Cosmos:

Welcome back to the show, my fellow extraordinary Americans. For today’s guests, we have Peter Murphy Lewis. Peter is the founder and CEO of Strategic Pete, a marketing consulting and revenue growth company featured by top brands such as Business Insider, the Boston Globe, and Yahoo Finance. As a foreign affairs correspondent for CNN, he elucidated complex global affairs, bringing clarity to millions worldwide. As a visionary entrepreneur, Peter’s initiatives blend his love for travel, television, and podcasting, creating distinctive cultural experiences. 

He was mentioned twice in the New York Times, along with his business associate. Mirroring their far-reaching influence. Their creative enterprise’s magnetism attracted legends like Steven Tyler of Aerosmith and Paul McCartney to their unique cultural immersion experiences. In 2018, Peter ascended another rung of his multifaceted career ladder, hosting Aquila, Trago Peter, a popular cultural television program on Chile’s TVN station. He has a new show pitched as Elano Americano that a new TV station in Chile is reviewing. In his new show, Peter will travel the USA in a camper van with his family, interviewing Latinos who came to the USA to fulfill their dreams. 

Peter’s broad spectrum of expertise extends to technology solutions, marketing, sales, community nurturing, and business growth. He toggles effortlessly between roles, personifying his multifaceted talent and dynamism. He is a TV host, podcaster, riveting public speaker, chief strategy officer at Tangan Nika, and co-founder of inventive enterprises like Labyrink, Leta Vertical Tours for Tips, and Chile Guru. He’s an extraordinary American. I’m glad and honored to have him on the show.

Peter:

Peter, are you there, man? I’m happy to be here.

Cosmos:

Peter, thank you so much for taking the time to do this podcast with us.

Can you tell me, the audience, a little bit more about yourself, your background, and how you got to where you are right now?

Peter:

Yeah, I’ll try to give you the abbreviated version, and then you can tease out what interests you. I grew up in a small town in the middle of the United States called Osawatomie, Kansas. About 2,000 people went to a small boarding high school In Missouri with 160 students, the entire high school, and then went to a small college in Boston. The thing that marks who I am today at 44 in that brief bio up through college is in boarding high school. The majority of my friends were international students. 

So I had a best friend from Egypt, another from Spain, and friends from Indonesia, Japan, Mexico, and worldwide. And those friends taught me to think differently. They taught me a paradigm. They taught me about languages; they taught me about different religions. And I think that sparked the way I started to approach problems as an entrepreneur, which is why I moved abroad to South America for 15 years. It approaches the way that I raise my son as well.

Cosmos:

Well, Peter, I know you started in a small town, but what made you go to South America, like, take this giant leap? Like, it’s. It’s terrifying for most people, like visiting another country with a different culture. And also, there’s the language barrier. So, can you tell the audience more about how you went to South America and created a life over there?

Peter:

The story goes like this: I started to learn Spanish in high school because of Shakira, the Colombian singer. Then, when I went to college, one of my mentors told me, “Peter, you have to perfect your Spanish and go to Costa Rica.” 

So, I went to Costa Rica and started to learn Spanish. And then I had a mentor from Switzerland who said, Peter, you have to go to South America. You got to this. Go to this cool country called Chile. You’ll love it as a sociologist or a political scientist. You’re going to fall in love with these people. And I went there when I was 20 years old and backpacked. When I was there, I attended a master’s program, knowing I would return to Chile sometime. When I was 24 years old, I had that opportunity. I won a scholarship to go anywhere I wanted in the world. I returned to the same master’s program I’d visited four years beforehand and walked in the door while on vacation. And that’s where I went back and studied. 

And I thought I was going to study for my master’s to come back and be a diplomat in the United States. But within six months, I called my parents. I said I’m not coming home for Christmas. I will live the rest of my life in this beautiful country called Chile. And there I did everything I could to. To. To stay there. And that’s why I ended up creating a company that grew. I just sold that company three months ago, and that’s. That’s how I got to Chile. I didn’t. I didn’t know I would live there for 15 years, but it all started with Shakira.

Cosmos:

Shakira was one of my favorite singers back in high school, too. Whenever, wherever I was, like, man, and then the stone lay, like that song, like those two songs, like, defining my high school life. But I didn’t know it would have such a profound effect that you’d travel to South America and a new culture. 

But I would just like to elaborate on this. So you managed to go there like you adapted to a new culture. But how did you start your business over there? Like, you know, it’s already hard to start a business from scratch, like being in the same culture, but like to go to Chile, do that, and also do the TV shows you did. Can you tell the audience about the process of how you went about doing that?

