Peter Beattie

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For a lot of us growing up, Lamborghini posters on the wall were quite the norm and a reminder to work hard while dreaming big. For guys like Peter Beattie, this was no different but a rough childhood growing up that transitioned into a bad experience in corporate America made his dream of owning a Lamborghini seem unreachable.

During a time when Peter’s back was against the wall and at risk of losing his home, Peter turned to entrepreneurship and started a web design and marketing business to supplement his income. Over time Peter transitioned full time into online marketing and has since fulfilled his dream of owning a Lamborghini and being out on his own.

Tell us a little bit about your childhood and your upbringing.

I was always very shy and quiet as a kid and was kind of an outcast who never really fit in with the “cool kids”. I was raised by a single mother who worked extremely hard to raise my 3 siblings and myself. I don’t know how she did it as she couldn’t have made more than $20-$25k per year. We never had much money and I grew up living in trailer parks and low income communities until I moved in with my dad at age 15.

My dad was out of the picture for the most part before this, although I did see him once in a while; usually in between periods of being sober for a few months. My dad was a heavy alcoholic and drug user. I lived with him for a few months but then one day, I came home from school and he told me he was leaving to basically live with one of his friends who was a drug user. I moved back home and never saw him again after that. He died from a drug overdose in a homeless shelter a couple months later.

After my dad died, I went through a very rough time and started using drugs myself. I guess I was very angry at him for leaving me to use drugs. I stopped going to school and almost didn’t graduate high school. Luckily during my junior year I snapped out of it and decided to channel my anger towards being the “total opposite” of him. So I got back to school, stopped using drugs and graduated on time.

After high school I got a job as a construction laborer. I was basically the lowest paid guy on the job site and always had a shovel in my hand. After seeing all the old guys who had worked in the construction field their entire life and were miserable with their life, I decided I needed to go back to school and get a better job. I didn’t want that to be my future. At this point in my life I still hadn’t really adopted that entrepreneurial mindset and still thought that going back to school to get a $35k per year for an “office job” was the right thing to do.

Where did you go to school and what major did you pursue?

After a few years as a construction worker, I started attending classes at Southern Maine Community College in South Portland, Maine. At this point I really didn’t know what I wanted to do for the rest of my life, but I felt the pressure to pick something as soon as possible to get out of construction.

I chose to study Architectural Design because it was a somewhat creative field and involved computers and those were two things that interested me. Looking back, I really had no interest in Architecture but it was a learning experience where I learned how to use a computer and introduced me to “Corporate America” so I don’t regret the decision at all.

I eventually discovered online marketing and immediately fell in love with it. The idea of selling digital products with virtually unlimited earning potential and being able to write your own check really amazed me. I learned everything I could about product launches, affiliate marketing and also got really good at building niche websites and ranking them in the search engines. But, like most people who discover internet marketing, I never really made any significant money with it. I guess that was because I never really took it seriously and didn’t really have the balls to quit my job and do it full time.

What was the turning point that forced you to become an entrepreneur full time?

During the summer of 2009 my life changed drastically over the course of about a week. I was still working as an architectural designer and dabbling with internet marketing in my spare time when my long time girlfriend of 9 years and I decided to buy our first home together.

3 months later I woke up one morning and she was gone. She left me for some other guy and I had to quickly figure out a way to pay all of our newly acquired bills and mortgage by myself. I couldn’t afford it on my current salary so knew I had to do something fast.

That same week I went back to work and my boss gave me the news that he had to cut my hours and pay by 20%. The architecture industry was really affected by the economic conditions at that time so we had no work. That point was the final straw for me. I had to get off my ass and generate some extra income fast, or I would literally lose my home. So I quit my job and started designing websites for local businesses in my area.

How did you learn about online marketing?

I remember the day quite well actually. I was sitting at my desk at the architecture firm I worked at during my lunch break and just started to Google ways to “make money online”. Somehow I came across a training program called “Product Launch Formula” by a marketer named Jeff Walker. He was actually in the middle of launching this course when I discovered him.

