Pop Quiz, Monday with Ian Peterman
The Pop Quiz, Monday, is a fun little exam that we love to give to savvy business owners. The examination is not a surprise, after all, since the interviewee already knew about the questions in advance. However, we can always pretend and have fun with the scenario of a young entrepreneur sitting in class nervously biting on their pencil. They are ready to take a pop quiz on a chapter that they were supposed to read the night before. Instead, they played Metroid all night on their SNES (Oops, this was me in high school). The real purpose of the pop quiz is that this is a fun way to introduce business tips from real-world experiences that you can not learn in a classroom. We want to thank our entrepreneur for being a good sport and volunteering their time to answer a few questions to help our community grow from their knowledge.
I want to introduce you to our guest today, who will be taking our Pop Quiz Monday.
1. Can you please tell everyone your name?
Ian Peterman
2. Tell us about your business and what you do?
I founded the Peterman Design Firm in 2017 after being a partner at another small design firm to design products. Over the last two years, that has morphed and grown, I’ve added several employees, and we’ve expanded our services and also niched down. We now provide Branding, Product Development, and what we call Legacy Design. We help companies to create coherent experiences for their customers and employees with the brand and work with investment groups and companies to provide road maps for products, services, and companies. Our goal is always to help our clients build a lasting legacy, and design what that looks like for them.
3. Why did you want to become an entrepreneur?
I grew up in a family of entrepreneurs, it was never an expectation pushed on me, but I started my first business when I was about 12 with my brother. After my first few design jobs early in my career, I ended up taking on freelancing. I didn’t want just to design the same things over and over, and because of my background and freelance experience, the decision was easy to launch a business and go full time toward that. I love working for myself and helping the clients I connect with.
4. What are the challenging aspects of running a business?
Definitely keeping boundaries with time is a big one, keeping work to a set time during the week has been a challenge. The other challenge, at least in the beginning, was cashflow, it wasn’t always steady, though growing has smoothed that out and kept us even after the first year or so.
5. What do you love most about your job?
I am getting to talk to people who are working on amazing new technologies. Interacting with inventors, to CEO’s, I love talking to people who are passionate about what they do and what they are trying to achieve. I also love working with my team, and it’s always a good time.
6. How do you have fun at work (team building, pranks, etc..)?
I have fun every day doing my job because I love it, and I only hire people who love what they do too. We don’t live near each other, so communication is through chat mostly, and we keep things light, never too serious, takes the fun out of work.
7. What would one piece of advice that you give to a new business owner?
Decide how you want your business to be, down to the hours you want to work, the money you make, team size you want, everything. Every day, week, and month review that and don’t be afraid to adjust what you are doing if it isn’t producing the results you want. You can waste a lot of money and effort going down a path you didn’t actually want, so keep your ideal business in mind every day.
Thank you for taking our pop quiz today. You get an A+ for effort. You can learn more about our interviewee and their business by visiting them on the web: https://www.petermanfirm.com
Originally published at https://www.inboxdude.com on November 24, 2019.