Peter:

I love this story, Cosmo. I haven’t talked very often about how I started my company. So, I was a full-time professor right when I got out of my master’s. I knew I had to find a way financially to stay in South America and not depend on my parents. And I finished my master’s program, number one. So, I was the best person positioned to become a full-time professor. I became a full-time professor in 2006. And I wasn’t making enough money to travel back to the US to see my family. I wasn’t making enough money to buy a house or an apartment. 

So, I started to look for side gigs. I was going to work, you know, from 4 till 8 o’clock when I got out of the university at another job to save up money. I liked academia, but I also wanted some business experience. My family comes from banking. I knew that sales and people were important beyond just academia. I applied for many jobs, and nobody would accept me because they said, You don’t have enough energy to work after work, or You’re such an academic that you’re not going to be able to help us. And I was getting pigeonholed into being a scholar instead of being able to contribute financially to any type of enterprise operation. 

At that point, when I realized I couldn’t get hired anywhere, I decided to start my own company. And I told my best friend I would start a company in the travel industry. This was 2006, 2007. The Internet was just starting to become important for travelers. Most people are still traveling with Frommers and Lonely Planets in their backpacks. But I knew the Internet was coming, and I understood culture well. 

So, I wanted to explain the culture of the Americans, Canadians, and Europeans coming to Chile. I will go into your point of view on how you took the risk. I told my best friend to introduce me to the smartest Chilean. I’m going to start a business with that Chilean person, and I’m going to start a business with that human being. He introduced me to Hoel Martinez. On November 27, 2007, I told Hoel I wanted to start a travel company. I told him about my background, and he believed me. Within three or four weeks, he put, I want to say, $3,000 into it. I cleared out one of my checking accounts. He put $3,000 unthinkingly into one of my checking accounts. I put $3,000 in and. And we started off building a business on my checking account. And that’s how it started. And it was built on trust. We were 50/50 partners. We’d never met before. I pitched him the idea. He sold his law firm about six months later. Then, we started a travel company off of grit, faith, and trust.

Cosmos:

Wow. But Peter, that is so intense.

Like, you’re in a foreign country. Like, you know, many businesses fail because your business partners are not going to be the right ones, or there’s a falling out or whatever, but it just seemed to work out. So, is there a particular way you’re seeing business? What is your mindset around how you see business and business partners and scaling business in general? Because a lot of people are afraid of it. They have a lot of fear and limitations when starting something new.

Peter:

Yeah. I think there are a couple of different lessons from that story, and that will try to answer your question. I think the first thing is that I would say the relationship with my business partner worked a little bit because of luck, but it also worked because I feel like I’m good at trusting others, empowering others, and helping them trust me. I just tend to be a trustworthy person. And I think I’ve earned that. That’s a skill that you can hone and improve over time. So, kind of to your question, you know, people are nervous. I think it’s okay to be nervous, but it’s not okay to be nervous when you’re going to go into a business relationship. Like, you have to trust each other. 

And I think that’s the smart decision I made there, as I didn’t go into the business with my best friend, which I could have. He’s a very smart individual. I think the smart thing is that I went into business with an extremely smart person who was not going to screw me over because there was a person between us.

Like, why would he want to burn a bridge with one of his best friends who’s an attorney? Why does an attorney want to ruin his reputation? Right? So, I chose the right person and approached the challenge correctly. And it worked because he and I chose the right industry at the right time. We worked our butts off. 

So the way that we kind of grew the business was a customer first, with the best customer service, and then the really good, innovative way to think about tourism, dive, and tease that out. Right? Customer first. We have 100% guaranteed satisfaction from the day we built the business to today. No one can leave the office and say that this was not a 5 out of 5 experience who does not get an offer to get a 100% refund. So that just means you dominate word of mouth. Like when people go to the Ritz-Carlton or the Sherry Chariot, the. What am I saying? When they go to these places, the Marriott and Sheraton go back, and they tell their concierge that they just had the best travel tourism experience ever because if not, they got their money back. And then you would never complain. 

Why would you complain about someone who gave you a hundred dollars back? And. And we dominated TripAdvisor. We were number one or number two on TripAdvisor for the. For the 19 years that the business has been around. It’s always been the best, I guess. 20. I guess. Yeah. Eight. Yeah, we’ll see. It was started in 2007. What is that, 17 years now?

Cosmos:

So, Peter, one.

