Unlocking Business Freedom: Transitioning from Operator to Owner with Pete Mohr

It’s like a postcard at this time of year as we’re recording here when the snow’s flying and shortly after Christmas, it’s just like a Hallmark Christmas card. Beautiful, lit up, really nice little town. Yeah, love it here. Cool.

Freddy D
00:01:40.266 – 00:01:45.370
Like we talked before we started recording. I’ve been to Toronto many, many times. I grew up in Detroit area.

Pete Mohr
00:01:45.490 – 00:01:45.882
Yeah.

Freddy D
00:01:45.946 – 00:02:05.336
So we used to drive up to Toronto, hang for the weekend, come back. So spent many, many times up in Toronto. Actually, I was there when the Argonaut team won.

This was back in the early 80s and they blocked off Yonge street and everybody was partying on the street.

Pete Mohr
00:02:05.408 – 00:02:11.688
That was their first when the Argonauts won the great cup. Yeah, I was there. Awesome.

Freddy D
00:02:11.864 – 00:02:16.136
Cheering for them, just being blended in like one of the locals.

Pete Mohr
00:02:16.248 – 00:02:17.416
Yeah, I love it.

Freddy D
00:02:17.568 – 00:02:25.876
So share with us a little bit about your story of your background and how did you come up with simplified entrepreneurship for our listeners?

Pete Mohr
00:02:25.988 – 00:02:31.076
Yeah, long story short, Freddy D. 30 years. I mean, time goes by quick.

Freddy D
00:02:31.148 – 00:02:32.100
Yeah, yeah.

Pete Mohr
00:02:32.260 – 00:03:46.278
Like 1994. What, are you kidding me? 1994.

I’m a young kid, finished university, worked for another person for about six months who happens to be My dad’s best friend and actually my namesake. I’m named after him. His name was Peter, too.

And so I was working for him, doing some stuff, setting up some stuff within his business for him that he needs some help with. And then he says to me, says, pete, you know, I think you should maybe be your own boss. And I said, yeah, I think so too.

So he was one of the guys that really helped me along the way. Becoming an entrepreneur. I came from an entrepreneurial family. My dad ran a fairly large construction company.

It wasn’t his, but he ran it like it was his own. My mom was always doing built crafts and all sorts of different things and selling them at local markets. We came from a farming community.

A lot of our relatives are farmers and business owners and retailers and all sorts of stuff. So I grew up in that. It was just part of life within our extended family that a lot of the. A lot of the people within it were business owners.

So I bought a franchise and I bought a bathroom renovation company. It was called, at the time, Surface Doctor. And the reason I bought it was because I could afford it.

It was 9,800 bucks to buy this franchise at the time.

Freddy D
00:03:46.334 – 00:03:46.806
Wow.

Pete Mohr
00:03:46.918 – 00:06:49.670
And they sold about 300 of them. I was number 20 in 1994.

And it just to kind of go through the story of franchise, non franchise, all this kind of stuff, that franchiso or sold their franchise business. It went to three different franchisors within five years. The first guy was really good at getting the concept going and selling that initial batch.

The second people weren’t really good at it at all. And the third people were the ones that actually ended up closing it down. But just to put it in perspective, I got out as soon as they transferred.

After the. After that third time, I was like, I’m not going through this anymore.

So we had a buyout agreement within our franchise agreement, and I bought it out and we rebranded it and took all the logos off and everything. And it still continues today, 30 years later. And the fellow. I sold it in 2009. So I had it for 15 years. And then the fellow that.

That bought it from me called me and he says, pete, you owned it for 15 years. I’ve owned it for 15 years. It served us both well. And so that business continues on today. We were in about a thousand bathrooms a year.

We refinished bathtubs, we did bathtub liners, we did acrylic wall systems, we did refacing of kitchens, all sorts of different things.

But at the same time, I Also owned another franchise, which was a cleaning company that we bought from one of the franchisors that had owned the other one. They also had another franchise. And my local guy was suffering really quite badly at the time in Ottawa, Ontario. And we bought it.

It had 30 clients and we built it to 300 and we sold it. I became a business broker helping people buy and sell businesses, which is how I still own a couple of stores right now at the time.

In 2010, we bought a Stor Shootopia. We sell shoes. And we’ve bought another one. We moved it, we closed it, we opened another one. So we still own two shoe stores here in Canada.

And that’s sort of my, let’s say, background business. And I spend most of my time these days working with, simplifying entrepreneurship, which is how I got to this.

Because my sort of philosophy around business is that you shouldn’t have to open the door every day. You shouldn’t have to make every decision, you shouldn’t have to hire every person, you shouldn’t have to do every purchase order.

