August 22, 2025 • 40 mins
Today, we dive into the world of business coaching and exit strategies with expert Peter Mohr. He specializes in helping entrepreneurs cut through chaos, align their teams, and create businesses that can thrive independently. Peter shares his unique framework, the "Six P's," which include promise, product, process, people, profit, and promotion. This method not only enhances business performance but also strengthens leadership and accountability within teams. We discuss the importance of having a clear promise that evolves with your business and how effective communication can transform your company culture. Join us for a conversation that's packed with insights on building a business that’s not just profitable, but also ready for the future!
The Leap to Be Unstoppable podcast welcomes Peter Moore, an experienced business coach and exit strategist, for an insightful discussion on business leadership and creating robust exit strategies. Peter, who has spent over three decades building and selling businesses, shares his expertise on how to create value and readiness for exiting a business. He emphasizes the significance of having a clear business promise, which serves as the foundation for aligning products, processes, and people in any organization. With his unique framework known as the 'six P's,' he breaks down essential components like promise, product, process, people, profit, and promotion, providing listeners with actionable insights on how to implement these ideas effectively in their own businesses.
Throughout the conversation, Peter illustrates how understanding and communicating a business's promise can significantly impact customer experience and team dynamics. He highlights the importance of having a well-defined onboarding process for team members, ensuring that everyone is on the same page regarding the company's vision. Peter also discusses the necessity of evolving this promise over time to remain relevant in a fast-changing business landscape, encouraging listeners to reflect on their own business practices and adapt accordingly. The episode is packed with practical advice and clever anecdotes that make the complexities of business leadership more accessible, leaving listeners inspired to take actionable steps toward becoming unstoppable in their entrepreneurial journeys.
Takeaways:
- In business, it's essential to have a clear promise that aligns with your products and services.
- Effective leadership hinges on accountability and trust within your team, fostering a productive culture.
- Communication is key; ensuring all stakeholders understand your promise leads to better alignment and performance.
- Utilizing modern tools can streamline processes and enhance training, making it easier to convey information to your team.
Links referenced in this episode:
- pete-mohr.com
- speaktopete.com
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:41):
Well, hello, everybody, andwelcome to another great episode
of Leap to Be Unstoppablepodcast. I am your host, Jaclyn Strominger,
and today I am so excited towelcome to the show. We have a great
guest, Peter Mohr. And let metell you a little bit about Peter.
He is a business coach andexit strategist and a Colby certified
(01:04):
coach. And honestly, it'sreally cool stuff. And he helps owners
coach, cut through the chaos,align their teams and create turnkey
businesses, businesses thatthrive without them. And he gets,
he really helps peoplespecialize in that exit readiness
and value building, which isso important. So we're going to have
(01:24):
a great conversation todayabout his businesses and leadership
and learning a lot more aboutwhat he has to offer. So welcome,
Pete, to the show.
Oh, thanks so much for havingme. I am excited to be here and I'm
excited to be with thelisteners. I mean, it's. That's why
we're here, right, Jaclyn?
Right. That's why we're here.So, Pete, you know, you know, you're,
(01:45):
you know, I was looking atyour profile and what you do. You
obviously have your own brickand mortar business also online.
You also have your coachingbusiness and which is business executive.
And then you also have, like,exit strategy, which is somewhat
overlap, but.
Yep.
So first and foremost, youknow, you're a business owner. How
(02:11):
are you managing all of thatand leading? You don't. I'm, I'm.
Surely you're not doing thisall on your own. So how do you lead
your team.
These days? I'm leading myteam pretty much virtually. You know,
I do have face to facemeetings, whether it's here on Zoom
(02:33):
or whatever the case is,sometimes in store as well. Lots
of different ways. But, youknow, I've been in business a long
time now, Jaclyn. It's, it'skind of crazy, but I'm in my 31st
year of being a businessowner. I started young, I was 23,
got my first business rollingand, you know, had, have built businesses
(02:54):
along the way. Built them,sold them. I've defranchised, I've
franchised. I've, you know,helped people buy and sell the business
you were just talking about.We currently own two shoe stores
and they're called Shoe Topiahere in Canada. And how do I run
those? Well, basically, I runthem through a lens that I created
(03:15):
several years ago and I wrotea little book on it. And the idea
behind that is that I'm goingto give you the five P's that are
in the book and I've addedanother P since I wrote the book.
But. But this. This idea hereis how I. How I run everything. And
it's understand your promise.Align your products, your process,
(03:36):
and your people to it so thatyou can have the right amount of
profit. And the one other Pthat I didn't have that I keep getting
asked about, so we've sort ofadded it after the book is promotion,
so, you know, we need topromote it. Right? So just. And I'm
not going to. I know the wholepodcast isn't around this structure,
but I'll dig a little bitdeeper into those six P.S. just so
(03:58):
everybody, a framework ofwhere I'm coming at in our conversation.
So the promise is not yourmission. It's not your sort of vision.
The promise is what you shoutout at the top of the mountain to
all of the people that willlisten to you. It's what you do for
your client. It's how you takethem from their pain to their game.
(04:19):
And when we think about that,I'll use my shoe store as an example.
Our promise is to help ourclients look great and feel fantastic.
And if you think about a shoestore and you're walking in the shoe,
what are you thinking aboutdoing? Well, I got to look good for
the event, or I got it, youknow, whatever. Or I got to feel
good at work every day becauseI'm on my feet 12 hours a day. And
you know what? All of thesedifferent things. So what we want
(04:42):
to do at Shootopia every timesomebody enters the door is we want
to help them look great andfeel fantastic. So that's where it
kind of starts. And how do wedo that? We build that by saying
ooh, ah and aha, which is wehave process getting back to one
of the other P's that takespeople from, you know, proper greeting
and all this other stuff as weget in, but as we get them to actually
(05:05):
try on the shoes and they. Andthen we're like, let's go to the
mirror. And what does it. Whatdo you think the questions are? Well,
it's like, how do they look?And you're like, ooh, I look pretty
good. And we're thinking,okay, how do you feel? Ooh is one
of our key words. We need tohear the ooh, right? So we know we
got the look good. The nextone is how do they feel? And then
they close their eyes andthey're going, ah. Those feel fantastic.