One thing that I noticed is that you started this as the Internet was starting to become popular. Then, there was a huge technological change in the 2000s, which had never been seen for thousands of years. Suddenly, you have something called the Internet, which is extremely new. So, how did you adjust on the fly and make your business successful with this advanced technology that’s coming into prominence and people are starting to use it?

Peter:

Back then, it wasn’t a calculated decision about the Internet coming to disrupt the travel world. I think that was mostly luck. I think I got it right because I chose an industry 10 years behind all that technology. Suppose I were going to do a company today, like many of the things I focus on today in my new entrepreneurship. In that case, entrepreneurship is I focus on B2B businesses that are still about 10 years behind digital digitalization. 

So, I’m looking at places that still live off trade shows and not websites, still live off person-to-person relationships. And not the Internet and email and traffic and ads and social media. So it’s the same thing with travel. Now I know that today, at the age of 44, when I was 27, I think what I chose there was not the industry based around the Internet. I chose the industry in which Chileans were bad at customer service and tourism. That means they like to talk about how modern their country was, is, and was. 

And so, they would, on their tours, just show off their malls. It’d be like if you went to Dubai and all you talked about was their wealth instead of the people. Well, that’s what Chileans do. That’s what Chileans were doing. Secondarily, they’re really bad at customer service. So, you walk into a restaurant, and people look down. This was more so in 2007 than it is today. But back then, you know, if a customer complained, they would blame it on the customer.

So, as an American, you know, we’re naturally great at customer service. And then, obviously, I understood that what’s great about tourism is people, not malls. And I put those two things together. Now, I was lucky when it came to the Internet. I was good at the Internet. My business partner was good at the Internet, and we just dominated TripAdvisor, which meant millions of dollars.

Cosmos:

Wait, Peter, one thing just for the audience to know is what Chilean culture and people are like compared to American culture and American people. What are, like, the. What are some of the basic similarities and differences from your point of view regarding these two different cultures?

Peter:

Because of their similarities, I always consider the Chileans the Latin Americans of the Midwest or the Midwest Latinos. 

So, I’m from Kansas. I’m in Kansas right now. You and I are speaking. I think the reason that I love Chile and Kansas is that they have a lot in common. And I think many developing countries can relate to what I’m saying. Family is the most important thing. The next most important thing is your friends that you create in middle school and high school, and then after that, it’s some local sport or your church, your synagogue, or your local mosque, and then some type of community thing, your YMCA, your public library, and that’s 80% of your life. Everything else matters so much less. People in Kansas don’t need a third car, and they don’t need a second home. People in Chile don’t need a second car; they don’t need a second home. It’s back to those values of who I have quality time with. That makes them both uniquely wonderful, and that is what I love about Chile and us, especially the Midwest. Main differences. You know, I already spoke to two of them about customer service. 

And I think that has to do with a little classism. The thing I like least about Chile is that it is extremely classist. The way that I’ve had many people explain it is to imagine everyone in the US understands something about caste. Caste system in India. Well, that basic understanding that you learned maybe in high school and, you know, world geography. Chile has a caste system. It’s not around your last name; it’s around what high school you went to, what college you went to, the diploma you have, and what your parents do for a living. And you can’t break out of those systems. 

So, as an American doing tourism who treats everybody the same, I do great for tourists, right? If I were an upper-class Chilean, I might not treat tourists well because I think I’m better. And if I’m an upper-class Chilean who owns a company, I might not treat myself well. More than likely, I don’t treat my employees well. He was an American from Kansas. I don’t even know the difference between them. I don’t know who has a high school degree because I don’t interview them about that. So, that’s Chile’s weakness, with Kansas’s strength being a perfect opportunity from an entrepreneurial point of view.

Cosmos:

Wow. It’s fascinating because it’s the perfect intersection of technology, different cultures, cultural exchange, and travel. And it’s just like one of those great moments in life that is not seen in different decades, you know, because you’re never going to have a time where you, like, you’re doing that, and you have a technological advance.

This brings me to the next question. Peter, I wanted your opinion on AI and ChatGPT and how they will influence companies, immigration, etc. From your perspective, now that new technology is coming on the horizon, which is far more powerful than the Internet and will revolutionize the 21st century, how do you see it playing a role in businesses?

Peter:

Well, I don’t consider myself particularly great at predictions. And I don’t know if it’s because I surround myself with people much smarter than me or why. I don’t know if it’s something about my personality. What comes to my mind is when people get nervous about AI in their jobs. So I’m a marketer, I’m a sociologist, and I’m a political scientist. 