And I’ve lived that all along, or else I couldn’t have two different businesses going and all this kind of stuff along my way because I’ve always usually had more than one business on the go. Now I coach to that. And a big part of what I do is what we call moving people from owner to operator or from operator to owner.

So that if you want to work in your business, work in your business by all means.

But if you don’t want to work in your business, you should have your business where you’re actually doing the things that one, you’re the best at doing. Two, that you actually want to do because that’s what you’re. You mean you it you’re allowed to do what you want to do in your business.

If you’re the business owner, you should structure it out so you’re not doing that.

You would think worse things that don’t align with what you love to do, you should be doing the things that really do align with what you want to do and what you’re best at. Because there’s other people that are good at those things that you’re not best at.

Freddy D
00:06:49.970 – 00:06:50.570
Right?

Pete Mohr
00:06:50.690 – 00:06:51.402
Right.

Freddy D
00:06:51.586 – 00:07:57.556
Very important what you just described there.

Because a lot of small businesses and I’ve been around the world, I used to be in charge of global sales and marketing for a couple software companies and took their products from zero to millions globally, set up independent resellers around the world, and there’s an arc to that because they’re independent, so they’re handling multitude of products, so They’ve got the 12 watches on their arm.

How do you get mindset with somebody in another country that’s an independent, doesn’t work for you, but is an independent rep and then has a team of their own to get mind share? So it’s all about really empowering the people in those teams.

So you bring up a great point there, Pete, because a lot of people get caught up in working in their business and really never get out of working in their business. And I really call that a glorified job. They’re in the business and if they get hit by a bus, the business is over.

And it sounds like that’s some of the things that you help people get themselves out of their own way.

Pete Mohr
00:07:57.708 – 00:11:50.200
Yeah, for sure. One of my other hats, Freddie D. Is that I’m a certified exit planner.

So where I used to be a business broker, helping people buy and sell businesses, I’m not licensed with that anymore. I gave that up a few years back. But what I do now with this being a certified exit planner is that I help people get their business ready for sale.

But the interesting piece of that is that getting your business ready for sale is also the same process as moving from operator to owner. Because the thing with it is building the value of your business. You need to have what I call the 6Ps in place.

Your promise in place, your product, your process and your people aligned to that promise. And then you’re going to promote it and then you have the right amount of profit. And it takes time to get all that stuff in alignment.

And it takes time to have all of that stuff work for you and your business. But if you’re not thinking about those 6Ps all the time, then it’s a really hard thing to move into that ownership position.

And the beauty of it is when you do have things where you’re literally working in the business in the areas that you love to work in the business and you’re not necessarily needed in the business, that’s when it’s most valuable and that’s when you have the best opportunity to have multiple offers or any of these other things or for a lot of the work that I do is transitioning to their kids in family transition of next generation. It’s do you want to hand this over running on all eight cylinders or six cylinders, whatever your four cylinders, whatever your car is. But.

Or do you want to have that running so. So and hand off something that isn’t good to your Kids. It’s the same thing when you’re looking at building the value of your business.

Because it’s one thing to build top line revenue, it’s another thing to build value. Because when it comes time to exit, and you will exit your business one day, that’s a guarantee you will exit your business one day.

So exit planning is something you should be doing all the time, not just at the end of when you’re ready to exit. Because here’s the other thing. Freddie D.

You probably know some people that have had this happen because business owners tend to hang out with business owners.

Maybe somebody died prematurely and their business wasn’t ready to go and they left everything to their family and they had to fire sale it or whatever the case was. The other thing is divorce.

With one in two people divorcing these days, divorce can cause the downfall of a business because sometimes you even need to sell the business just to pay out your other half a disability.

You probably know someone that’s got in a car accident that’s been laid up for three months or six months or maybe cancer took you out of the business for a year. What happened to the business during that time?

If you’re the person that opens the door, hires every person, goes to the bank every week, does all that stuff and it’s you how much of the value of your business, even if you’ve done it for 20 years, got eroded over that point in time where you couldn’t go to work. That’s if you couldn’t. What if you want to take a holiday for like taking a holiday for a week, okay.

But taking a holiday for a month or two months or three months, can you do that? Those are good questions to ask yourself.

Because if it’s not at that level, it’s not at the maximum value and it’s not able for you to transition it so that you’re leaving the legacy that you want to leave with those dollars. Because not everybody’s getting rid of their business these days just because they’re ready to retire. Especially the now generation.