(05:30):
Look good. Feel fantastic.We've given them the next three letters,
which is aha. So with ooh ahand aha, we've hit the emotions of
look great and feel fantasticthrough the process, through the
product, so that we can thenpromote these things, thinking about
all of those expressions andall those different things with each
individual product in order todrive the right amount of profit
(05:52):
in the store. And so that's ashoe store. And for anybody listening
here, whatever your journeyis, your customer journey is, we
have to start framing this upin these ways. Is your promise still
relevant? A lot of people havebeen in business 10, 20, 30 years.
You know, what you did 20 or30 years ago may not be as relevant
as it was. Have you updated?Have you looked at these things?
(06:15):
Do people still care? I seethat a lot with my coaching clients.
It's like, okay, well, thispromise is 30 years old. People,
you know, don't have a faxmachine anymore or something like
that. Right? Like, things change.
Right? And it's. I like thattoo, because it's actually your.
Your promise is going toevolve as you evolve. And it's, you
(06:38):
know, I know it's not yourmission or your vision, but it's.
But that promise is. Is inthere. And those things are fluid.
They're not. It's not like youchisel it in stone, put it on a beautiful
rock outside your door andforget about. Has to change and evolve
with as. As time change, asyour customer changes, as your business
(07:02):
evolves. It's.
It's the bedrock of everydecision you make. So if you think
about that flipping and, And Ilike to use the shoe store example,
because everybody buys shoes.Everybody's bought a pair of shoes,
right? So the idea here now isthat if I, if. And I invert these
when I have it in a graphical,the promise is actually at the bottom
(07:24):
of the stack graph becauseit's the actual bedrock of everything.
Everything is stacked on topof that. If you think of the foundation
of your house, the promise isthe foundation. So next we have the
product, or if you're in theservice business, it's going to be
service, right? So what's theproduct? Does it align with your
(07:44):
promise? If it doesn't align,it has no part of being part of your
product offering anymore. Andso many people will say, well, we've
always done that. I've alwaysfixed fax machines, for example,
but nobody cares anymore.Like, nobody even has a fax. So whether
you've always done it, is itstill relevant? No. So in. In the
shoe store, maybe it's a line,maybe it's a brand, maybe it's a
(08:06):
department. We got rid of kidsshoes in our shoe stores because
it wasn't profitable enoughfor us. When we look at the overall
amount of. Of space in thestore for the square footage it was
taking, it wasn't generatingthe profit. We had to lose that area.
And did it affect our promise?It did. We're not promising to. To
fit those kids anymore. Right.And we're not going to promote that
(08:26):
anymore. And our processdoesn't involve kids shoes anymore.
So that all has to changebecause of the decision that we made
around the fact that it's notprofitable. So all of these things,
like, they interweave intoevery decision that you make. And
having the clear understandingof what the promise is is where it
all blends in. So the processneeded to change. In that case, when
(08:50):
we actually decided to exitkids shoes, our promise did change.
We're still helping peoplelook great and feel fantastic. But
there's other derivatives ofpromise that you might have, right.
Like in your marketing and thevariety of different things. So we
had to clean up that language,we had to clean up the website, we
had to clean up a variety ofdifferent. And then we had to let
our customers know about it.Right. And so all of these things,
(09:14):
even the people side ofthings, so the people's always the
big one. Right. So we haveprocess and people and a lot of small
business owners really have ahard time with getting the stuff
out of their head and intoprocess so that other people can
take accountability. Andaccountability is a big part of leadership.
And this is a leadershippodcast, right? So, you know, if.
(09:36):
If we can't get the stuff outof our heads and into some sort of
format that's going to allowothers to do the tasks that we're
asking them to do so that wedon't have to worry about them and
micromanage them, then we'renot great leaders. And we need to
then align and assign theaccountability to the right people
with the right culture whounderstand the promise, who live
(09:57):
the promise, so that they canbe making the decision in alignment
with the promise so that wecan work this through, promote it
properly, and drive the rightamount of profit. Because getting
back to the exit plan things,the first thing that people will
look at if you ever do want tosell your business down the road
is, is this a profitable business?
Right, Right. So you'vetouched on quite a few things. And.
(10:19):
And I'm going to kind of goback a couple things. So something
that you said, and I. And Iwant to bring this out. It's not
ne. It's part of the peopleportion of it, in a sense. But something
that you said. There's a fewthings you said that struck me, but
something that you said reallyI think is extra important. You said,
(10:40):
you know, it's. When somebodywalks in the door, it's even. It's
down to as small as how arethey greeted, for sure. And that's
a part of the people. Theemployee. You're as. And I hate the
word employees. I've said thata thousand times. They're part of
your tribe.
They're your team. Same thing. Yeah.
My team members. The wordemployee just seems.
(11:00):
Yeah, I agree. We use team.
Yeah.
Yep.
They're your team members.Right. How do you disseminate this
messaging to your people sothat they're providing and capturing
(11:23):
the essence of what you'redoing? And that prom. And. And part
of that promise. Right. Theyget the ooh, ah, aha.
Yeah. It's not easy.
That's why I'm asking.Because. And I'll share it. Because
when you think about it, atthe end of the day, every business.
There are so many businessesout there that I don't want to say
(11:48):
they forget about the customeror that. That, you know, some. Some
do it really well and some doit horrible. Right.