And I, and I’m. My father and I think the same advice applies to anybody worried about AI. If you are good at critical thinking and synthesizing lots of information, simplifying that into a way that can help others, you don’t have to be afraid. I always. My son’s eight years old, and I tell him three main things. If you treat everyone with respect, are the most helpful person in the room, and are good at listening, no one will ever take your job away. You’ll never lose a job; you’ll never be fired. And I think it’s the same thing with AI. AI can’t take that from you if you’re the most helpful person in the room. If you know how to synthesize complex data that doesn’t fit into your next LLM, right? 

You have to pull data from Google Analytics; you have to pull it over from qualitative data about what’s happening on your website or how people interpret your messaging. And then lastly. And lastly, I can’t remember the first. Treat everyone equally, right? That just gives you a business advantage. So, I’m not afraid of AI. I see AI as helping me do a hundred times more things I could not do 10 years ago. I see how I can help synthesize information from podcasts and repurpose it. 

So, in this podcast you and I are doing, I will use AI, cut up the best quotes from me and your best questions, and then use that across 15 different platforms. I couldn’t have done that 10 years ago. So, I’m not a cynic at all. It will be revolutionary for those who are nice, helpful, and good listeners.

Cosmos:

No, I mean totally. One of the reasons that I’m asking is because I like extra from a perspective. Extra. America, automation in the future is going to revolutionize everything. Then, people will have to decide if they are going to live in the past or if they are going to adapt to the future. And those that are going to live in the past, they’re going to be left behind. And I think on a national level, it will create a lot of political turmoil and economic issues. But ultimately, you’ll be fine, you know, because we go through these different eras, like the Industrial Revolution and then the Internet revolution. And so it’s, it’s just part of change.

Peter:

Yeah. And I would say that for somebody who doesn’t have a highly skilled job, you’re worried about it. You’re not too late right now. I can give you an example. I have a friend who probably makes $400,000 a year as an attorney, and he doesn’t use AI 10 minutes a week. And the last three contracts I’ve written as a fractional CMO. I start with everything that, 10 years ago, I had to pay an attorney for. 

And this will slap many people in the face who aren’t ready for it. Even people working in law firms, doctors, electronic health care records, and these SAS products have been overpriced for 20 years. Right, some of these things are going to be beneficial for those; it’s going to be democratic for those, for those of us that are at the bottom. Right. I’ve never had a job that, in theory, should pay more than $100,000 a year unless I outwork. Right. I don’t have a science; I’m not great at math. I’m not an attorney; I’m not a doctor. Now, it will allow me to make the type of income that other people had before because they had a degree.

Cosmos:

No, I mean totally. From a business standpoint, it does help a lot because you can do 10 people’s work in months. What would take months would just take weeks. What takes weeks would just take days. And so, yeah, it’s different.

But Peter, I wanted to ask you about your TV show because I know you did all these businesses, but you also had time for these TV shows. So, can you tell me, the audience, a little more about how you got to be on the TV station and how you are juggling all these different things simultaneously?

Peter:

I’ll tell you how I got into it, and then I’ll tell you how I feel like I took a mix of luck and then a piece of luck and how I turned it into a strategy and a bigger outcome. So in. While I was doing my travel company, you mentioned at the beginning of the intro that we had a lot of kinds of PR at the beginning. We got the New York Times twice, Paul McCartney twice, Steven Tyler from Aerosmith came into my office, Beyonce hired us, and so forth. That puts us at the top of everything—tourism in South America. And so about once a year, the local news would come to us and say, Hey, what new things are you doing? We want to cover it. That’s just part of the, like, the. The gig, right? It’s the beat writer who, in spring, has to cover new travel excursions. 

And we would go on TV, and we would explain it. Sometimes, we would show them the tour on a bicycle, wine tour, or whatever it was, or a walking tour, graffiti tour, or cooking tour. Well, one of these experiences, they said, Hey, we want you to show us your new tour, and we want to do it on a bicycle. Can you do it, Peter? 

So I went out on that day, and I just happened to be the guest with a host who rode around on bicycles and showed them. The program director sent me a message the next day and said, “Hey, Peter, can we have dinner? I’d like to know if we could do a show just with you. I asked my wife and business partner about it, and they both supported it. We thought it would be good for the business. I knew that I would enjoy it. And that turned out to be a successful TV show. The second and third seasons rolled into a second TV show I just filmed. You mentioned in your intro we just filmed that in the United States.