The now generation saying, I want to do this for seven to 10 years and then I want to take that capital and plunk it somewhere else and take another run, right? There are a lot of people that were the baby boomers and stuff. It’s like, this is my business, I’ve done it for 50 years.

That’s not as much the case anymore.

Now people are moving on to their next business as opposed to just keeping their business and growing their business until they’re Ready to exit at whatever time. That. Yeah.

Freddy D
00:11:50.280 – 00:11:53.368
So let’s go back to where you’re talking about the P’s.

Pete Mohr
00:11:53.464 – 00:11:53.880
Yeah.

Freddy D
00:11:53.960 – 00:12:26.974
Because this happened and I’m going to share the story. Sure. Recently I came in to help an interpreting and translation company in their sales. I help improve their sales. It was a husband and wife team.

They started it 30 years ago. They built it to a certain level and it was a lifestyle business. Okay. They would take a month off and go travel the world and stuff like that.

They wanted to take it to another level because they didn’t have the skill set. You’ve probably run into many business owners. They take it so high and then that’s as far as they could go.

Pete Mohr
00:12:26.982 – 00:12:27.710
That’s the ceiling.

Freddy D
00:12:27.790 – 00:14:24.588
Yep. So I helped them with the sales and they were not really strong in handling RFPs and stuff like that. That’s one of my strengths.

Got some large accounts and then next thing you know I’m helping them with operations. So we got the sales going and then all of a sudden we’re having operations. Didn’t have any systems in place. It was old school.

They weren’t using technology. They didn’t have a CRM. They were using file folders. Yes. So I implemented all those tools and helped get them in place.

They were like, you know, this is really going good. We would really like to have you maybe run the business and we’ll step aside and you be the general manager. So that was the plan.

In mid December 2022, unexpectedly, he passed away. I had spoken to him in the morning and that night he was gone. So it was weird. I officially became the general manager.

Unexpectedly, I turned that company around and grew them by a million dollars in a year. We had systems in place. More importantly, what I did was I made sure that every team member was on the same page.

So we were in the same racing rowboat with the four of us in line. But we got the oars in sync and we had a goal. We had Monday morning meetings. Everybody was on the same page.

And I created some superfans out of the team which are still friends today. Position it for acquisition and it was acquired last year. And then I hung around to help the transition and then it was done. They were fortunate.

They had a guy with my skill set that was able to do what you just talked about. Not everybody company is in a position and that’s a problem. If something like that happens.

They don’t have a Freddie D that can step in or a Pete that can step in and take it over and not Miss a beat and actually scale it and position it for growth.

Pete Mohr
00:14:24.644 – 00:15:48.600
And that’s why I say that middle alignment, right? The promise is part of your guiding principles. Your guiding principles, your mission, your vision and your promise.

Mission and vision are internally facing promises. Externally, it’s what you’re promising your customers. Because people will only buy a better life, right?

So the promise really is around this idea of what’s their pain? How are you positioning yourself in between their pain and where they want to be so that you can take them to the better life.

That’s where the dollars happen, right? And when the dollars happen, there needs to be the alignment of the process, the product or service.

If you’re a service based business and the people, the people are broken down into three. One is your ideal customer, and I’m sure everybody gets that listening to the show.

Two is your ideal teammate and three is your ideal outsourced supplier that also helps you deliver your promise.

So any of those other suppliers that are part of your delivery so that you can then promote it and get the profit, and that’s the operational structure. Those, every meeting’s based on those. Everything for the generation of the business and the continuance of the business are based on those.

And then I’ve got an overarching theme that sits on top of that from the leadership perspective that you had mentioned earlier, and that’s called the cma. And the CMA is really, as a leader, your job is to hone your communication skills, your management skills and your accountability skills.

Freddy D
00:15:48.680 – 00:17:24.495
Important, very important, what you bring up there. Because go back to the interpreting company. Yeah, you talk about suppliers. The suppliers were the independent contract interpreter.

They were not employees, they were independent contractors. And the mindset from the company beforehand was these guys should be thankful we’re giving them work.

My mindset was no, you should be thankful that he speaks or she speaks that particular language. Because otherwise you can’t fulfill the project that this particular hospital needs.

So we created a newsletter to edify all the independent contract interpreters.

So once a month I would pick someone who went above and beyond and made them feel important, special, and recognized them for their birthdays and all that stuff.

And the interpreter started to come into the office and felt welcomed and just completely changed the whole dynamics of the internal culture of the company, which is what you just mentioned. In a sense, that culture and that company has got to be on the same page. Because if people are unhappy with their workplace, you and I know this.