I never actually bought the course as it was $2,000 and I didn’t have that kind of money back then to just spend on training. But I learned A LOT about product launches and the power of a responsive email list just by consuming his free training material and watching how Jeff constructed his launch.

From there it kinda just snowballed and I got on a warpath to learn all I could about internet marketing. Over time I got good at ranking websites, building websites and also discovered I was pretty good at writing sales copy.

The “turning point” wasn’t until I was forced to quit my architecture job to put these skills into action. This is when I started my web design business and starting using these skills to help local business owners.

I learned a lot about SEO and ranking websites from Youtube videos and doing research in different marketing forums like WarriorForum.com and BlackHatWorld.com (a black hat SEO forum). I would learn different loopholes to “trick” the search engines and put those tactics to the test with my own niche websites.

To my surprise it was pretty easy for me to achieve rankings this way I learned about building websites with WordPress the same way, mostly from watching tutorials on Youtube.
If I could do this over again now, I would have just paid for a course on the topic because it took me a few years to learn what could easily be learned in a few days if I had the info in one simple course or ebook.

Why did you decide to focus on local clients instead of making more of your own websites?

I first discovered the idea of “selling online marketing services to local business” in the same forums I learned about ranking websites. I kept coming across posts by other forum members who were always talking about how “easy” it was to make money selling these services to local businesses.

People would talk about getting $10,000 checks from clients just for building them a simple 5 page WordPress website and ranking it in a few days. The fact that I could use my website building and ranking skills to make that kind of “easy money” was what initially appealed to me.

After starting your web design and marketing business, was it a smooth transition or did you face some struggles?

Starting that web design business and making it profitable turned out to be one of the toughest things I’ve ever had to do in my life. I struggled so much in the beginning. Mainly because I didn’t know how to market my skills and had trouble getting clients.

I knew how to build websites and rank them, but I had no clue about running a business or even marketing it. I thought I knew but I had no idea so I had to learn as I went. That’s what made it so tough.

There were times when my bank account was almost empty, and I couldn’t sleep at night because I’d be up all night worrying how I was going to pay my bills. I had to sleep with a “night guard” because I’d be grinding my teeth when I would fall asleep.

I was working 7 days a week, pretty much every hour I wasn’t sleeping I’d be working on my business. This took a massive toll on me and the relationships I had with friends, my new girlfriend and my family. I put on about 60 lbs in the first year as the long hours took a toll on my fitness habits. I stopped going to the gym and eating healthy because I just didn’t have the time.
I stopped having a social life almost altogether. I remember reading a Facebook post from a friend saying he saw a new movie that just came out, and how great it was. And my first thoughts were….”I couldn’t imagine having the time to go to the movies right now”.

I just seriously blocked out the world and put all my energy into making my business work. I was always figuring out new ways to get clients and different ways to increase the lifetime value of each client by building a sales funnel etc.

How were you able to build up that company into a success?

Things really started to come together for me when I figured that I needed spend more time working “on my business” rather than “in my business”. Instead of trying to find leads, convert them to clients, build their website, rank it and maintain it all by myself, I started to outsource as much as I could and so I could put all of my focus into the marketing side of things.
Once I found a client I would then outsource the design and programming of the site to designers and programmers using a site called “vWorker.com” (now merged w/ Freelancer.com). This allowed me to take on more clients because I could leverage the skills of others to get the job done faster.

I also started to position myself as the “WordPress Expert” in Southern Maine. This helped me position myself as a “specialist” in the eyes of my clients because they saw me as “the WordPress guy”.

This was around 2009-2010 and offline business owners were just starting to learn about WordPress and it appealed to them because they could maintain their own website by themselves. This tactic helped me attract those clients who knew they wanted their website to be built on WordPress.

