An Interview With Fotis Georgiadis
Don’t take advice from everybody. There are so many leeches that want in on what you’re doing. Just because a person wants to talk to you doesn’t mean you have to listen to them. You must follow your instincts, but you have to be an expert first in order to do this.
As a part of our series called “Making Something From Nothing”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Levi Conlow.
Levi Conlow is the Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of Lectric eBikes, based in Phoenix, Arizona. At the age of 23, he partnered with longtime friend and engineer, Robby Deziel, to design and market an electric bike built for everyone at an industry-shattering price. The final prototype resulted in sales of $1 million in just three weeks in 2019. Today, Lectric is one of the fastest growing ebike companies in the nation.
A Lakeville, Minnesota native, Levi earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Entrepreneurial and Small Business Operations from Grand Canyon University (GCU) in 2016. He subsequently gained a Master’s degree in Leadership from GCU in 2018. Levi resides with his high school sweetheart and wife, Rachel, in Phoenix.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dive in, our readers would love to learn a bit more about you. Can you tell us a bit about your “childhood backstory”?
I think my dad was swinging for the fences on his 4th boy. My older brothers were troublemakers — they were a little restless and found themselves in some sticky situations as kids. My dad allowed them to go out and get jobs in our hometown. For me, my dad insisted that I not go out and get a job, but instead set up my own business. He always encouraged me to make my own money, as he wasn’t going to give it to me and I wasn’t allowed to get a job.
When I was a kid, I made $10 a day walking dogs 365 days a year, which was a lot of cash for a kid. One summer I arbitraged energy drinks at camp. I also made a lot of money helping people cheat on video games. I would rent this software for $45 an hour, but I would make about $600 an hour, and that was awesome! By the time I hit high school, it was never even a thought that I would work for someone else after working for myself for so long.
My dad would challenge me to take ownership of everything. He would insist that I plan events with my friends, and make sure the plans actually came through. It’s stuck with me to this day, and I’m still planning the parties.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
I think Brent (my dad) should write a book on how to raise an entrepreneur. He sent me this email on July 6, 2014, and I still have it in my inbox. It’s the only email in my inbox that I won’t delete. I read it every day — it has a quote by Charles Swindoll.
“The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude.”
I have lived by this quote for 8 years now. I’m convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I react to it.
Is there a particular book, podcast, or film that made a significant impact on you? Can you share a story or explain why it resonated with you so much?
Conscious Capitalism. It opened my eyes to using business as a force for good.
Ok super. Let’s now shift to the main part of our discussion. There is no shortage of good ideas out there. Many people have good ideas all the time. But people seem to struggle in taking a good idea and translating it into an actual business. Can you share a few ideas from your experience about how to overcome this challenge?
If something matters to you, you’ll move mountains to make it a reality. You’ll be scrappy, rash, competitive. You’ll do anything. We set out to be the greatest urban transportation solution ever, but there came a point when we were low on inventory during COVID. You can’t be the greatest urban transportation solution ever if you don’t have eBikes in stock.
So, I got to the point where I airmailed bikes across the world. I lost money, but I had to get bikes out there. I sometimes paid over $40k for a container when the average price was half of that. The philosophy is: it’s not the wrong decision if it’s getting us to our goal. Our investors told us they had never seen a business set up a warehouse so quickly. I think that’s part of the reason Lectric has surpassed our competitors, because we have worked harder than them and have stayed true to our vision.
Often when people think of a new idea, they dismiss it saying someone else must have thought of it before. How would you recommend that someone go about researching whether or not their idea has already been created?
Become an expert in your field. I track all the data and I know all my competition; I consume every piece of information I can. What most people don’t realize is that you can become an expert in your industry before you even start.
Before starting Lectric, electric bikes had already existed for years and the XP was not necessarily a revolutionary concept. It’s this particular bike, at this level of performance, in this particular class, at this particular price that made it revolutionary. I knew that I didn’t have to win, I just refused to lose. It pushed me to come out with a really affordable bike and it meant that I needed to care more about getting bikes on the road than margins.
It’s about doing the research, having a big idea and being crazy enough to tackle it.
For the benefit of our readers, can you outline the steps one has to go through, from when they think of the idea, until it finally lands in a customer’s hands? In particular, we’d love to hear about how to file a patent, how to source a good manufacturer, and how to find a retailer to distribute it.