Yeah.
Or just. Or, you know, or somepeople do it great within a company
and some people don't. Andthose that don't obviously have a
bigger impact on those thatcan have a bigger. Bigger impact
on those that do. It's right.It's like the bad experience that
(12:09):
you have. So how do we createno bad experiences or.
Well, we have bad experiencesat Utopia. You know, we do. And.
And we do our very best to.And we have a process to clean those
up as well, you know, butnothing's perfect. I think ultimately
it begins with a leadershipculture of holding people accountable.
(12:33):
And we need to have process inplace. Again, getting back to process,
and before we hopped on, Imentioned that I'm a Colby coach,
and Colby really is veryhelpful in understanding how people
deal with communication, factsand figures systems. Are they okay
with change? Are they not okaywith change? All of these different
(12:55):
things. Because people learndifferently than the business owner.
So taking that back toprocess, if I was talking about how
do we greet somebody at thedoor? We have onboarding training
that really tells people inwritten language because some people
like to read, some people likechecklists. Some people would prefer
to watch a video or somepeople would prefer to listen to
(13:18):
it because they're auditory.So Almost all of the process that
we have in place has manydifferent ways of absorbing the information
for the listener or for thereader or for the watcher. Because
as leaders, we need to providethe information in a way that they
can absorb it and most want toabsorb it. And if we're asking somebody
(13:40):
to read a 30 page document,but they are an auditory or a visual
learner, that's a real problem.
Right.
Yet we're expecting it becausemaybe we're, we like 30 page documents.
Well, that's not good enough.And you're wondering why these people
aren't doing, you're sayingyou never do what it says in the
document. Like go to thedocument. And they're like, well,
(14:00):
you know, they're thinking,they may not be saying to you, but
they're thinking, I'm notgoing to read 30 pages on this stuff.
Why don't you just do me avideo? Technology today allows us
to do this stuff so quickly.We could do and one of the best things
that we use, and I mean, I'mtool agnostic, but we do have tools
that we use that make lifeeasier currently and they'll change
(14:23):
as we as this podcast ages.But things like Loom, for example,
L O O M a wonderful digitaltool that you can just track your
mouse and go around thesedifferent things and you can just
point to the different areasand saying, go here, do this, go
that. And you're talking thisout at the same time, it's transcribing
it for somebody that wants toread it, pop it into something like
(14:45):
Chat GPT and you say, can youdo me a checklist on this as well?
Well, that would have taken useven three years ago. Yeah, like
a half day to do that. And nowyou can literally knock it off almost
as quickly as you can speak it.
Right. By the way, I just haveto share. Do you know that. Not that
I'm a, not that I'm a sellerof Zoom, but Zoom has that feature
(15:06):
now too.
Yeah, for sure. So, you know,there's like I said, tons of them.
There's tons.
They're just endless. Right.And you know, I'm not saying ChatGPT
is the right one either.There's perplexity, there's. I mean,
there's just so manydifferent, different things. Right.
The idea here is that there'sno excuse to not have your process
in many different formatsthese days because the tools are
(15:27):
so easy to use, they're souser friendly and you can provide
this to the people on yourteam in many different Formats so
that you can get the stuff done.
Right.
And that's what we need asbusiness owners, as leaders. We need
the stuff to be done,hopefully without you being involved
in every decision. Right. Andas we climb that sort of accountability
(15:49):
chart and have other peopleworking for us, we want to ensure.
And like I said, do thingshappen at Utopia? Sure, they happen
at Utopia, but, you know,ultimately we're hoping that 98%
of the time they don't,because we have good process in place.
We have people that areaccountable for understanding what
needs to happen, not just me.Why can I work only one or two days
a week, give or take, on anaverage week within the two stores?
(16:12):
Because I have good people inplace, good accountability. We have
good process, and people knowwhat to do and how to do it. And
that's the culture of the kindof business that we run.
And a key thing that you justsaid, too, I think that's also really
important is it's thataccountability piece and knowing
that you've got the goodpeople in place and what's underlying
in there is trust. You trustthe people that you have, so that.
(16:37):
And you empower those peoplethrough the accountability to do
the work. Because at the endof the day, people want to be able
to think for themselves. Theydon't like the micromanagement. They
want to have that, like thatfeeling of. Of autonomy.
If they're the right fit, ifthey're the right cultural fit, they
(16:59):
will want to make decisionsfor. And with you, keyword this.
The right cultural fit. So,right. In your process too, in. In
bringing on people.
Yeah.
You know, if you're listeningto leaders and you're taught and
leaders are listening andyou're thinking, like, how do you
grow that team? How do you.What are the tools that you use to
(17:20):
make sure you've got the rightculture in people?
Well, I mean, it starts reallyon how you send out that ad. You
know, how are you sending outthe ad? What's the language in the.
In the ad that you're puttingout there for whatever position that
you're hiring for? I mean,that's their first general, their
first interaction. If they'venever been into your business before
(17:41):
and they know nothing aboutyour business, they're going to see
this ad, and now they're goingto go look at your website and they're
going to. You got to thinkabout the journey. Right. And so,
you know, just like a customerjourney, we're thinking about the
employee journey or thepotential team member journey. As.
As we're Attracting, just likewe'd be attracting a client, we're
going to now attract a teammember. And so having language that
(18:06):
understands the kind ofbusiness that we run, the culture
that we run, the fact thatwe're small town sort of stores and,
and we like to offer serviceand we're okay with having a chat.