Next I discovered that I could make more money from my existing clients by selling them other services such as video marketing, social media services, website maintenance packages etc. This was where I started to learn about sales funnels. Which would ultimately end up helping me have my first 6 figure year in 2010.

These 3 things (outsourcing, expert positioning & sales funnels) worked together to help me finally start making some decent income from the web design business.

After running the Web Design Business for a year, I decided to go from serving clients one on one, to teaching others how to start their web design business and get clients. This is when I launched my first digital product.

Tell us about the first digital product you launched.

After about a year of running the web design business and making it profitable, I discovered a lucrative opportunity to teach other aspiring marketers how to sell websites and online marketing services to local business. I started creating my own information products (ebooks & video courses), software and website templates to help other aspiring marketers start their own local web design company and get clients.

Once I launched my first video course to this market, I made a little over $10,000 within my first 30 days. I managed to generate a little over $5,000 in product sales, then I flipped that website on Flippa.com to some guy in Australia for $5,000 and broke even.

Seeing the hundreds of sales notifications hit my inbox and my Paypal account balance rise so fast and continue to pour in even as I was sleeping or not working just seemed almost like magic to me. I was in complete shock that I could just create something once (a digital product like a video course or ebook) put it online, buy some cheap ads and sell it over and over again without any extra effort.

After the experience of launching my own digital product, I knew this was the business I was destined to be in. Not only were my training courses selling like crazy and I was making about on average $5 – $10k per month almost immediately, but I was also helping a lot more people and making a bigger impact on my customers through my training programs.
People were going through my trainings and were actually able to quit their jobs and start their own businesses. Some of these people turned out to be major success stories in a very short amount of time.

How were you able to get your first set of buyers for your digital product?

I bought some ads on a marketing forum where my target market was hanging out. (Warrior Forum sales thread). The first ad I bought was to start my pre-launch and build buzz around the launch, and of course build a list of interested potential buyers (leads) for my upcoming course.

I wrote a short “teaser report” just giving a taste of what I cover in detail in the upcoming full version of my course. I gave this “teaser report” away for free in exchange for their first name and email address.

From there I built a relationship with the new subscriber, taught them some cool things, and told them if they wanted to learn more to watch out for my upcoming course. This is how I got the first subscribers on my list. A week later I bought some more ads and along with my brand new list of leads launched the paid version of my course.

Why have you decided to focus on video marketing specifically?

I was always using video marketing to grow all the websites I had built and I was pretty good at making sales videos. On top of that, my marketing friends and customers were always asking me how I made my videos. So I decided to start VideoRevolver to teach marketers on all aspects of video marketing and provide them with tools to make video marketing easier for them.

I have courses on everything from marketing video creation (the technical side of things), writing scripts for your videos (the selling side of things), selling video marketing as a service to other businesses to full out marketing funnel templates (the business & sales generation side of things).

My latest and most popular products are my Instant Video Templates products and Rapid Video Funnels.

The Instant Video Templates are explainer video templates that my team and I have built to help marketers and small businesses create animated explainer videos for their business without needing expensive software or hiring an expensive video firm to do it for them.

Explainer videos usually cost a lot of money to have created if you hire a firm to do one for you (can be upwards of $5,000-$10,000 for one video). So we just wanted to give the “little guy” an easy more affordable solution to make their own videos without the high costs.

How do you plan to expand your VideoRevolver business?

I’m a prolific product creator. I’m ALWAYS creating new products and a big chunk of my business comes from repeat buyers. This gives me a massive advantage over my competition because I never run out of things to sell.

Personally I think in order to really become a leader in a niche, you NEED to be prolific with your product creation. You need to have multiple products that “scratch slightly different itches” for your customers.

If you do your job right, your customers will want to buy from you over and over again. So if you don’t give them that chance you are missing the boat and also letting your customers down. I know that when someone buys a product from me, they’ll love it and continue to buy my other products. I have systems in place to ensure this happens.

