Welcome to the The VICI Code, where we unlock real stories of small business owners who have battled chaos, crushed doubt, and conquered their challenges. Faith, family, and finances. No fluff, just raw, honest conversations that decode the path to victory, one story at a time. What is up? Thank you for joining us today as we explore our latest purpose-driven journey, Built for the Wild, where we look at navigating the toughest terrain, how a CEO integrates faith, family, and fitness to scale a global adventure empire. In business, as in the Outback, it's not the smooth roads that define you, it's how you handle the washouts and the steep climbs. Luke Schnacke is the CEO of Ironman 4x4. Starting in 1958 as a leaf spring manufacturer, Ironman 4x4 has become a global leader in off-road armor, suspension, and camping. Honesty, grit, respect, and action are all at the heart of everything they do. And their story starts with the incredible resilience of founder Gunther Jacob. Born in Germany, Gunther's precision engineering skills helped shaped by extraordinary circumstances during World War II. Surviving four years of imprisonment in Auschwitz, thanks to his exceptional spring-making abilities, Gunther emigrated to Melbourne, Australia after the war. In 1958, Jacob Springs Works was born and Guter, later known as the Ironman, laid the foundation for what had become the Ironman 4x4 brand. By 1982, the brand evolved to JSW Parts, designing and supplying leaf and coil springs for cars, trucks, buses, and 4x4 vehicles. Luke's personal mission, creating products that empower people to achieve their dreams and live with courage. Luke and I met in Dan Martell's elite coaching group and have grown closer in the Power 10 group, or P10 as we've called it. I not only get to observe Luke crush it every day, but I also get a front seat to personally connect with him and his journey. This isn't just a talk about four by four parts, people. It's a masterclass in the Vici code. Vision, integrity, clarity, and impact. Luke, welcome to the show, Wow. Thank you. That was an amazing job. Really interesting to kind of listen to that whole story from not beginning, not beginning to end, but like where it all started and to where we are today is, yeah, It's incredible. It's incredible. I had a really fun time researching you and the company, and I don't think we have enough time for this. I'd love to, this may be part one of our conversation, so I'll jump right in. The Ironman journey and professional breakthrough, you know, I want to get into the heritage and the pivot. Luke, Ironman 4x4 has a legacy dating back to 1958. As a CEO coming into a brand with much history, what was the biggest operational or cultural hurdle you had to overcome to modernize the vision without losing Obviously, with pedigree to the brand over multiple decades, there's so much meat there to be able to build on. But ultimately, here in North America, the brand was unknown. Zero awareness, next to zero awareness, unless you are like the hardest of hardcore overlander, like Toyota Land Cruiser enthusiast. So I would say that the biggest challenge, and it still remains today, is taking that history and that pedigree and showcasing it to the North American market in a a concise and impactful way, because there's so much that the brand does. Even within a product collection, there's the suspension, which we're a world, a global leader in. There's the bumpers and the armor. And there's backstories to all of these, like The United Nations and various other NGOs and military or defensive military organizations around the world use those products. And then there's the camping and lifestyle. And there's a whole myriad of things within the product. Then there's a whole story to the brand. Anyway, long story short, there's so much to tell the audience. It's honing in on what is relevant to our audience and then how we distribute that to the community across North America. Brand awareness still today is one of our Right. And what was that breakthrough moment where you realized the brand wasn't just selling suspension, but Yes. There are a few different audiences that we sell to globally, and they can differ by market. So, for instance, in the Middle East, the brand is known for suspension, armor, up armoring, actually, of vehicles. not necessarily well there's an element of lifestyle but there's also a significant element of military and defense to what the brand delivers there. Here in North America it's much more recreationally driven so it's more about kind of the outdoor lifestyle and One thing that I have always tried to do with the brand and how we take it to market here recreationally is for families to have the courage of getting outside together and having those experiences that they come across when you're out in the wild. Because you You literally can go from mild to wild with regards to how extreme your journey is, and the product will take you all the way through that gamut. But things happen when you're out in the world. A tire blows out. There's a tree that's fallen down on the trail. Your vehicle goes into a ditch or a ravine or turns over, and you've got to recover the thing using the equipment that we've got. One of my missions for the brand here has been making it a family-oriented activity because there's just so much value in that and experience and