That tonality to a prospective customer is going to come across can’t hide it. It’s impossible. They’re going to sense something. They’re going to get that feeling. You know, I’m not sure I’m going to go with these guys.

I’m going to go someplace else. Whereas someone reaches, answers a phone and says, hey Pete, glad your call. We’re super excited to talk to you.

You’re going to go, wow, this place has got energy. It’s those little things are really become the big things they do.

Pete Mohr
00:17:24.567 – 00:18:16.232
There’s so much to unpack there culture wise.

But one of the key things with that CMA structure that I mentioned, that communication management accountability, is that you as the leader, because it’s mostly leaders listening to this show, you gotta own that because that’s where everything comes down the accountability chart from you. And that’s why we need to have the promise and we need to shout it out loud. We need to have those slogans, we need to have everything in alignment.

We need to hire the right people, we need to have the right clients, not just any client. We need to have the right outsource partners that are believing in our promise.

If they don’t even know what our promise is and you’re just saying, hey, I need another interpreter, let’s fire them on, let’s go.

Like how can they deliver the promise that we’re promising our clients on behalf of us if there isn’t a process in place to tell them what that is and background checks to make sure they’re in alignment?

Freddy D
00:18:16.296 – 00:18:30.152
Totally agree.

So Pete, share a story of how you worked with a business owner and helped them go from being an operator to actually a business owner is what you and I would define.

Pete Mohr
00:18:30.216 – 00:20:16.532
You know, there’s a lot of them, but one of the ones and some of my clients, I just help them through different areas like you said, breaking that ceiling to get them through a certain area for three months, six months, a year, whatever the case is.

But one of the fellows I’ve been working with now for maybe three, four years and on an ongoing basis as we continue to do monthlies and quarterlies and making sure everything’s in rhythm.

He’s got this awesome business and I won’t go into it for non disclosure reasons, but he has a retail business, which is an online retail business, but he also has a manufacturing business in India. He lives in the states and he has 25 people manufacturing musical instruments in India.

And he only goes to India about and he started this whole thing right during COVID and he couldn’t get over to the factory.

He had Partners, they were setting up communication, they’re setting up accountability, they’re adding on space, they’re getting CNC machines in there, all this stuff. And it’s all being done from over here for the most part.

He got over a few times since, but even now with a lot freer travel, he only goes about once a year. And he runs the side of this business on the retail. And one of the things I’ve helped him with along the way is wholesale, too.

He knew nothing about wholesale. So we built a wholesale network around the world.

And he just said to me the other day, I just got two huge orders that will occupy the plant for the next three months. We’re going to need to expand again.

When we first met, this is just before COVID because we just started working when he was adding this whole division, and he said, I’m going to need some help working through some of this stuff. He hadn’t taken a vacation in 10 years. He’d taken vacation because they homeschool and stuff like that.

But his vacation was more like, okay, well, I’m working from a different location today. And that may resonate with a lot of business owners listening here today, too.

Freddy D
00:20:16.636 – 00:20:17.140
Sure.

Pete Mohr
00:20:17.260 – 00:20:24.426
Does your vacation involve you working from another location, or is your vacation checking email, making sure.

Freddy D
00:20:24.498 – 00:20:29.562
Going on slack or teams and communicating and you’re not on vacation.

Pete Mohr
00:20:29.706 – 00:21:14.158
No, you’re not. I’m taking a month off away from our home office here soon.

But my intention is I will be working certain parts of that because I just don’t want to be here. We live in the cold, and we’re going to go somewhere warm for a month and.

But part of that, like three quarters of it is going to be vacation vacation where I have no contact, really at all with my team. And about a third, 25 or a third of it’s going to be some appointments that I have scheduled that I’m okay with. So I’m doing a bit of both there.

But the idea is, if you’re always on your phone when you’re away with your family, that’s no vacation. And believe me, your family see that too. Right.

They know you’re not there on vacation with them just because you happen to be in Arizona or Florida or Tahiti or wherever you’re going for your vacation.

Freddy D
00:21:14.254 – 00:21:16.650
Affects family life for sure.

Pete Mohr
00:21:16.960 – 00:21:38.712
And they did have their business set up so they could homeschool and they got four kids and they wanted to do all that stuff. And that’s great. But he was still finding himself. Anytime they went and did anything, he’s always tied to his phone.

He’s still answering customer calls, he’s still answering all these other things. So we freed him up from that right off the bat. Like the first vacation he took maybe three months in was a week away. Without his phone.

He had his phone but without contact to.

Freddy D
00:21:38.896 – 00:21:42.494
There must have been some major withdrawals taking place there.