And it's not just an in n outand a variety of different things
around creating a family likeatmosphere. I help people do what
they're called their heartmodels for their business. And so
(18:28):
we have a heart model. It's,you know, it's got the five Ps in
it, of course, but indirectlyit's got all these different things
of we share our heart modelwith, you know, with them right off
the bat so that theyunderstand this is what you, this
is what it's going to be liketo work here. And usually they'll
almost always either love thator that's where it ends. And that's
(18:52):
okay. Like, we're okay to letpeople go that aren't going to be
right fit before we even haveinterview one. So we want to be very
clear in our language aroundthat sort of stuff. When we do have
the first interview, we haveanother set of very clear language
and we want to go through avariety of different things. And
then we put them through theColby test, which the, the Colby
A assessment, which I'm aColby coach, so obviously we use
(19:14):
it within our own business aswell. It's one of the only assessments
that can be used as part ofthe hiring process because it's got
nothing to do with yourpreferences, which are sort of frowned
upon as far as hiringprocedures these days. But Colby
is still perfectly good to useas part of the hiring procedure.
So we're going to look and seeif their Colby A aligns with the
(19:35):
Colby description that we'relooking for for that particular position
so that we can see if there'sgoing to be some issues going into
question two. We'll take alook at their Colby. We'll take a
look at any of the areas, gapsessentially, that we want to dig
into on, on our secondassessment. If they pass that second
interview, then we ask them tocome in for a working interview.
(19:58):
We want them to work with us.Sometimes that happens, like literally
the minute after the secondinterview ends, it's like, hey, have
you got a couple of hours? Andyou can just stay and work with us
and see what it's like. Youcan see what we're like, we can see
what you're like. And Then Icall that Discovery Day. So I've
been doing Discovery Day.Years ago, I used to have a bathroom
(20:19):
cleaning business. Andeverybody says, oh, I don't mind
cleaning toilets. I mean, Ican tell you I've cleaned more toilets
and urinals. Urinals than youwould ever imagine in your entire
life. My first 15 years ofbusiness. But you know, they're like,
oh yeah, no problem. I, I gotit, I got it. And I'm like, we start
at 5:30 in the morning. Yep,no problem, no problem. I, I, I like
the idea of starting early andbeing done early. Okay, so your working
(20:41):
interview starts tomorrowmorning at 5:30. And then they would
show up at like quarter to sixand wonder why I wasn't there. And
I'm like, I told you we startat 5:30. Like we start at 5:30. Yeah,
but 5:30 is pretty early.Well, that's what time we start.
Like you've, you failed onDiscovery Day, so you're not the
right fit. You know, so how dowe work out some of these things?
And then it's like, okay, wellsometimes they would get there and
(21:04):
they would say, oh, I didn'trealize I was going to be on my hands
and knees all the time. It'slike, yeah, you're cleaning toilets
and urinals. You're going tobe on your knees almost all day long.
Oh, well, that's not what Iexpected. Okay, well then it's not
the right fit. So that's whywe call it Discovery Day. It happens
really quick and we can make adecision. They may choose not to
stay with us or we may askthem not to stay with us after that
(21:26):
Discovery Day. And it, it, youknow how much money is wasted after
two weeks or four weeks or twomonths of hiring somebody and knowing
they're really not the rightfit all along when this could have
been dealt with before youeven put them on payroll.
You know, it's a, the hiringissue and, and placement. It is a,
at least I know in the Statesit's like a $43 trillion issue where
(21:50):
people actually, and, and I'mnot even talking worldwide, I hear
so I love that because, youknow, we, we talk a lot and I, and
I sometimes feel like I talkabout this till I'm blue in the face
is that not everybody is theright fit for your company. They
might be great on paper, butyou have to have, and you share this.
(22:11):
There are certain questionsyou have to have key questions to
ask people to reallyunderstand their key values, as I
call it, their Achievementcode. Like what do they live by,
how do they operate? And if,if they're not aligned, they don't
have to be exactly like you,but they have to be enough in alignment
(22:34):
with how they operate andtheir beliefs and how they put out
into the universe basicallyinto the world that if it's not the
right fit, they should not beon your team. They, you know, and
that's where it might be rightto say, you know what, you're not
right for our company, but Iknow another company that might be
(22:56):
better for you.
For sure. And we've done thatin the past. For sure. We have. And
I think, you know, that peopleportion is interesting. It's the
fourth P of the P list there.And so when I think about the alignment
of people, it's so, so vital,right? You can have all the process,
all the product, you can evenhave the promise aligned. But if
(23:18):
the people aren't there,you've got no business because the
right people are. I break themdown into three different categories.
One is your ideal client,which I'm sure everybody's done,
at least I hope everybody'sdone their homework on. And then
two is your ideal teammate,which we're talking about here, right?
And what's the processinvolved in bringing on the ideal
teammate? Or maybe what's theprocess in training them and onboarding
(23:41):
them? Or maybe what's theprocess in, in paying them and, you
know, working through that? Ormaybe what's the process in letting
them go? You know, all ofthese things we need to look at.
But the third one, which a lotof people don't think about that
much, are any of yoursuppliers, are your suppliers aligned
(24:01):
with your promise? And if theyaren't, is there someone else who's
a better supplier that'scapable of taking that? Because if
they aren't aligned with yourpromise, just like a bad employee
or just like a bad client,they can suck every living juice
out of you and a lot of moneyout of you and take up all of your
time so that you don't havetime for your best clients, your
(24:24):
best teammates and your bestsuppliers. And so we need to be actively
working on bringing on bettersuppliers every single day as whatever,
whatever business you arethere, you have outsourced suppliers.
Maybe it's a marketingcompany, maybe it's a bookkeeping
company, maybe it's a, a shoecompany that you're buying shoes
from. Whatever the case is,everybody's dealing with outsourced
(24:45):
suppliers, or are they alignedwith your promise? Do they even know
what Your promise is, have youever even shared it with them? If
they're true partners withyou, they should know what you're
working towards and theyshould know when they're suggesting
products that they have intheir bag of tricks that, that it
should align with your promiseso that they can help you deliver
your promise so that you canget paid, so you can pay them.