great for kids and helping them experience, come together and overcome those challenges. as I love that you bring family as the message, the courage to go out and seek adventure. Now, I also believe that you have a family in the company, right? Correct. When you start, when you have a business, you know, everything just gets blurred. You know, you've got your family, you got your business, you got the people, it all becomes family, right? How do you ensure that Ironman toughness is reflected in your internal team culture, not just Well, when you start a you have to have. When you start a business and you want it to succeed, you have to have buckets of grit, stamina, endurance, the sense of community and service working together, the honesty, integrity, again, of working together as a unit. And my family is literally integrated into the business. When I started this in North America, it literally was a family affair. My wife, Lauren, she still works for us today, five, six years later. Her roles and responsibilities have become more manageable. But ultimately, it's all hands on deck when you start the business. And you've got to have those core ingredients of being able to function as a unit as people together in order to achieve what the mission is. Now that evolves over time as you do add substance to the business and you do start to generate revenue, it allows you to obviously get a bit more specific with the roles and responsibilities that people have because you can bring more people and resources into the business, technology and what have you. So We have our core values, and I really just rattled a lot of, I rattled quite a few of them off there. They are, and in no particular order, it is integrity. It is grit. It is continuous improvement. It's the, it's documented as customer service, but really it's that service to ourselves internally, and also the service to the customer. Doesn't matter if it's B2B or direct consumer. And then it's execution. Like you have to execute. to get anywhere. So those are the core values of the business that we operate to on a daily basis. We really try to religiously hire, fire a reward around those so that we've got the right mix of people in the business that will help us achieve our mission. Today, slight tangent, but today, after this podcast, we are going out as a team and it's miserable. I wish you could see. It's been trashing it down in Oregon for like three straight days. But the team and I are going out in the vehicles and we're just going to go out into the wilderness. and bond together. Just like I said about the family, we're going to go and see what's out there. We're going to have that experience together, so we work together as a unit if we need to overcome obstacles and we're just going to have some fun. I'm going to have to take your idea. That sounds like a great team building moment. I'm assuming you guys are going to be bringing some winches with We are in a fortunate position. Again, back in the beginning, we couldn't afford anything. We were using, you know, personal vehicles that were slightly modified. But today, fast forward, we're in a position where we've got multiple vehicles. We've got like every Toyota going. current generation and previous generation. And we've got other like Subarus and Fords and what have you. So we've got this fleet now of branded vehicles that are pretty much fully equipped. So yeah, whatever we bump into out there, we're going to be, we should be in a pretty good place. And the other thing is that everybody that works in our business, for the most part, does what we do. So you might have the somebody on the more milder side, which they go family camping or they're a bit of a weekend warrior all the way through to people that are experienced overlanders. And, you know, they are specialists in doing recovery classes and what have you. So we're very well-equipped, both from an equipment perspective and a people perspective, because we do what Right. It's talking the talk and walking the walk is what I hear right there. Yeah. And I also got to point out, side note, I haven't met one P10 guy whose spouse doesn't work with them. I just want to recognize the bravery that goes on. And honestly, you know, all chuckles aside, like, that's a great experience to be able to grow that business. You know, my wife. handles so many other things. I mean, she's, she's always been my business partner, maybe not directly on payroll or doing anything for our clients, but supporting me and supporting our family. She's always been a part of the business. So I just want to say kudos to you guys for, you know, uh, being able to make it work and not go crazy with, with having the spouse, um, their work and side by side in some moments. Um, But just a point to that, which I think is really important. When we began this journey, when it was an idea, when there was more substance there, it's like, hey, this could be a direction that we go. We sat down together and said, OK, if we do this, these are going to be the potential friction points. And we need to come to an agreement on what the next few years look like, how we operate together. The fact that I'm going to be, I'm not going to be in a place where I can spend all my time with the family. And there are going to be times, well, actually in the early days, like I'm going to be working like every