Pete Mohr
00:21:42.632 – 00:22:48.520
You know, that was a huge win. A huge win.

And I think things like that, I want everybody to think if you actually own the business, reel back, just reel it back a little bit to when you first either started your business or bought your business.

Because you probably had these ideas of I’ll have a little bit more freedom, I’ll have a little bit more money, I’ll have life will be better than when I currently am. Whether it’s a corporate job or whether it’s any of these other things that you were doing prior to the business that you now own.

If you don’t feel the way you thought you were going to feel when you took that business over, then you got some work to do. This is the kind of stuff when we start moving from operator to owner. One of the things here, Freddie D.

Is that we get habitualized into making all these decisions because we had to. Cash was tight. We’re watching the dollars, we’re doing all this stuff. We’re going to make our own decisions. We’re going to watch all these things.

We want to know the business. Maybe we don’t know the business as well as we think we do. So we think we need to be in the weeds with everything, all of that sort of stuff.

But when you do that for one, two or three years, which is a normal sort of startup period, now I’m habitualized into doing that and it’s hard for me to actually let go of these things.

Freddy D
00:22:49.300 – 00:22:54.684
Yeah. I worked with and I stopped working with them was a commercial flooring company.

Pete Mohr
00:22:54.772 – 00:22:55.276
Yeah.

Freddy D
00:22:55.388 – 00:23:55.728
And the guy had been in business for 30 some years, family run business.

I got connected because when I was doing the interpreting company, I had a business coach that was helping me brainstorm, sound off, blow off my frustrations with idiotic stuff and whatnot. And so the same coach connected me with this guy. Could really use some help.

Unfortunately, this person was so entrenched in the way they were doing things, they felt that they were losing control because I was implementing systems and technology. They were doing file folders. Okay. And actually 24 in six weeks, I had 1.1 million doll worth of commercial flooring bidding opportunities.

I ended up saying this isn’t going to work.

Sometimes you have to fire a customer because it’s not aligning with your beliefs, your system, your culture, and it’s actually going to suck you down versus empower you.

Pete Mohr
00:23:55.784 – 00:24:15.852
Yeah. And you know what? There’s another coach out there for that person that’s going to fit them better than us.

And that’s part of understanding your promise that I help people develop their promises and go through all those five, the five Ps and get to profit for the sixth. That’s part of the process. But we have to have it for ourselves, too. We have to be in alignment. That wasn’t an ideal customer.

Freddy D
00:24:15.996 – 00:24:16.396
No.

Pete Mohr
00:24:16.468 – 00:25:02.536
So it doesn’t fit. It doesn’t fit the system. So from those kind of perspectives, that’s part of this onboarding process.

And whether we’re onboarding a new employee, as you said, for the right people fit, when getting the right people with the right culture, I’ve got another thing called the candidate evaluation, which goes through. Do they have the capacity to do the work? Do they have the capability to do the work? Do they have the confidence to do the work?

And are they the right cultural fit? And so once we get all of those four pieces, it’s like, are we going to hire this person now? It’s part of Colby, too.

I’m a certified Colby coach and I work through a whole bunch of things around Colby for that to get the right fit for people. It costs so much money to get that people person right. And if you hire wrong, you’re back in the boards and you’re six months down.

Freddy D
00:25:02.608 – 00:25:38.034
The amount of money that you waste on hiring the wrong person and then losing that person is astronomical. With this interpreting company, they were having people quit 90 days. They didn’t hire the person to fit the culture. They got the cheapest person.

They would come in, they would train them verbally, and then the following week, when they would go live, they would get chastised for a mistake. Not in private, publicly. You can take 1, 2, 3, 4 of those, and after that, you’re. I’m out of this place. And that’s what was happening.

A revolving door. So very, very important.

Pete Mohr
00:25:38.202 – 00:26:21.174
Yeah. I mean, that’s part of the 6Ps, right? Getting that people port. Because it could happen the same with those outsourced suppliers.

It could happen the same with your teammate, it could happen same with your customers. All of them can cost you severe amounts of money if you’re aligning with the wrong person. Right. Same with the products.

If you’re aligning with the Wrong products or service and they don’t match your promise. Your promise isn’t in alignment with that. People are expecting something differently than you’re giving them that’s going to affect your profit.

All of these things have to happen, have to be in alignment. And here’s another thing.

For those people that have been at it for 10, 15, 20, 50 years, sometimes what you used to do and what you’ve always done maybe isn’t the way it needs to be done anymore. Sometimes things change.

Freddy D
00:26:21.342 – 00:27:06.990
You gotta adapt. You know, the ball changes, the direction changes and the wind changes.

