.

Jeffrey Peterson: 00:36:02

Wow.

Freddy D: 00:36:03

So I got stories of that and being in the communist party part of East Germany and Poland and going through Czechoslovakia, when it was called Czechoslovakia, and staring down machine guns and all that kind of stuff. We have different aspects, but we have similar trials and tribulations that we went through to get to where we're at.

Jeffrey Peterson: 00:36:23

Most of the people I gravitate towards, or even if I didn't know it early on. Later on you become friends and you find out that most of them had some kind of similar background where they started out shoestring.

All of them have challenging stories from the past that they had to overcome, and they may not have overcome it the first time. And there's been failures, too. I mean, you know, you learn from your failure. You just hope you have one more success than you have failures. Right.

Freddy D: 00:36:48

That's it.

Jeffrey Peterson: 00:36:48

That's the whole key. Anybody can be motivated, but if you wait for motivation to hit you, you're going to be sitting here for a while.

Freddy D: 00:36:54

Yep. Totally agree. Totally agree. Jeff, it's been a pleasure having you on show. Great conversation.

You and I could talk for hours on this stuff and definitely would love to have you on the show down the road again.

Jeffrey Peterson: 00:37:07

I'd love to do that. Thank you, Freddie. I appreciate it.

Freddy D: 00:37:10

Wow, what an energizing conversation with Jeffrey Peterson today. This episode directly ties into the propel pillar of the superfans framework, attracting ready to buy clients.

By crafting messages that cut through the noise, Jeff showed us how clear positioning and authentic storytelling aren't just marketing tactics. They're magnets that pull the right clients in faster. So here's your challenge.

Take one offer, strip away the jargon, and rewrite it in a single sentence that makes your perfect client say, that's me. Do that, and you'll see more qualified prospects leaning in to ready to buy without the chase.

And remember, one action, one stakeholder, one superfan closer. Until next time, keep building your business. Superfans, thank you for listening. And know this. When you do, freedom follows.

Hey, one more thing before we sign off. What if your employees, your customers and even your partners became your biggest advocates.

Imagine referrals flowing in, clients staying loyal and a business that scales sustainably, not forcefully.

That's what we're building inside the Superfans Growth Hub, the community for service based business owners who want proven strategies, my Superfans framework and a supportive network to accelerate results.

So if you're ready to outpace your competition and build a business powered by Super Fans, join us today@superfansgrowth hub.com once again, that's superfansgrowthub.com and I'll see you on the inside.

Outro: 00:38:58

We hope you took away some useful knowledge from today's episode of the Business Super Fans Podcast. The path to success relies on taking action. So go over to businesssuperfans.com and get your hands on the book.

If you haven't already, join the accelerator community and take that first step in generating a team of passionate supporters for your business. Join us on the next episode as we continue guiding you on your journey to achieve flourishing success in business.