 And I think the luck was that I was invited to the show. The hard work was, you know, going back to treating everyone equally, being the most helpful person in the room, and being a good listener. If you do those three things, you can also be good at TV. And now, where that’s kind of growing into my bigger outcome and strategy: I’ve just sold my third documentary. I’m producing, hosting, and directing a documentary called People Worth Caring About in the Long-Term Care Industry. And that’s taken off on TV. I couldn’t have planned that like you can’t go for that. Like, I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t tell my younger version, Peter, to take a swing and try to get on TV. I wouldn’t have done it. I would have failed miserably.

 But after you open the first door, you know how to take it to the next level. And I think I’ve done that with, you know, life lessons.

Cosmos:

So.

Wow, Peter, you do a lot of different things simultaneously. So, back to the question: How do you juggle all this together? How do you mitigate risk and compartmentalize these different businesses in your head simultaneously? Because you’re pretty busy if you’re doing all of these things.

Peter:

And I think there’s probably a two-pronged answer. One is that I surround myself with people who are usually way smarter than I am in one or two areas. So, when I delegate, those people do a better job than I do. I have 15 full-time contractors on my team, and 15 are better at one or two things than me. Right? 

One of them. Currently, three people on my team are better at PPC, paid performance campaigns, and marketing; three are better writers and SEO, and three are better at branding.

 So those. When something is, when I’m given an opportunity, I do the part that is, the, the essential part that no one else can do, which is showing up on TV or being a keynote speaker, whatever it is, or getting to meet Paul McCartney. Everything else, there’s a huge machine behind me that’s doing a great job. And then the second thing that I think is now, at my age, probably a superpower: being good at delegating, empowering, and retaining those brilliant people. I have a book that’s going to be published next month. It is a systematic approach for teaching CEOs how to build a remote team and build culture, starting with interns. So, in my 20 years of entrepreneurship, I’ve had over 100 interns come under my wing. And I’ve taught them how to be smarter than me. And these people make all of it possible. So, directly to your question, I’m doing a lot. 

So it looks like I’m filming and doing a documentary and keynote, growing the fractional CMO, and all these things. I’m only doing the visual side of it. That makes me think it looks like that. The hard work behind it is doing the prep work and so forth. There’s a team of brilliant people making it happen.

Cosmos:

Peter, you, you put the nail on the head. This is exactly what I want the audience to know: you have to do delegation. And you have to, like, you cannot micromanage a business all the time. For example, if you want to become wealthy, you have to delegate and give it to people you trust who are smarter.

 Many times, people don’t want to do that out of ego because, you know, it’s kind of humbling not to be in a room where everybody’s smarter than you. But if you can do that and delegate, you can now expand, do multiple ventures, and have multiple income streams. So, delegating is key to becoming financially successful and obtaining financial freedom.

Peter:

There are two things that, you know, that reflection makes me think of. The first one returns to my relationship with my business partner, right? Like, you have to find somebody you can trust and know that you can go and scale with two people better than you can with one. The second thing is a great TED Talk by Tim Ferriss called Fear Setting. He walks you through the things you are afraid of and the cost you have because of inertia, of not facing that fear and deciding to break out. And back to you, you know, you say delegation. Most people do not delegate because they fear it won’t be as good if someone else does it. Or they’re afraid that if somebody else does it, they’ll get credit for it, or they’re afraid that if somebody else does it, they might lose the positioning or the opportunity or the market or the brand, or they’ll copy them So I think most of the time, humans, entrepreneurs more so, are driven by fear more than they are by desire. And I think delegation is very intimately tied to that fear. 

So, I would challenge anybody. Listen, this resonates. When you said talk about delegation, watch the Tim Ferriss TED Talk and walk yours. Throw yourself through those fears, and if one of them is around delegation, figure out what the cost is in your life for not delegating. 

And it’ll, it’ll, it’ll push you over the edge, right? You’ll be like, Oh my gosh, that’s so painful. I’m losing out on so much. And you’ll prepare yourself to make different decisions.

Cosmos:

So, Peter, one of the revelations I had during my time, especially doing Strong America, was that there are two key aspects that people have that determine business success. One is trusting the people with whom you’re working. And the other is discipline. 

Right? So, if you’re disciplined, you’re going to make a business successful if you have trust. And the combination of those two leads to success. 

But many times, people had the trust or discipline factors down. But doing both is pretty difficult.

Peter:

Oh, I love it. This is new. I’m going to steal some of this content. I got a brainstorm on this, and I think you’re on to something. You should write a book out of this. There must be some formula for people to break down what you just said. I know this is a podcast, but I can say it out loud, and people will understand.

This is what I referred to as the equation. For anyone not watching this, I have an equation tattoo on my arm that says happiness is the relationship between reality and expectations. The only thing you can control in life is expectations.