day, all the weekends, all the hours, like the business has to come first for this period of time while we get into a place where it is in Yeah. And that just sometimes is what's required. Um, I want to get into navigating the washouts. This is probably my favorite question of the ones I got teed up for you. You talk about empowering people to achieve their dreams. Can you share a candid account of a time when the business finances or Yes. Okay. There are many, to be honest with you, but that's life. In 2023, we've been gaining traction, really starting to gain some brand recognition. Suspension is our number one category in terms of revenue generation and margin generation. And around about March, an issue came up with one of the products that goes into the suspension kits. It's called an upper control arm. And we have a great upper control arm. It's very well made. It's amazing value, like literally a market-leading product. And there was a recall. It was found that basically we had a ball joint from a third-party supplier that was failing. So that meant that we officially went into a recall globally for that product. And we had sold thousands and thousands and thousands of these over the years. So never been through this before, ever. So it was a case of understanding, all right, what's this process? Working with the appropriate authorities in the US to understand what that process is. Because we had to operate exactly like an OEM would operate when you get a recall on your Toyota, Ford, whatever it is. We had to learn and go through that process. Ultimately, all of those customers that bought that product, we had to reach out to them, we had to notify them, then have to obviously notify them of what the remedy would be. But at the time when it happens, like, okay, we didn't even have the remedy, you know, it's like, how are we going to how are we going to fix this and make sure that we can switch out these products and get customers back on the road safely. Now, thankfully, it wasn't a like a terminal, you need to take your vehicle off the road, but at a certain point after so much wear, it could become a real hazard. So that for sure cost us millions of dollars in sales over the course of that year, because we effectively went into recall in, I think, May, technically, and didn't come back out of recall with fresh inventory until November, December of that year. So that means months and months and months of lost sales on new products. And then all the while absorbing mountains of cost in outreach, outreached customers, exchanging their product, compensating the customer for the installation of the product and what have you. So real, real challenge, but big but. the outcome of that, and the way that we went about it, doing the recall, doing an official recall, because a lot of brands would try and kind of brush that under the carpet. We declared it being an issue. We really put emphasis on taking care of the customer as quickly as possible, making sure that outside of their time, they were 100% financially compensated. And Ultimately, the way that we looked after the customer had a positive impact on the reputation of Yeah, that's a true leadership moment, right? Ownership and doing what's right for your customers. Just from an internal standpoint, what did that moment teach you about leadership that Well, I've always, well, not always, but I've come to learn over the last few decades that it's actually challenges where you learn the most. When things are easy, when things are smooth, everybody's relaxed. You just don't learn You learn about people, about your systems, about your customer base, when things are difficult, and where the So we don't want challenges, but we do appreciate the learning from them. And one saying that we've always had in the business, good or bad, is capture the learning. So we literally document every experience so that we can build that into our SOPs and into the way that we operate together And the recall itself was an international collaboration as So us having to work with Australia and we understand what they're parameters are and how they've got to go about things. And in the US, it's a slightly different market. And the way that we've got to operate and do things here is different as well. So building those bridges internationally to get the outcome for both parties equally was good Yeah, absolutely. And I appreciate you sharing those moments. We're going to take you off the hot seat now and get into some more fun stuff. You know, let's get into the four pillars, faith, family, fitness, and finance. The Ironman 404 is famous for its suspension system that handles the heaviest loads. Personally, How do you use faith and fitness as your own internal suspension to handle the heavy load of being a CEO, husband, and To be completely honest with you, Joe, I am learning, always learning, and specifically around this When it comes to fitness. And. I do jujitsu, which if I recall rightly, you maybe do wrestling or I've got history in wrestling. I My family. Yeah. My, my son does the wrestling and jujitsu. So. Yeah. So, you know, jujitsu in itself is a really good. activity that you can mirror against the business or family life because it's very humbling when you're getting crushed by a 130-pound male or female, and they are just tying you in knots and doing whatever they want with