(25:07):
Right. You know, keeping youjust, you just said is shared, right?
I mean it is like sharing thatpromise. It's, it's something that
needs to be done and done. Sohow often do you share that promise,
like with your team and yourclients and your suppliers?
(25:29):
Yeah, well, I mean on mypodcast and on all the things I do
from a coaching side ofthings, I share my promise every
day. From Shootopia, theShootopia side of things. It's an
interesting thing. We havewhat I call a supplier scorecard
that we've developed and Istrongly suggest everybody do one
(25:50):
for whoever are theirsuppliers. And it goes through our
sort of our guidingprinciples. It goes and it and it,
and it actually lays it out ina 12 step process. Does this person
align with what we're doing?Do they provide what we need? Are
they on time? Are their peoplegood? Is the price right? Like a
bunch of different things. Andthen we'll take that when we go to
(26:11):
do our buys and we'll say,hey, listen, you're 73% and I don't
do it with every supplierbecause, you know, quite honestly,
the really good suppliers youalready know. And it's like, I don't
even need to show you this. Wealready have the best relationship
ever. If you want to see it,I've got it. But you know, it's more
about the ones that are alwaystelling you, why don't you give us
more business? Why don't yougive us more business? Like, what's
(26:33):
going on here? You should be,you know, you should be. Everybody
else gives us more business.How come you don't? It's like, well,
because you don't look afteryour returns, you never ship us the
stuff on time. You like,whatever they may be, you've got
a scorecard, you can say, butthis company does. And so if I'm
looking at my budget ofwhatever, a million bucks worth of
shoes to buy, am I going toallocate, how much am I allocating
(26:55):
to you? When you're 72 andsomebody else who's got a very similar
brand is a 94, I'm probablygoing to give them more. And that's
the Reality of how you startlooking at this, because it's, you
know, if you're scorecardingthe people, you're scorecarding your
best clients, right. Do theypay on time? Do they. Do they give
you hassles or not? Do theylove your product? Are they bought
(27:18):
in all this stuff? Or you'rescorecarding your team? Right, right.
Are they living up to theaccountability? Are they doing what
they said they're going to do?You know, do they have the capacity,
the capability, theconfidence, all of these things,
so that when it comes time tosit down with them and they're saying,
hey, I want more money, you'resaying, well, you know, here's all
this is what we need to do inorder to get the more money. Because
(27:39):
it doesn't work if we don'thave this happening. You've agreed
that part of the job ofgetting paid is that you're accountable
for these three things andyou're only doing two of them until
the third one's up, then wecan't give you more money. Or maybe
we have to do even worse thanthat. Right, Right. But, like, if
we're not scorecarding thingsin our process, if we're not, you
(27:59):
know, communicating to ourpartners, the people in our business,
whether they're clients, theirteam or suppliers, then it's very
hard to have a profitablebusiness that's going to stand the
test of time and hopefully oneday be at a point where you can sell
it for a tidy sum.
Right. You know, it's. Yeah,it's. That is just. It's so important
(28:23):
to have that and to create.And you're creating such a great
culture, you know, with whatyou're doing. And by creating, you
know, all around with, withyour team, the people, your clients,
your suppliers, I mean, thenwhen people look at the business,
(28:43):
they have a certain idea ofwhat, like a, A certain belief and
thought of the comp of the company.
If you, if you were, you know,putting a marketing plan together,
you should probably, you know,like, if you, if you wanted to do
a spread in a local newspaper,just say. Not saying that everybody's
doing newspaper these days,but just as an example, you'd probably
(29:05):
send the newspaper, your brandguides. And the brand guide says,
this is how to use my logo.This is the color we want, this is
the font we want, this is allthat stuff. And it's like I'm. I'm
giving them everything theyneed to represent me in this guide.
That's the process. We'vealready got this Process piece. Now
I'm going to hand it over. Andif they don't represent that properly,
(29:27):
then that's a problem. It'slike, I've got a reason. It's like,
I've got a reason not to paythat bill even, because it's like,
hey, I gave you the brandguide. What were you doing? What
were you thinking when youmade our logo purple when it's yellow?
Like, what's going on here?You know, so, but if we're not clear,
getting back to clarity,getting back to communication as
leaders, something like that,and we're not clear with our team
(29:51):
and we're not clear with ourclients, and we're not clear with
our outdoor suppliers, how canwe expect them to be accountable?
Just because we know what todo doesn't mean that they know what
to do. If I didn't give themthe brand catalog and they just came
up with that, like, what couldI say, right? Oh, well, you did the
best you could, I guess.Thanks. But. But if I'm laying it
(30:11):
out how it's supposed to beand they're not doing it that way,
now we've got something totalk about.
Right? That's. Yeah, that'sso, you know, I love that because,
you know, I love how your sixp's actually really come, really
help illuminate the entire,the, the biggest thing of all, which
(30:31):
is that communication piecewithin leadership. Because in leadership,
you, you know, as a leader,you have to be able to communicate
all of those things toyourself. You have to be able to
communicate it to your teamand you have to be able to communicate
it to your clients and as youlike, in your suppliers. So that
is so important. So, you know,not necessarily to switch gears,
(30:51):
but, but I, but I want toactually it kind of goes into the
whole idea of communicationbecause it's, it's a really big topic
and we, you, you, it's onsomething that you coach on and that
is the exit ready business.Right. And that's. And so communication
is a huge chunk of that.
(31:13):
It is.
Right. So, you know, so I'mcurious, how do you feel that cultivating
those Right. Relationships,advisors and peers and customers,
you know, play a role inpreparing for that successful exit?