I’ll speak to the second item here, and that is that you need to go TO the manufacturer. Even before we ordered, I went and visited factories in person, some of them even unannounced. We cared so much about good working conditions. So, it’s about doing a great job of vetting the manufacturer in person and being diligent in testing. You can’t settle on any issue with a sample. Every concern needs to be addressed before going on a production run.
What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me When I First Started Leading My Company” and why?
- Don’t take advice from everybody. There are so many leeches that want in on what you’re doing. Just because a person wants to talk to you doesn’t mean you have to listen to them. You must follow your instincts, but you have to be an expert first in order to do this.
- Have good self-awareness. Our self-awareness was more on not wanting to hold the company back and getting help when we needed help. Understanding your own limitations and hiring rock stars really helped us out.
- Don’t completely reinvent the wheel, because it can be very costly when you screw up.
- Understand every single cost. I didn’t learn how much insurance would be until I shipped my first bike and it was ridiculous.
- It’s supposed to be hard. My dad always told me in the early days of Lectric, “If it was easy then everybody would do it.” I have lived by that since.
Let’s imagine that a reader reading this interview has an idea for a product that they would like to invent. What are the first few steps that you would recommend that they take?
Start with market analysis, prototype it, get it to a manufacturing source, and get on it! I’m all gas and no brakes. If you understand your market and you see there’s a gap and if the data is telling you to make this thing, then go make it happen.
With our latest innovation, the XP LITE, we conducted extensive research to find out what the current ebike market was missing. We realized that consumers longed for an ebike that was easier to maneuver and available at an even more affordable price, while still maintaining high quality features of traditional bikes on the market. So, we did just that — creating a model that’s lighter and easier to utilize, entering the market at the industry-shattering price of just $799.
There are many invention development consultants. Would you recommend that a person with a new idea hire such a consultant, or should they try to strike out on their own?
I had terrible experiences with consultants in the early days of Lectric. You need to be your own expert. If not, then you need a partner who is. I knew all the data from the industry and I dumped that info on Rob who crafted the design and we worked together to build the first XP.
What are your thoughts about bootstrapping vs looking for venture capital? What is the best way to decide if you should do either one?
We bootstrapped for as long as we possibly could. The moment you realize that you and your finances are holding the company back, you need to look at what’s best for the company. If you’re looking to do something special, the top priority should be the success of the company, not your own personal financial gain. We followed our GUTS(e) philosophy (to be the Greatest Urban Transportation Solution Ever) and that helped us make the right decisions.
Ok. We are nearly done. Here are our final questions. How have you used your success to make the world a better place?
We can do more and Lectric will continue to do more. Although we do participate in philanthropy by donating toys and financially to charitable organizations, such as the Leukemia Society, just look at what our bike is doing for the environment. I really dig that.
In the last 2 years alone, we’ve gotten about 140,000 people on electric bikes in the US. That’s more than any company before within that timeframe and at a more affordable price than anyone before. Our community is using it as a commuting tool in some serious volume. With that type of change in transportation behavior, together, we’re making a real impact in the world.
If you just accept that your business can be used as a force for good, you can do some really special things.
You are an inspiration to a great many people. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.
I’d like to get more people to think about the idea of Conscious Capitalism. If you make a bunch of money and then use it for doing good, that’s a great purpose! I want to see more people start their own businesses.
I was in the bottom half of my class in high school and probably the same for college — that doesn’t mean you can’t start a business. As long as you’re willing to work hard and really learn it, you can be successful. It’s not just about hustle. You need to become smart in the field you want to be successful in. Hence why I have Robby (Lectric Co-founder), Jay (Lectric CFO) and Bertram Labs (Part of Bertram Capital, who owns Lectric), so I can surround myself with people who are smarter than me and will help lift the company higher.
We are very blessed that some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US, with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them.
Shawn White or Rob Dyrdek. They were the ones that showed me the narrative between business and fun — not just action sports, but true fun. I idolized them not only because they did sick flips, but because they created careers out of it and withstood the test of time in doing so.
Thank you for these fantastic insights. We greatly appreciate the time you spent on this.
Making Something From Nothing: Levi Conlow of Lectric eBikes On How To Go From Idea To Launch was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