you. At the same time, that challenge, that friction going through that struggle, just like the previous point, is good. You learn and acclimatize to that, which I think can build That's the right word. Build stamina and build grit to apply to your day-to-day life, again, in the business or challenges in the family or whatever it may be. And also, you know, with that and switching off jujitsu, back in the day, I used to play golf to a pretty high standard. I think that's where my kind of discipline for practice and continuous improvement was really kind of formed. Because you're always striving to beat that score, hit that drive longer, get more accurate. get a lower handicap and you're competing all the while at a club, a county, or a national level. So that competition equally from a, it's not, I would say golf is not that, golf and fitness, they do go hand in hand, but you don't necessarily, somebody says fitness, you probably don't say golf immediately, but, you know, sports, I think is a great, educator and character builder that you can use in life and Absolutely. I mean, that's, I know you're, you got your kids in soccer and stuff, sports in general. We talk about this. It comes up almost every single time because when you, when you talk in fitness and family, like it's hard to ignore, uh, youth sports and just how important it is for kids to get some experience, even if they're not athletic. I mean, a lot of people that do jujitsu, they're not athletic, but they, they do it because of the, a lot of the benefits that you mentioned of like, you know, humbling and, uh, being able to always find a way to change your position when you're in a challenging situation. Um, so yeah, you know, always, you know, the, the, the impact of youth sports is, uh, so formative for, for kids and it just, it's something that they can take, um, for them for life. Uh, I completely agree. And I also grew up rock climbing as well, which is very similar again in terms of jujitsu. There's the physical component of it, there's the physical strength, but there's the mental strength component of it as well, which again transitions into what you do on a day-to-day basis. And when something goes wrong, you've got that learning and that weathering, for want of a better term, which downplay is the situation that you're in. You're just acclimatized to it. And then from a family perspective, again, I'm really learning because I've been very much the character of like, head down, get on with it, just go, go, go, go, go. I'm really trying to be more present for the family and structure my calendar around this is dedicated work time, this is dedicated family time and having that presence and clarity and commitment to those religiously. This is work time and I'm focused on doing this. break. Okay, it's whatever time it is in the day or is the weekend. This is now family time and I've got to be present and committed to doing what I can to help my family and really, you know, from a kid's perspective, be a good dad and Yeah, and I have this conversation in our men's group, our church group, we talk about having those structured times. And some people feel it takes away, it makes it so that this thing, but also like, if you do it right, you start building that as a habit. And then once it becomes a habit, now it's not a structure. Now you're not having to, you know, okay, well, this time is, well, now it just becomes a part of your operating system. So I definitely recommend, and you know, I'm a big structure guy. I'm very much blocking my time out. I've talked to people in our group and Dan Martell's group about time blocking. My mornings are so important to me. The silence and solitude, the reading, the prayer. What does your morning routine look like to ensure you're trail ready Yeah 100% and this again is something that I've really put focus on over the course of this year in particular. So I'm up at 445 and really Once you get used to that, your natural alarm clock goes off, up at 4.45. And then I'm basically at home downstairs and I do my reading. So I get straight into reading at least 10 pages of my nonfiction book. I'm absorbing knowledge, learning. And sometimes I reread books. In fact, I do that quite frequently because I really want to not just read, but implement and digest properly. So that's the first thing that I do. And then I switch gears into working on whatever the biggest challenge or focus is within the business. So between basically 5.30 and 7, I'm doing that. And that aligns with our vision and our three-year goal and our one-year goal. And then where we are today as this is what we're focusing on in the quarter. So I get to work straight away on that. And then after that, it's dog walk, get ready. Sometimes I take my son to school on certain days and then get into the office. And then I'm off to my regular working day in the office at at like 9am. There is actually one component that I missed. When I walk the dog, I do two things. I do actually do three things simultaneously. So I'm walking the dog. You could argue I should be more present for that. But I'm also, I am reviewing my goals at the same time. And I am also, I have basically worked with my GTP to create a training course, and it delivers it to me at 5am every morning. And this particular course that I'm going through right now is based around communication. So