I have a good friend of mine that is a retired airline pilot and he said, which stuck with me was that when you going from Phoenix to Hawaii, that plane is always constantly readjusting its direction because if you didn’t do that, the wind would blow it way off course and you would never arrive to your original destination. So you’ve always got to be tweaking, adjusting everything else.

So very good advice that you’re sharing with the audience and business owners is, yeah, you’ve been doing something for 10 years that way. Guess what, it’s probably not the best way today.

Pete Mohr
00:27:07.290 – 00:27:18.822
Yeah. You know, you said a lot of the work that you’ve done is setting up process. And I do the same thing.

I set up a lot of process and help people set up process. But one thing I know is that there are no perfect processes.

Freddy D
00:27:18.946 – 00:27:19.294
Correct.

Pete Mohr
00:27:19.342 – 00:28:01.898
And we’re also always trying to perfect them. So although there are no perfect processes, we’re always trying to perfect our process. And that’s this idea of steady and never ending improvement.

And it’s something that we need to be looking at as leaders all the time.

It’s one of the laws in my 10 laws little ebook is this idea that we always need to be rolling through steady and never ending improvement and working towards betterment in our business and not always accepting the way it was done for the last 10 years is the way. And maybe it is still the right way to do it, and that’s okay.

But at least we need to have these sort of stepping back and looking at it and saying, is this still the right way? Because if it is, great. But if it isn’t, we need to do some work here.

Freddy D
00:28:02.034 – 00:28:17.664
Yeah, yeah. Because things change.

And then you wonder why your competitors all of a sudden ahead of you and you’re going, wait a minute, I’ve been doing this for 10, 15 years. What happened? Well, they’ve tweaked, they pivoted, you didn’t.

Pete Mohr
00:28:17.792 – 00:28:22.304
When was the last time you put a VHS tape into the VHS machine to watch a movie.

Freddy D
00:28:22.352 – 00:28:23.136
Don’t remember.

Pete Mohr
00:28:23.248 – 00:28:24.848
Yeah, 30 years ago, right.

Freddy D
00:28:24.904 – 00:28:28.496
I still have some. Right. I don’t have the machine anymore, but I still have them.

Pete Mohr
00:28:28.568 – 00:29:24.814
There you go. But for the time, Blockbuster was the, like they were the deal. Right. So.

And all of these things, and I use that because those of us of our vintage at least remember VHS machines and Beta. But things do change.

And as leaders, one of our gigs is that we need to be always searching for the next thing in our industries, whatever that industry is. It’s like where is this going and where do we think it’s going? And staying on top of that.

Because as much as our team, we’re asking our team to do all this stuff for us every day and they’re mired down in the day to day operations. If we can elevate out of that now, we got to spend some time really seeing where the next best thing is within our industry.

So we can be the leaders in those early and not the, the late adapters. Because when that’s the case, we’re already behind the ball and we’ve lost opportunity for that profit segment.

And it’s not like we can’t fire something in after it’s five years into adoption.

Freddy D
00:29:24.862 – 00:29:47.320
But you’re playing catch up just like that flooring company. They’re wondering why they’re not growing and getting business.

And yet there’s $159 billion worth of commercial construction going on in Arizona right now. Is all the data centers and everything else.

But you can’t compete when you’re not using technology, not leveraging technology where everybody else is.

Pete Mohr
00:29:47.440 – 00:31:12.602
That’s another one of my, one of my laws is you gotta at least accept technology.

And I’ll use another example from that because even from people that like massage therapy or physio or all these things, people that were, they’re still calling and saying, hey, can I have an appointment next Tuesday morning? No, I don’t have an appointment Tuesday, but you can come in on Friday.

And all this kind of stuff, you know, people that haven’t adapted to having like online ordering where I can just book my own schedule and I’ll come in and I’ll be there.

All of these different things have made life easier because even from a calendly perspective or tidy cal or all these different things that help your schedule. Do you want to have five or ten back and forth? Yeah, I can do Tuesday at two. No, I can’t choose to like all these back and forths.

Average of 7 to 10, I think it is times you’re back and forth or do you want to just click a link, look at my calendar, look at your availability and say, I’ll take Tuesday at 10. But people still want to use the manila folders, people still want to pick up the phone and do that stuff.

But here’s the thing, people are bypassing you that are using some of these technologies. And as leaders, we need to at least know they’re out there.

And we need to look and research and ask our team to research if we don’t feel comfortable about it.

But research these things because you may really be missing some key infrastructure that’s going to help take your business to the next 25 years of joy and glory.

