Think Business with Tyler - A Podcast Interview with Peter Wasmer

The ProValet Team

April 2, 2024

Success means different things for different people. But one thing’s for sure; in business, success is what you make it. Tune into this episode to hear what our guest has to say about entrepreneurship.

Meet Peter Wasmer. Peter is a serial entrepreneur with more than 25 years of building strong organizations, managing sales and marketing, and developing successful businesses. He’s currently the President & Chief Executive Officer at Pure Coastal Technologies, a software helping service companies automate their operations, such as scheduling dispatch invoicing, customer payments, and customer communications. Having worked on several high-performance teams throughout his career, Peter understands the importance of mutual trust for company growth. He is passionate about helping business owners overcome challenges, implement innovation, and define success for themselves.

According to Peter, being a serial entrepreneur doesn’t always mean being successful. But what matters is to know how to dust yourself off and get back to work.

In this episode of the Think Business with Tyler podcast, we talk about how technology can be a business ally, the importance of faith, why the destination is more important than the journey, and learning to trust your gut in business.

If you want to get more tips on entrepreneurship, tune into this episode to hear what Peter has to say.

Guest-At-A-Glance

💡 Name: Peter Wasmer

💡 What he does: He’s the President & Chief Executive Officer at Pure Coastal Technologies.

💡 Noteworthy: Peter is a long-time Naples, Florida-based entrepreneur who helps pragmatic small business owners manage like a pro.

💡 Key Quote: “I certainly advocate for success, and however you define that, but in many ways, success is a direct derivative of what you put into a day.”

💡 Where to find Peter: LinkedIn

Key Insights

Technology can be a powerful business ally. With the emergence of ChatGBT, it’s safe to say that technology is more powerful than ever. From writing high-quality content to managing essential tasks, there’s so much that technology can do to help, especially for a small busy business owner. But the question on everyone’s minds is whether technology is a friend or foe. Here’s what Peter thinks. “We all only have 24 hours in a day, and in our case, we’re working with service companies, you’re operating the business to deliver a service to your customers, and that’s the only thing you want to be concerned about. If you can [have] help in the background, make the other things that you really want to do to keep your business going, to retain customers, and to communicate better, then it’s great to have these tools.”

Have faith in your business. Faith can be of great help when you’re a business owner. According to Peter, having faith is especially vital during the hard and long nights when you’re questioning your choices and motivation. He explains, “Faith, for me, is a foundational way to move through a day. If I get up in the morning and I believe that I’m serving another purpose, not just simply for myself or my family, but if I’m serving a higher purpose, I tend to listen to the universe and hear what it has to tell me.”

It’s not about the destination, it’s about the journey. It’s a tale as old as times; your journey is always more important than your destination. The same goes for entrepreneurship. That’s why you need to accept that failure is a natural part of life and learn to embrace it. Peter says, “The media, they showcase life as though you arrive somewhere, and this is what we’re all sold. You’re going to end up rich and famous if you’re an entrepreneur. Well, I got a mountain of people that have been entrepreneurs that are all over the place that haven’t made it big, but they’ve had a great journey. And I think that the one thing that does keep me going on a day-to-day basis is understanding that this is just another day in the pathway. And so, I certainly advocate for success, and however you define that, but in many ways, success is a direct derivative of what you put into a day.”

Trust your gut. Your gut can be a powerful ally in business. That’s why you need to nurture it and learn to use it to your advantage. Peter explains, “If your gut is telling you something, you have to pay attention to it. And so a lot of small business guys operate really well on their gut, and my advice is continue to listen to it, and if you’re not paying attention to it, figure out what voice is actually trying to take you away from listening to your gut, ‘cause that’s what’s going to drive you, that’s what will be successful for you. Somebody else doesn’t know any better than you.”

Top Quotes

“It’s a good moniker for somebody who just doesn’t want to take orders from somebody else. […] That’s really what it comes down to. I just don’t want anybody to tell me what to do. I’m just going to go figure it out on my own.”

“We had a good business, a good solid market presence. The challenge came when some changes happened with our equity partner, and they said, ‘Really, at the end of the day, you’re good guys, but we don’t see this business growing to be a billion dollars,’ which I thought, ‘Well, yeah, I know. We never thought we would really get there.’ But that’s what they wanted.”

“We all only have 24 hours in a day, and despite the copious amount of dollars that they have to invest, they were not going to spend that kind of capital on a small company because, quite candidly, we required a lot of attention from a professional financing perspective and so that investment of time didn’t marry up with the returns that they could get with the dollars they would need to invest down the road.”

“If you’re going to have something for five years, you should just own it. But really, the metric is, especially in a small business, if it’s losing value over a five-year period of time, you should just rent it, make it an expense.”

“You should keep your operation as light as possible. Everything should go into the cloud.”

“AI, for me, is a very hard topic because, on one hand, you can see the initial journal of truth that it can help you. But we can quickly see and are already seeing really consequential results from AI.”

“The art form of any one of these things right now is in the prompt. You can write very generic prompts, and you’ll get a very generic answer, but if you write very specific prompts, you’ll get a very specific answer, which is cool.”

“I’m very concerned about what the end result is going to be because of their fabulous capacity to produce, whether it’s written word or video or something else, that will have a serious consequence in terms of truth.”

“The Terminator stuff is here right now, and people don’t know it.”

“Infinite curiosity is where it starts. And I have a deep faith. So, if there’s a kernel of an idea, then I’ll explore it and keep going down that road to see if there’s merit.”