Well, there's a couple oflittle things before that, I think.
(31:38):
Yeah. Yeah, probably, yes.
One is that, you know, I do alot of work with people. Not, I mean,
the business, that side of thebusiness called the exit ready business.
But ultimately it's notbecause you're ready to sell your
business. It's because youwant your business to be exit ready.
There's two different things.Maybe you do want to sell it, maybe
(31:58):
you are getting ready to sell,but your business should always be
exit ready. And the reason whyis, and I've seen this, and Jaclyn,
you probably have too. There'swhat we call the five Ds, and the
five Ds are death. Death willcause you to exit your business and
probably cause a lot ofproblems in your business if you
(32:20):
aren't exit ready and yourbusiness isn't exit ready. So premature
death has caused a lot ofproblems. Okay.
Yeah.
Two, Divorce.
Yeah.
With so many people gettingdivorced and, you know, the numbers
are sort of whatever you wantto call them. It depends on who's
playing stats, but. But let'sjust say one in two people getting
(32:41):
divorced. Divorce can causedramatic problems within the business.
And you may have to sell yourbusiness in order to rectify the
divorce. And if it's not exitready, you are both, both you and
your partner are going to loseon that deal. And that's not good.
(33:02):
Right. The next one isdisagreement. And if you have a partnership,
a partnership disagreement islike a divorce. It's the same sort
of thing. One day, one of youor both of you will exit the business.
Is it prepared? Do you havethe right documentation, the right
legalese? Do you have, do youhave your buyout clauses? Do you
have all of that stuff set up?Right. And then the next one is disability.
(33:28):
What happens? And I just had afriend of mine, in fact, my. One
of my store manager's husbandsjust had a heart attack, and he's
my age, 53, and had to haveopen heart surgery. Not even just
the stent, like they tore himapart. And because of the, the valve
issues that he had. And heworks a physical job and he's not
(33:52):
going to be able to work fornine months. Right. Are you ready
for being out of your businessfor nine months? Maybe it's cancer,
maybe it's a car accident. Theproverbial hit by the bus syndrome,
you know, on my way to bandpractice last night, I saw two car
accidents. Two car flip overswithin five mile radius. Very unusual
(34:14):
on a super hot day. That wouldbe more like in the slippy days of
winter when there's freezingrain. But I mean, stuff happens,
right? And I'm not saying wewant this to happen to you. I am
saying you do need to beready. And the last one is distress.
So we went through Covid.We're going through tariffs, we're
going through like all ofthese different things that are out
of our control distress issuesthat can cause major havoc on your
(34:38):
business. So 50% of thebusinesses out there exit because
the person wants to. The other50 exit because the person has to.
Right? Because one, yeah,there's a D that happens. Okay, so
I'm just going to share thiswith you. Like this is like, it's
like your, you know, it's yourinsurance plan.
(34:59):
It totally is. Totally is. Andyou know, the work that we do to
build the value in yourbusiness, which is the value building,
coaching side of things andwhatever that is, we're always working
to build the value in yourbusiness so that we can free you
up and get you out of beingthe cog of every decision and set
up the process, set up thepeople, set up all these things that
we've been talking abouttoday. Align the communication, the
(35:22):
process and the accountabilityin the leadership wing of everything
and have the 6Ps underneaththat. And then what we're doing really
is setting this up so that ifand when you are ready now, it becomes
a choice. If and when you areready to exit your business, you
can. And a lot of the timeswhen people say I want to exit my
(35:43):
business, it's because they'retired of doing whatever it is they
don't want to do anymore. Idon't want to do the sales anymore.
Maybe I don't want to cleanthe toilets anymore, maybe I don't
want to sell the shoesanymore. Whatever the case is, you
just don't want to do thatanymore. But if we align and assign
the accountability, if we workall this stuff through, we get everything
in an organized, functionalway so that anybody who's looking
at this business, includingbankers, if you want to expand the
(36:06):
business, because just likeexiting a business, we need to do
the same work in order to getthe business ready for expansion.
That's the value building sideof things. Right? I'm going to open
another location, I'm going tomove to a new city. I'm going to
whatever the case is. We stillneed to build this structure, same
thing, so that we're not therebecause we can't be in two cities
at once. We can't open twodoors at once. We can't be on two
(36:28):
zoom calls at once. There doesneed to be process and other people
and other things involved sothat we can grow this business, but
that's also when it's mostvaluable. So then we building this
up. And at the end of the day,I've literally had clients that say,
listen this is a good,profitable business. I am actually
loving what I'm doing in mybusiness now. I work what I want
to work when I want to workwithin my business. Other people
(36:51):
are doing what I always hateddoing, and I'm going to keep it for
another five years because,like, why would I get rid of it?
The reason I wanted out of itwas because I wanted more time or
I wanted whatever they wanted.It doesn't matter there. It's all
unique to the individualperson. But if we can give them that
back, then they can make thechoice as to when they want to, as
opposed to when they have to.
(37:12):
Right? That is so important.You know, Pete, I could talk to you
for hours about all of this.You have a wealth of information
and a wealth of knowledge andlisteners. I think you need to connect
with Pete and. And, you know,take his Colby test. Like, get this
assessment. Not test, notassessment. Have the assessment done.
Get, you know, you know, jumpin and what he's, you know, he wrote
(37:38):
the book on the. The five P'sand is adding the six. You really
need to get that. It's reallyimportant what you are offering and
what you're sharing. So, Pete,tell us how people can connect with
you.