again, I look at my goals, I go through that process. And then I switch into the 15 minute communication training. and I'm digesting that, and then I look like a crazy person, but I'm literally walking around the streets of my neighborhood, like verbally speaking, and doing, yeah, correct, and doing these, what the Exercises? Doing these exercises, correct. You are a crazy man, I know you are. I tell everyone, and I can't say it enough, most days, you win that day in the morning. If you're not getting up early, you're missing out on a massive opportunity to literally win your entire day before anyone else is even awake. You're left alone to do the things and you're charged. You're waking up at seven, jumping in the shower, you're jumping right into the grind. I remember those days. I can't remember being happy any one of those days going into work. You know, so much gets accomplished between five and seven and eight that like I could never go back. It sets the tone for my entire day. It makes me feel, it's where I spend my time of being, having gratitude so that my mindset for the day is like, I've just, I've already won. Everything else that I do from here is, uh, is a cherry on top. So great advice on getting the most out of your mornings. And we did touch on family a little bit. I want to circle back on, you're a dad and a husband first. In a role that demands global travel and constant scaling, what is the non-negotiable system you've built to ensure The non-negotiable systems that I've built are, I come back to really leveraging the calendar and booking things in and having Because what we do with the family is very fluid with And their family are very active. So not only have we got the business, My son, as you mentioned, does competitive soccer. So that takes quite a commitment. That's multiple evenings of practice and then games at the weekend. And then there's travel. We just got back from a trip from Arizona. And at the same time, my daughter is in, she's eight years old. She loves her dance and she's in competitive dance. And equally, very similar to the soccer, she's practicing most nights doing competitions here, there and everywhere at weekends. And there's a season to it, but really is pretty much much nonstop. And then obviously there's that. If you're doing not only the business from pretty much 5 a.m. through 6 p.m., it's then calendar, you know, breaking the calendar. We divide and conquer with regards to the kids and That works. Again, we're there for each other to help each other through the, say mayhem is not the right word, through the commitments that the kids have got, which honestly does make it challenging for me and my wife to have time together. It is a real challenge. And again, something that we're working on is planning those like date nights and we're we're in a bit where this is a bit personal you know this is a personal circumstance but obviously you can tell from my accident i'm not from the us and that means that we don't have family around us everybody else is back in the uk so we don't have that family circle where we can you know the grandparents can take the kids or the aunts and the uncles can take the kids so we've really got to operate as a you know, as a small family unit, and my wife and I So I think, you know, straying a bit off piste here, but the non-negotiables are clear communication of what we've got ahead of us, making sure that's on the calendar, and then where we sporting commitments or a business commitment, which is making sure that that time is set aside for the family. And we've got family goals. So what we want to do from a travel perspective in the year, or how we want to teach the kids and what we want to teach the kids. So I feel like I'm struggling with this question a little bit, but it's honestly, No, and that's fine. It'll always be a work in progress. Like you said, the family time is fluid, right? But you have to be structured for it to be fluid. Because when you take the fluidity out of family, now you're sucking the imagination and creativity out of your family and your kids. So it's got to be that way. What you described is really exactly how we do it, right? It may seem a little bit, you know, to have everything on a calendar. We have a saying, it wasn't on the calendar. Oh, I got this thing. Well, it wasn't on the calendar. Like, what do you want me to do? I didn't know. Uh, so, you know, every day, you know, we see things pop up on our iCal and we make sure it's on there. And if it's on there, it's on there. And we, and we've, we've discussed it. If it's on there and someone forgets, it's like, but it was on the calendar, you know? Um, but, uh, I think that's important in clear communication. no matter what area of life you're talking about, just so important. My wife and I have worked with counselors to get better at that. We've taken those building blocks and we've learned how to communicate, right? Like we know each other, we know our little things, but sometimes we forget like that, how we are and how they are and how to speak their language. So we constantly work on communicating as well. So that calendar and then communicating about the calendar and being intentional and structured to allow yourself to have that more fluid, playbook, I think you're doing it the right way. And we do have obviously family close by, not many, but