Freddy D
00:31:12.666 – 00:31:21.514
Sure, absolutely. I started in the beginning of the software industry. I mean 1980, so I’m a pioneer in that area in a sense.

Pete Mohr
00:31:21.642 – 00:31:23.466
Well, you still got more hair than me, Matt.

Freddy D
00:31:23.578 – 00:32:33.038
I started as an applications guy and then went into sales. But I’m a firm believer that you’ve always got to look at technology because there’s always something new, better.

If you aren’t aware of what’s out there, you may not necessarily need replace anything. You may say, okay, what we’ve got is working fine for what we’ve got.

But then there’s times where you go, you know what, wait a minute, I’m getting way more value in this other platform. It’s going to save this much time. Out with the old and in with the new.

You’ve got to be able to pivot from that perspective because your cus, your competitor may be doing so. And then they’ve got some automation tools put into place where it’s got instant chat, you’re leveraging AI, so it’s creating a conversation.

Even though you may think you’re actually talking to somebody, you’re really talking to an AI robot that’s programmed to have a intelligent conversation with you for sure. And you don’t have that and your competitor does, you’re toast. Because just like you just said, I can come in and reach out, get some answers.

Okay, yeah. And then the thing says, when do you want to schedule? Boom, it’s done, you’re outside looking in.

Pete Mohr
00:32:33.094 – 00:32:45.238
You have to be available when they want to to find the information and they want to schedule the appointment. Not just between 8, 5. You’ve got to be available for when they want your services.

Freddy D
00:32:45.374 – 00:32:50.486
We just talked about that before we started the show. You went to the dentist at 7 o’clock this morning.

Pete Mohr
00:32:50.558 – 00:32:50.998
That’s it.

Freddy D
00:32:51.054 – 00:33:05.942
Was dentist or doctor at 7:00 this morning. So they pivoted to be able to accommodate you as a customer. That’s a game changer because your day can go on.

They’re able to service several customers in that window.

Pete Mohr
00:33:06.086 – 00:33:06.870
That’s it.

Freddy D
00:33:06.990 – 00:33:12.134
So they’re scaling their business because of the fact that they’re accommodating the market for today.

Pete Mohr
00:33:12.222 – 00:34:42.544
I think going back to this earlier conversation, which is we get habitualized into doing things the way we’ve done them for a while.

And whether it’s scheduling, it’s like, no, we don’t open Saturdays or Sundays, or we don’t open late at night, or we don’t have a website, which there’s still some businesses out there that don’t have a website. You know, like stuff like this. It’s like, no.

If you want to carry on your business, if you want to build value in your business, because as we said earlier, you will exit your business one day. And what does that mean for most small business owners? It’s their most valuable possession that they have more so than their house.

In a lot of cases, if they do have stocks and bonds and everything, they can pull up the reports like, Okay, I got 200,000 in this and a hundred thousand in that and a million in this or whatever my house. I can get a rough idea of what my house is worth. Oh yeah, the neighbor sold for 500,000. I should be able to get 500 plus or minus that kind of stuff.

But your business, where are you getting the valuation of your business? And how do you know how much your business is worth? Well, I can tell you one thing.

It doesn’t come from the golf course, from your buddies that you golf with every Thursday afternoon and men’s league, right? Just because somebody sold their business for a million bucks doesn’t mean you’re getting a million, even if it’s in the same industry. Right?

So your biggest or one of your biggest things in the portfolio that you have at least, and you don’t even know the value of it really, or a range of value. That’s one of the things that I work with a lot of my clients on is building range of value. So at least they know.

And if they don’t like the number they get, then they got to do some work to get it where they need it to be.

Freddy D
00:34:42.632 – 00:34:46.432
And that’s where you can come in, is you can help them with the work that they need to do to get there.

Pete Mohr
00:34:46.536 – 00:35:25.992
Or you, you know, like Freddie D. This is what we do right. It’s like, right, but you need to have the benchmark.

And the benchmark is like, oh, you mean my business is only worth 300,000? I thought it was like a million. Well, I’m not saying it’s worth 300, but probably between three and four.

But I need a million in order to do what I want to do next to buy this next business to retire. So then we got. Then we need to build it from give or take three or four hundred thousand to a million over X amount of time.

And this is the plan because if you leave it till the end, because now I’m thinking all along, for the last 10 years, I’m going to get a million for this thing and I’m actually going to get 300,000. Well, that changes my life after, doesn’t it?

Freddy D
00:35:26.096 – 00:35:47.112
Yep. Yep. So as we wrap up here, Pete, what are some.