With that said, most marketers get stuck on the “product launch hamster wheel” where their income depends solely on launching new products. They don’t have a back end system in place for monetizing their other products after that initial sale.

This is a bad place to be because your income is unstable. I was here at one point until I realized that my products need to act as the “entry point” to my sales funnel where each customer will be taken down a path and be presented with the opportunity to buy more from me, and also invest in higher priced services like one on one coaching or consulting with me.

So, to sum it up. I continue to develop so many products because it gives me a massive advantage over my competition. I always have something to sell. It also allows me to cross sell different products and increase the value of each customer that buys from me initially. And because I have such a variety of products, I can attract slight variations of my perfect customer.

For example, look at a company like Apple and all the products they have. The iPhone, iPad, iMac, Macbook Air, the list goes on and on. Apple makes a lot of repeat sales for their different products because they have mastered the art of product creation and building a cult like following around their products.

Once you buy an iPhone and fall in love, they know there’s an X% chance you’ll be back to buy an iPad within a certain amount of time. An iMac etc. They have other things in their “backend sales funnel” like Apple care, but just by looking at their wide selection of products, you can see why they have the loyal customer base they do.

Imagine where Apple would be if they only created the iPod? What a different company they would be today, and how different would our world be without the iPhone and all that came with it.

Tell us a little bit about your launch process and what makes a perfect launch?

At this point I’ve built up a loyal following of customers who are always looking out for my next product. This is a good place to be in because whenever I have a new product to release, my customers are only an email away.

When I create a new product, I usually start hinting about it’s coming release a couple weeks or even months in advance through a series of emails. As we get closer to the launch date, say a week or two, I’ll finally reveal the product to my customers and let them know a launch date. I usually do this via a video on my website. From there it’s old fashioned “product launch 101″. Building anticipation, using social proof and scarcity to ensure the launch takes off with a bang on launch day assuming the product is a good seller.

I also have a small group of Joint Venture (JV) partners in my niche and we all work together to support each others launches. When they have a new product that appeals to my customers, I promote it to my customers for a commission. And when I launch a product that appeals to their customers, they do the same for me.

In reality since we all serve the same niche, we should be competitors. But in reality, we all work together to help each other out. JV relationships like this is something I’ve made a point to really focus on in the past year, and it’s helped my business tremendously.

On top of my own customer list and JV relationships I also use Facebook Pay Per Click Advertising to build buzz around the launch and attract more JVs.

What aspect of video marketing do you think small business owners fail at?

I see a lot of small businesses making videos just for the sake of making videos and they don’t put much thought behind the purpose of the video they spend so much time creating.
Every video you publish for your business should have ONE purpose. There should be ONE call to action in the video. To get an email opt in, to sell a product, generate phone calls, to encourage some type of action from the viewer.

I see a lot of new marketers and businesses making videos that really have no clear purpose. They’ll publish daily videos, or make a “sales video” that have to clear call to action and you leave the video wondering “what did I just watch?”. For example, after someone watches your video, they should know EXACTLY what step you want them to take next.

Looking back now, what are three things you’ve learned about online marketing?

Being consistent and staying focused on ONE thing, without a doubt. In my early days, I would have a success, pull in a bunch of money then get lazy for a couple months. I would literally screw around, play videos games and just be an idiot until I realized I had to get back to work to continue making money.

Now I never stop. There’s always another product. Always another promotion. Always another goal I’m working towards. I’ve learned that maintaining momentum really is the key to growing revenue.

I think rewards like cars, motorcycles and homes help me with this. If I know that once I reach a goal I can also buy this new toy, that really motivates me and keeps me focused. Staying focused and learning to say NO to opportunities is another thing I’ve learned about over time.

In the past I would try out all these different ideas, jumping from the next big idea to the next without really putting much thought into it before taking action. Someone would approach me with a business proposal and I’d be like “yea, lets do it!” All that would do is cause me to spread myself too thin and take my focus away from the ONE project I should be working on.