 So, back to the cosmos point of view, right? Success is probably some type of equation between discipline and trust, right? There, there are some undermining things. There are underlying things we can’t control, like what our parents gave us, where we started regarding wealth or education, or what neighborhood we lived in. But you know, Cosmo, Cosmos, right, there’s something we can control: trust and discipline. 

So, you know, quit complaining about what our parents gave us. There are two variables that we can control.

Cosmos:

No, totally.

And your formula for happiness is the next question I wanted to ask you regarding the American identity of the pursuit of happiness. Because, you know, many people are trying to attain happiness in America and the American dream, but for many, it’s just elusive. But I think they’re attached to the material materialism aspect of it. 

But you just showed a formula that is like reality versus expectations. It got me thinking that in America, many people have high expectations based on a fantasy given by social media, Hollywood, and many other things. But from your perspective, what is the reality? What should Americans expect, and how should they obtain the American dream?

Peter:

Oh, we might need another two hours to talk about this. I, where my mind goes. So I don’t have this, I don’t have this worked out perfectly, and I should because I just filmed a TV show six months ago called The American Dream, and it airs in two weeks. 

So you would think that after filming for 10 weeks on the road daily, I would know the American dream. I think what comes to mind is, from a financial point of view, right? It’s being able to do what you want to do to jump into a social class within five years and give your kids a better future than you had growing up. I think it’s a lot more than that. Right. Like, you know, my wife became a US citizen yesterday. She was naturalized yesterday at 10 am, and it was the most beautiful ceremony. One hundred thirty-seven people were naturalized from 41 different countries. I teared up 15 times during the ceremony, and she did, too. 

And I asked her on the car ride home. I was like, what, what touched you? What did you think of this American dream becoming a reality? And she gave her story. And what came to my mind was, you know, the ability, independence, and freedom to think differently than everyone else. Right there, out of the 137 people who were naturalized yesterday, there were some Muslims in the crowd, and there were some Jews in the crowd. My wife is agnostic; there were Christians. And all of these people live in this small town, a town in Kansas, where you would think there would be so much racism and so much hate if you watch TV. It’s not the case. All these different religions and class levels want to live in this city and live together when in many other countries, they can’t; they can’t talk or be in the same building. Their governments do not want them; they can’t get along and are at war. There’s something unique where our differences in the United States can be put aside, and what we want in common with our kids can be what unifies us. 

And that. And you know, to kind of the topic, what we’re talking about, that’s entrepreneurial, right? I have 25 friends who live within 20 miles of me. And they’re undocumented, which means they shouldn’t, legally, be in the United States. They’re at risk of being deported. They all work their butts off. They work so hard, right? And it’s because they wouldn’t be able to do what they do in their own countries. They wouldn’t be able to start their own company. 

So, I think it returns to the mentality that you can lift yourself. And people say that, you know, the American dream is gone. It might not be as strong as in the 60s or the 80s. It’s still prevalent. I just interviewed 36 people on a TV show, and a couple of them were homeless, sleeping on a bench 10 years ago. And now one of them, the guy who was homeless, is making over $200,000 a year. I mean, don’t follow social media. Tell you what the American dream is. You can go out and make it. It might be really hard. It might be harder than it will be for your kids, but you can do it.

Cosmos:

Wow, Peter. Yeah, you’re right. And as a continuation of this, like, I like, you know, like you embody the entrepreneurial immigrant identity of America as you have lived it, and it shows open-mindedness, adaptability, and all of that. S

From your perspective, deep, from your perspective, where do you see, like, do you, are you optimistic about America’s future and about realizing the entrepreneurial immigrant identity? Or do you think there’s a battle or clash between different thinking methods?

Peter:

I consider myself optimistic. I think that the US is hyper-polarized right now. As a person, you know, I’m a political scientist. I’ve shared that I’m in the center. I haven’t voted for the right or the left in 20 years. 

And I think that we need to get over that polarization. You see, right now, in the US, between the coasts—right, right, and left—coasts don’t understand the middle of the United States, and the middle of the States doesn’t understand it. I think it goes back to kind of, you know, being understood and being heard. Right. Like, I think that there’s being connected and being understood. I think that there’s a human need, a basic human need like a tribal human need, to feel connected to others and to be understood by others. In the last 10 or 15 years in the United States, we haven’t felt understood by others, and we don’t feel connected with others. We can blame some of that on cell phones, but as I mentioned, we must quit blaming things on our parents. 