it's a great support system, but we still use your system. We're on the same system. So you're definitely doing it right. And it's always going to evolve, especially as the kids get older and they don't want to be your friend and they want to hang out with other people. And that'll change. You get a little bit more freedom there, but you're also concerned like what's going on when I'm not there. I think you've got it nailed down the best that you could possibly do. It's never going to be perfect. No, it's not. And just like anything, as long as you've got that, I think if you've got a vision and, you know, a clear direction, we're just going to continue to chip away and move in that direction, you know, just continue to move in that direction with the kids as they evolve personally. We've got our last question here. If you could go back to the version of Luke that just started his career, what's one piece of advice you'd give him about living with courage when the bank account is maybe low I think there are two things. I think it relates. I think it all comes back to one though. And it's, it's easy to say, it's much harder to do. And that is like, have, believe in yourself, have the self confidence to make that ask, to stand up for yourself, to value yourself, because it doesn't matter if you're a billionaire or the reverse, everybody's You are enough, right? And when you are enough, when you truly believe that you're enough, because I thought I believed that most of my life, but it wasn't until the last few years that I actually believed it because your actions speak louder when you don't believe in yourself, when you don't think you're enough, you do things to try to impress people, you do things for status or vanity that really just don't matter and all they do is actually hold you back. If you go through life knowing that you're enough, your decisions are totally different. Um, so that's amazing. That's a, that's an amazing, uh, bit of advice that everyone out there, um, whether you're in it and you're, you're, you're trying to connect and see, you know what, I'm in a tough situation. You are enough. Um, or if you're in a parenting situation, you know, make sure your kids know they're enough. Um, you know, that's, That's great advice. Um, you do have an offer for our, our listeners as well. Um, can you first tell us a little bit about, um, how our, our listeners can, can, can, can connect with you, your, your, your, your handles on your social profile, stuff like that. And Tom, a little bit about this, Yeah, so if anybody's interested in what the brand does and learning more about that, then our website is iamman4x4.com. You can find us at iamman4x4 America on Instagram and Facebook. and YouTube as well, actually. And then for me personally, I'm at Luke underscore Schnacker on Instagram. You can also find me on LinkedIn and just at Luke Schnacker, I think it is. I mean, all the usual places when it comes to Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn. But really, I spend predominantly my time on the Instagram because I really do use it as a tool to learn. Right. As for the offer, And anybody that wants this, just DM me to the Luke Underskorschnacker at Instagram. And I've got two things actually. So first and foremost, anybody that operates on the Shopify platform, I have a whole list of prompts that you can leverage within the Shopify assistant. There's a raft of great prompts there that are just going to give you information, intelligence for you to use to move forward with clarity. It's so important to have that within the business. Now, I appreciate you can't always have complete clarity, but this gets you way down the road on a raft of different components that you would have within an e-commerce business if you're using the Shopify platform. So that's the first thing. And then the second thing is if you are selling a product, there are these promotional seasons within North America, Black Friday, we just came out of Black Friday, Cyber Monday. Whenever you do a promotion, Certainly if it's a discount, it's margin degradation. And it's really important that you understand that with complete clarity because it can put you into a big financial hole. So there's a calculator that you can download at my Instagram. It's in a little link in the bio. And it's a calculator that will help you navigate If I do this, this is what it means from a margin perspective and I need to go and sell X amount more of this to wash its face or be in a positive situation. So there are two tools that are really beneficial for anybody that's e-com based or selling a product and does promotions and discounts and what have you. And so we'll try to get those links from you, if that makes sense, but we'll definitely have all those social profiles, your personal and the business, so that our audience is able to get in touch with you. And they can just mention that they heard the offer on the VICI code and you'll know exactly what they're talking about. Before we close things out, I just want to remind everybody about, you know, the Ironman mindset. Strength is built in the struggle. Luke, thank you so much for your transparency and for leading a brand that matters. Thanks for tuning in to the Vici Code, where the underdogs rise and the numbers finally make sense. If today's story hit home, share it. And remember, faith fuels