Entrepreneurship is like being in a relationship. If you don’t put all your energy and focus into maintaining your relationship, it will eventually fail. You can’t cheat on your significant other and expect the relationship to last.
It’s the same with business. Put all your focus into your ONE project and learn that not every opportunity is worth going after. Even if it seems like a profitable one at first.
For new entrepreneurs, this is a HUGE KILLER. Once you learn that saying NO is good, and you stay focused and work towards your goals consistently with a purpose, you will be unstoppable.

For readers wanting to get started in online marketing, where do you suggest they start?

Become a master marketer. Great marketing can sell a horrible product. But a great product won’t sell one copy with horrible marketing. Once you learn marketing and what it takes to make a sale happen, you can literally make it in any business. I’ve had many opportunities to get a behind the scenes look at several web start ups and one of the main reasons why they fail is because they just don’t have a clue about marketing.

Too many people get caught up in learning the tech side of things. Just because you want to sell software doesn’t mean you should spend the next year of your life learning PHP. Instead, hire a PHP developer to create your vision and you learn how turn that product into sales. Because in the end, the only thing that matters in business is sales. Sales cure every business related problem.

You’ve recently been sharing a lot more of your life on Youtube, including your new Lamborghini. Tell us why you’ve chose to do so.

Most people don’t realize but my Youtube channel is around 8 years old. People are just starting to notice my videos because of the Lamborghini videos.

Since I bought the Gallardo I’ve been making videos about how I bought it, what I do for work, how I paid for it, how I insured it and even some business & entrepreneurship videos have now made it’s way into my channel.

The reason why I make these videos is simple: People need to hear it from someone who’s been in their shoes on what it takes for a normal person – not from a wealthy family – on what takes to own their dream car.

People need to understand that this stuff is possible with hard work. If I can encourage one person to work hard and achieve their dreams – instead of playing GTA 5 every day wondering why they are still broke – then it’s all worth it.

Up until Sept 2014, I was the guy who would watch videos from people like Rob Dahm, Dedication Blog, or Allen Wong about how they bought their supercars. I would always wish it was me on the other side of the video taking delivery of that Lamborghini and now it is. These videos kept me motivated so it’s time to give back and pass on the torch I guess you could say.

You grew up idolizing the Lamborghini brand but recently picked up your dream car. Tell us about that.

I’ve been obsessed with Lamborghinis for as long as I can remember. And when the Gallardo first came out I was obsessed with from day 1. I made it a goal back in 2006-2007 to one day be able to own a Gallardo and I think that played a big part of why I wanted to one day have my own business.

I knew that I would never afford a car like that while working for someone else so it motivated me. After 2013 I knew that my dream of owning one was getting closer, but I never looked into it. During the summer of 2014 I was browsing the web and came across an 04 with only 15k miles for under $100k. Before I knew it I was on the phone with the dealer (Lamborghini Dallas) and began the buying process.

I made the decision to buy the car at the absolute worse time as I was in the process of moving into a new place. So I was busy relocating all my belongings to the new place while at the same time trying to stay productive in my business and arranging things like getting the car shipped to me here in Maine all the way from Texas.

In the end the timing worked out perfectly though and I don’t regret the “spur of the moment” decision to buy the car at all. If I hadn’t of taken the jump then, I probably never would have!
Now I couldn’t imagine my life without a Lamborghini in it. Whether I keep this car or get a Murci or Aventador eventually, I will be a Lamborghini owner for life.

I know it sounds crazy but owning this car has changed my life in so many positive ways. It’s helped me make new friends and attract more attention to my business because people always want to know what you do for work. It’s literally one of the best investments I’ve ever made and has already paid for itself.

What’s next for you in 2015?

With the success I’ve had in the digital product space over the past several years, I’ve naturally been getting a lot of questions about how I do things. So I’ll be starting a mentorship program later this year where I’ll be guiding entrepreneurs through the process of launching their first digital product online within 90 days and growing it into a consistent monthly income.