And if you have a cell phone addiction, turn off your cell phone, talk to your neighbor, shovel their snow, or mow their yard. I think we’re headed in the right direction. I predict that five years from now, we will be less addicted to our cell phones than we are today. We will be more connected to people than we are today, and we’re headed in the right direction. You know, I just filmed it, finished filming a documentary about nursing homes, and I noticed that nursing home connections are stronger than ever, and it’s because people are not on their cell phones. 

And so if we could get back to, you know, the African American CNA who’s talking to a 90-year-old upper-class white woman in a nursing home, neither one of them has a racial divide nor a class divide. Neither one is looking at their cell phones or letting Instagram tell them how to vote for different parties or where they should fight in the streets. They’re both trying to improve each other’s lives, and it’s a win-win situation.

 I’m very optimistic, and most of my friends who have kids feel differently. I feel the world will be better for my 8-year-old in 10 years. When he’s 18 years old, he might have new struggles, new drugs, and more individualism. But my life is better today than it was five years ago. I just have to say no to a lot of things.

Cosmos:

No. Yeah, I think with the technology and social media, it creates these bubbles and creates like these. Dude, it’s almost like two football teams fighting each other. But ultimately, if we go and dive into our entrepreneurial immigrant identity, 

We realize that we are all interconnected. Love is the main thing. We can overcome all the barriers. Because a lot of times, like right now, it’s almost like a. It’s not even like a political thing. It’s more like a spiritual thing, if anything. It’s a battle between egotism and narcissism and interconnectedness and helping others, coming down to a basic spiritual message, if you ask me, because that’s the root cause. 

Because what we’re seeing right now are just the symptoms, but it’s all about getting to the root, you know, that you have to get rid of the disease. And it’s all about, like, connectedness.

Peter:

I agree.

It makes me think of a really important book called The Five Languages of Love. And the Five Languages of Love is. A book is maybe 185 pages. You can read it in two hours, pick it up, or download the PDF. It says that people who want to be loved in the same way that they love. And the five languages are quality time, words of affirmation, acts of service, gifts, and physical touch. 

And that reminds me about. Let’s see, my. My son is 8. About six years ago, my wife and I were struggling. We, you know, like most parents who have an infant, have no time to love each other. There’s no time to sleep. There’s no time. Everything is a struggle financially. Everything’s a struggle traveling, kind of. And I can remember being on a car ride and just being so angry at my wife for not loving me, not appreciating me as a dad, a husband, and so forth. 

I reread the book and said my wife wants to be loved through acts of service and quality time. And I’m trying to love her how I know how to love, which is gifts. I’m the provider. I’m paying for the rent, I’m paying for our family, and so forth. And words of affirmation. I’m telling her I love her and how beautiful she is. She doesn’t need to be loved in that way. She needs to be loved how she wants, not how I want to be loved. And I question myself. Can I unilaterally change this negative relationship we’ve created as parents? And can I do it differently? And I started to do acts of service for her every single day without telling her that I was changing my mindset. And you can flip a negative relationship on your own. 

So if. If you’re a Republican and you hate the Democrats, flip the relationship. Quit blaming the Democrats. If you’re rich and you hate the poor, flip the negative relationship. You can do it. Quit blaming the world for your problems and start today with baby steps. And you’re going to have a bigger impact than you think.

Cosmos:

No. Yeah. It’s all about mindset and how you look at the world. Like, there’s a lens you have. But most people don’t understand that you can control your thoughts, emotions, and how you see the world. No matter your environment, you can have a positive or negative view of it. 

And you get to decide what that view is going to be. A lot of people have been through a lot of hardships, and that’s one of the reasons why I did this podcast. It is because many people have gone through hardship, but they succeeded. And it was mainly because of how they perceived the world.

 And there was a certain perception they had, which was positive. For instance, one of the things they see is opportunities in problems, right? Like them. They take those opportunities and then turn them into businesses. Like, that’s a perception. And if you have the right perception, you go through life successfully. So thank you.

Peter:

Yeah.

Cosmos:

So, Peter, can you tell me, the audience, a little bit more about your company, Strategic Pete, and the premise of how you started it?

Peter:

Yeah, I’ll start with how it started and then explain how we got to where we are. Strategic Pete started as a side hustle, and I think your audience is trying to figure out what my side hustle should be. I started as a side hustle when I was recruited as the vice president of marketing for a private equity turnaround. 