Best way is just go to my mainsite, which is pete-mooremohr so
pete-mooremohr.com underneaththat, you can get to the Colby coach
(38:02):
and understand that or theExitReady business and take the value
builder assessment, which isgoing to help understand what you
need to do in order to getexit ready. And I think that's probably
a really good spot to startfor any business owners on the Colby
side, always love chatting andoverlaying Colby on executive teams
and on your team and helpingyou understand right fit hiring,
which we were talking about,and using Colby as part of the hiring
(38:25):
process or part of thecommunication process, or if you
just want to build the valuein your business and you just need
to have somebody to shoot thebreeze about, you can always go to
speaktopeat.com and I'm happyto chat with you for free for half
an hour, and we can just kindof toss around a few ideas and see
if we're a right fit.
Oh, that is absolutelyfantastic. So, listeners, I'm sure
you've gotten a lot of valueout of this. I know I have. So please
(38:47):
do me a favor. Connect withPete, go to a site, and then do me
the other favor and hitsubscribe. And then the third favor
is actually to take thisepisode and share it with your friends,
your business colleagues,because this is so important. I mean,
like, the whole the entireexit strategy is so important. And
having a plan, like I said,it's your insurance plan for your
(39:07):
business. And having all thoseP's aligned is going to help you
have an amazing businessculture to help you have growth in
that business. So I'm JaclynStranger, your host. Thank you all
for listening. And again,Pete, thank you so much for being
an amazing guest.
Thanks for having me, Jaclyn.Make it a great day.
Thanks.
Well, hello, everybody, andwelcome to another great episode
of Leap to Be Unstoppablepodcast. I am your host, Jaclyn Strominger,
and today I am so excited towelcome to the show. We have a great
guest, Peter Mohr. And let metell you a little bit about Peter.
He is a business coach andexit strategist and a Colby certified
(01:04):
coach. And honestly, it'sreally cool stuff. And he helps owners
coach, cut through the chaos,align their teams and create turnkey
businesses, businesses thatthrive without them. And he gets,
he really helps peoplespecialize in that exit readiness
and value building, which isso important. So we're going to have
(01:24):
a great conversation todayabout his businesses and leadership
and learning a lot more aboutwhat he has to offer. So welcome,
Pete, to the show.
Oh, thanks so much for havingme. I am excited to be here and I'm
excited to be with thelisteners. I mean, it's. That's why
we're here, right, Jaclyn?
Right. That's why we're here.So, Pete, you know, you know, you're,
(01:45):
you know, I was looking atyour profile and what you do. You
obviously have your own brickand mortar business also online.
You also have your coachingbusiness and which is business executive.
And then you also have, like,exit strategy, which is somewhat
overlap, but.
Yep.
So first and foremost, youknow, you're a business owner. How
(02:11):
are you managing all of thatand leading? You don't. I'm, I'm.
Surely you're not doing thisall on your own. So how do you lead
your team.
These days? I'm leading myteam pretty much virtually. You know,
I do have face to facemeetings, whether it's here on Zoom
(02:33):
or whatever the case is,sometimes in store as well. Lots
of different ways. But, youknow, I've been in business a long
time now, Jaclyn. It's, it'skind of crazy, but I'm in my 31st
year of being a businessowner. I started young, I was 23,
got my first business rollingand, you know, had, have built businesses
(02:54):
along the way. Built them,sold them. I've defranchised, I've
franchised. I've, you know,helped people buy and sell the business
you were just talking about.We currently own two shoe stores
and they're called Shoe Topiahere in Canada. And how do I run
those? Well, basically, I runthem through a lens that I created
(03:15):
several years ago and I wrotea little book on it. And the idea
behind that is that I'm goingto give you the five P's that are
in the book and I've addedanother P since I wrote the book.
But. But this. This idea hereis how I. How I run everything. And
it's understand your promise.Align your products, your process,
(03:36):
and your people to it so thatyou can have the right amount of
profit. And the one other Pthat I didn't have that I keep getting
asked about, so we've sort ofadded it after the book is promotion,
so, you know, we need topromote it. Right? So just. And I'm
not going to. I know the wholepodcast isn't around this structure,
but I'll dig a little bitdeeper into those six P.S. just so
(03:58):
everybody, a framework ofwhere I'm coming at in our conversation.
So the promise is not yourmission. It's not your sort of vision.
The promise is what you shoutout at the top of the mountain to
all of the people that willlisten to you. It's what you do for
your client. It's how you takethem from their pain to their game.
(04:19):
And when we think about that,I'll use my shoe store as an example.
Our promise is to help ourclients look great and feel fantastic.
And if you think about a shoestore and you're walking in the shoe,
what are you thinking aboutdoing? Well, I got to look good for
the event, or I got it, youknow, whatever. Or I got to feel
good at work every day becauseI'm on my feet 12 hours a day. And
you know what? All of thesedifferent things. So what we want
(04:42):
to do at Shootopia every timesomebody enters the door is we want
to help them look great andfeel fantastic. So that's where it
kind of starts. And how do wedo that? We build that by saying
ooh, ah and aha, which is wehave process getting back to one
of the other P's that takespeople from, you know, proper greeting
and all this other stuff as weget in, but as we get them to actually
(05:05):
try on the shoes and they. Andthen we're like, let's go to the
mirror. And what does it. Whatdo you think the questions are? Well,
it's like, how do they look?And you're like, ooh, I look pretty
good. And we're thinking,okay, how do you feel? Ooh is one
of our key words. We need tohear the ooh, right? So we know we
got the look good. The nextone is how do they feel? And then
they close their eyes andthey're going, ah. Those feel fantastic.
(05:30):
Look good. Feel fantastic.We've given them the next three letters,
which is aha. So with ooh ahand aha, we've hit the emotions of
look great and feel fantasticthrough the process, through the
product, so that we can thenpromote these things, thinking about
all of those expressions andall those different things with each
individual product in order todrive the right amount of profit
(05:52):
in the store. And so that's ashoe store. And for anybody listening
here, whatever your journeyis, your customer journey is, we
have to start framing this upin these ways. Is your promise still
relevant? A lot of people havebeen in business 10, 20, 30 years.