Give me some, like, takeaways that business owners could really bullet points that they can really resonate with that will drive home the importance of transitioning from working in the weeds to working on the business.

Pete Mohr
00:35:47.216 – 00:37:02.310
You know, I think the big things to take away here is if you think of those things we’ve talked about throughout the episode. One, what is your promise and is it still relevant just because you’ve had that promise for many years, is it still resonant to your clients?

Two, are your product, your process and your people actually aligned with that promise? Or is there some misalignment there?

Do you need to do some work and maybe bring in some new products or services or maybe get rid of some ones that are legacy products and services that just making it anymore process.

If everything is in your head and things cannot happen without you in your seat at work or at least available by phone like we talked about with that one client I had, then you got some work to do on process in aligning and assigning the accountability to others. Because here’s the next piece of process. It’s one thing to have the process written and on video, on audio and checklists, all that kind of stuff.

It’s another thing to actually turn it over to somebody else. That accountability, right people. Do you have we talked about this, Are they the right customers?

And if they aren’t, you got some work to do, you might have to fire some. What about your team? Are they aligned with your culture? Are they capable?

Freddy D
00:37:02.390 – 00:37:02.678
Are.

Pete Mohr
00:37:02.734 – 00:38:42.422
Do they have the capacity to grow? Are they confident in what they do and delivering your promise that’s shouted out to the world? Promotion.

Are you getting your communication and message out of that promise and how you can take people from where they are through your services to where they want to be. Because that’s how the dollars happen so that you can have the right amount of profit.

When you have the right amount of profit, it isn’t just about profit, it’s about multiple. When you do want to get to the end, and the multiple is about being able to show you’re going to get more multiple. Because it’s one thing.

If you make a hundred thousand dollars and you get a one times multiple, that’s a hundred thousand bucks. Or if you get 0 multiple because you don’t have your business set up, that’s still zero. Right. But if you can get three or four or whatever.

Now we’re talking multiples. How do we build multiples?

We build multiples by having these systems in place, by having the right people in place, by having the right customers, by being able to prove and document things so that when the new owner looks at this thing and says, is this something I want to do and do I need the existing owner to take it to the next level or can I replicate this? And you’re basically saying, hey, I don’t even need to go to work. I was gone for a month last year and my business actually grew.

If that’s the case now, as an outsider and think of this too, even if you’re not looking to sell your business, think of it from a bank position. If you need to go and acquire money to grow that next thing and put a 30,000 square foot addition on or whatever the case is.

And you’re showing them this and you’re saying like, stuff happens without me. That’s risk. That’s been, that’s been looked after. Right. Because the banker’s looking at this saying, what happens if I lose the kingpin here?

Freddy D
00:38:42.606 – 00:38:43.526
Yep.

Pete Mohr
00:38:43.718 – 00:39:05.830
So profit is interesting, but multiples are even more interesting as we look to build value. So where are you going to build value and how are you going to work this year on your communication, your management skills and your accountability?

Because things need to be transferred to someone else in order to free your time up so that you can do what you want to inside your business and outside of your business. As the business owner, you deserve it.

Freddy D
00:39:05.870 – 00:39:34.888
Thanks to Richard Branson, you don’t see him gassing up the airplane or making sure that the Virgin Voyages is all set to go on its next voyage.

He’s out on his island, he’s out entertaining, he’s playing flight attendant, he’s playing guests on his ship because he’s empowered his team to do what needs to be done and he’s got the right team in place. So great nuggets and great insight there. Pete, for our listeners, how can people find you?

Pete Mohr
00:39:34.944 – 00:39:51.512
Best way is just to go over to my website@pete-mooremohr.com so pete-moore.com and I’ve got a host of other sites that are inside there that depending on what what area of business you’re interested in, you can click on those and dig into more information.

Freddy D
00:39:51.696 – 00:39:55.048
Okay. And you have something for our audience, I think you.

Pete Mohr
00:39:55.104 – 00:40:14.250
Yeah, we’ve talked, yeah, we’ve talked a little bit about the journey from operator to owner today.

And I’ve got a download which is a little ebook, a little PDF ebook, around the 10 laws of moving from operator to owner, some of which we’ve talked about today. And you can find that@simplifyingentrepreneurship.com laws.

Freddy D
00:40:14.750 – 00:40:28.278
Great. Pete, it’s been a pleasure having you on a business superfans podcast. Great conversation. We could probably go on for a couple hours here.

So I look forward to having you on a show down the road. And thank you very much for your time.

Pete Mohr
00:40:28.414 – 00:40:30.070
Thanks for having me, Freddie D. It’s been a blast.