So private equity bought a company that was dying, which was a distressed asset, and the goal for us and the leadership team was to turn it around and exit and make a good, profitable sale. Well, while I was doing that job, I got recruited for a large B2B software-as-a-service company, a SaaS company, and they were going to pay me, I don’t know, maybe 50% more than I was making at the time. And I didn’t go to my boss either. I didn’t go to my boss to say, Hey, I’m going to leave the company, or even raise my salary. I just shared with him because I’d become close to him; I wanted to work with an amazing boss, not make more money. And I shared it with him, and he said, You’re amazing; I can’t raise your salary. But you do know as long as you meet your goals, you can take Fridays off.

 So I could meet my quarterly and yearly goals Monday through Thursday. So, on Fridays, I started slowly picking up clients I could help with my consulting with my experience as an entrepreneur in South America and my marketing and revenue skills. And I started to pick them up. Initially, it was a mix of people paying me 500 months, small retainers, and doing things pro bono in some communities where I was helping people. Over time, people started to pay 5,000, 10,000, and $15,000 retainers not to make the mistakes they would make without my guidance. And that started to roll into Strategic Pete. 

So Strategic Pete now has three different branches of consultancy. I’m a fractional chief marketing officer and the only person guiding people with strategic goals and/or what they should do to improve their revenue. Second, the 15 people behind me are working at a marketing agency and executing the strategic guidance I’m given. But you don’t; you can hire one or the other and don’t have to hire them together. 

Third is the documentary. I’ve started filming many documentaries, helping people translate and own their narratives in a world where video dominates. That’s what Strategic Pete is. Today, we have five to 15 clients at any given time, with engagements usually lasting nine to 18 months. Some people, including two clients, have kept me on for over three years. That’s what we do right now.

Cosmos:

That is amazing. I will advise my audience to contact you if anybody needs help regarding this. And Pete and Peter, are there any other projects you’re doing right now that you want the audience to glimpse?

Peter:

Well, I would say to answer your question about people reaching out. Right. So, as I understand, the price I’m charging today is no longer within everybody’s or startups’ points, but I still do three free sessions per week pro bono for anyone who reaches out to me. I’ll do it through the Growth Mentor platform, where I’ve been a mentee, a paying mentee, and a mentor. 

So feel free to reach out if, you know, like, if those numbers scare you, don’t be afraid. Reach out to me. The other project I think I would mention is probably my upcoming book. The title is Interns to a Player. A Blueprint for Remote Bosses. But it might change. If you’re interested in the book, I’ll give it to you for free. Connect with me on LinkedIn. Peter Murphy Lewis. I’m the only Peter Murphy Lewis on LinkedIn. There’s no reason for you to buy the book on Amazon; send me a DM and say, Hey, I loved you on Extraordinary America. You told me to give you a free copy. Copy. I’ve got you covered.

Cosmos:

That is amazing, Peter. Besides LinkedIn, is there any other way for the audience to connect with you and learn more about you, your work, and everything you do?

Peter:

You can follow me on any of the channels, and I’m sure you’ll put some in the links. I’m on Instagram under Gringo Peter because gringo is what they call people in Latin America. I’m on YouTube as well. LinkedIn is my favorite platform. It’s what I use every single day. I post every single day, and I reply to every single DM. 

So I would start there and, you know, say, Hey, tell me, tell me what you heard about this deep conversation between Cosmo and me. We discussed interns, books, travel, discipline, and tattoos everywhere.

Cosmos:

That is amazing, Peter. And Peter, I’m so glad and grateful you took the time to come to this podcast and share your story and wisdom about everything. It makes a difference because you are the ultimate embodiment of the entrepreneurial spirit of immigrants that made America extraordinary.

Peter:

You know, I appreciate that, man.

 

Cosmos:

That’s being open-minded and understanding how you perceive the world. That’s exactly what we need in this world. You know, we need to see things from a certain perspective. That’s the only way we as a nation can move forward, so I appreciate that.

Peter:

I appreciate it. And you know, if you weren’t born in the United States and you’re taking this from an immigrant point of view, you heard me start. The most important thing that happened to me was making friends from outside this country. You have greatly contributed to the people born here, like Americans like me. Right now, in my team of 15 people, I’m the only person from the United States.

 So, 14 people make Strategic Pete. Amazing. And I told you, everyone has something smarter than me. So don’t doubt yourself because you weren’t born in this country. You can contribute and make something great.

Cosmos:

Yeah, for sure. And I do hope, Peter, that you will come to this podcast later.

Peter:

You know, I would love to.

Cosmos:

And I want to conclude this episode by letting my fellow extraordinary Americans know that, hey, look, there’s an extraordinary within every one of us. We must awaken it and unleash it. Until next time. Bye for now.