You know, what you did 20 or30 years ago may not be as relevant
as it was. Have you updated?Have you looked at these things?
(06:15):
Do people still care? I seethat a lot with my coaching clients.
It's like, okay, well, thispromise is 30 years old. People,
you know, don't have a faxmachine anymore or something like
that. Right? Like, things change.
Right? And it's. I like thattoo, because it's actually your.
Your promise is going toevolve as you evolve. And it's, you
(06:38):
know, I know it's not yourmission or your vision, but it's.
But that promise is. Is inthere. And those things are fluid.
They're not. It's not like youchisel it in stone, put it on a beautiful
rock outside your door andforget about. Has to change and evolve
with as. As time change, asyour customer changes, as your business
(07:02):
evolves. It's.
It's the bedrock of everydecision you make. So if you think
about that flipping and, And Ilike to use the shoe store example,
because everybody buys shoes.Everybody's bought a pair of shoes,
right? So the idea here now isthat if I, if. And I invert these
when I have it in a graphical,the promise is actually at the bottom
(07:24):
of the stack graph becauseit's the actual bedrock of everything.
Everything is stacked on topof that. If you think of the foundation
of your house, the promise isthe foundation. So next we have the
product, or if you're in theservice business, it's going to be
service, right? So what's theproduct? Does it align with your
(07:44):
promise? If it doesn't align,it has no part of being part of your
product offering anymore. Andso many people will say, well, we've
always done that. I've alwaysfixed fax machines, for example,
but nobody cares anymore.Like, nobody even has a fax. So whether
you've always done it, is itstill relevant? No. So in. In the
shoe store, maybe it's a line,maybe it's a brand, maybe it's a
(08:06):
department. We got rid of kidsshoes in our shoe stores because
it wasn't profitable enoughfor us. When we look at the overall
amount of. Of space in thestore for the square footage it was
taking, it wasn't generatingthe profit. We had to lose that area.
And did it affect our promise?It did. We're not promising to. To
fit those kids anymore. Right.And we're not going to promote that
(08:26):
anymore. And our processdoesn't involve kids shoes anymore.
So that all has to changebecause of the decision that we made
around the fact that it's notprofitable. So all of these things,
like, they interweave intoevery decision that you make. And
having the clear understandingof what the promise is is where it
all blends in. So the processneeded to change. In that case, when
(08:50):
we actually decided to exitkids shoes, our promise did change.
We're still helping peoplelook great and feel fantastic. But
there's other derivatives ofpromise that you might have, right.
Like in your marketing and thevariety of different things. So we
had to clean up that language,we had to clean up the website, we
had to clean up a variety ofdifferent. And then we had to let
our customers know about it.Right. And so all of these things,
(09:14):
even the people side ofthings, so the people's always the
big one. Right. So we haveprocess and people and a lot of small
business owners really have ahard time with getting the stuff
out of their head and intoprocess so that other people can
take accountability. Andaccountability is a big part of leadership.
And this is a leadershippodcast, right? So, you know, if.
(09:36):
If we can't get the stuff outof our heads and into some sort of
format that's going to allowothers to do the tasks that we're
asking them to do so that wedon't have to worry about them and
micromanage them, then we'renot great leaders. And we need to
then align and assign theaccountability to the right people
with the right culture whounderstand the promise, who live
(09:57):
the promise, so that they canbe making the decision in alignment
with the promise so that wecan work this through, promote it
properly, and drive the rightamount of profit. Because getting
back to the exit plan things,the first thing that people will
look at if you ever do want tosell your business down the road
is, is this a profitable business?
Right, Right. So you'vetouched on quite a few things. And.
(10:19):
And I'm going to kind of goback a couple things. So something
that you said, and I. And Iwant to bring this out. It's not
ne. It's part of the peopleportion of it, in a sense. But something
that you said. There's a fewthings you said that struck me, but
something that you said reallyI think is extra important. You said,
(10:40):
you know, it's. When somebodywalks in the door, it's even. It's
down to as small as how arethey greeted, for sure. And that's
a part of the people. Theemployee. You're as. And I hate the
word employees. I've said thata thousand times. They're part of
your tribe.
They're your team. Same thing. Yeah.
My team members. The wordemployee just seems.
(11:00):
Yeah, I agree. We use team.
Yeah.
Yep.
They're your team members.Right. How do you disseminate this
messaging to your people sothat they're providing and capturing
(11:23):
the essence of what you'redoing? And that prom. And. And part
of that promise. Right. Theyget the ooh, ah, aha.
Yeah. It's not easy.
That's why I'm asking.Because. And I'll share it. Because
when you think about it, atthe end of the day, every business.
There are so many businessesout there that I don't want to say
(11:48):
they forget about the customeror that. That, you know, some. Some
do it really well and some doit horrible. Right.
Yeah.
Or just. Or, you know, or somepeople do it great within a company
and some people don't. Andthose that don't obviously have a
bigger impact on those thatcan have a bigger. Bigger impact
on those that do. It's right.It's like the bad experience that
(12:09):
you have. So how do we createno bad experiences or.
Well, we have bad experiencesat Utopia. You know, we do. And.
And we do our very best to.And we have a process to clean those
up as well, you know, butnothing's perfect. I think ultimately
it begins with a leadershipculture of holding people accountable.
(12:33):
And we need to have process inplace. Again, getting back to process,
and before we hopped on, Imentioned that I'm a Colby coach,
and Colby really is veryhelpful in understanding how people
deal with communication, factsand figures systems. Are they okay
with change? Are they not okaywith change? All of these different
(12:55):
things. Because people learndifferently than the business owner.
So taking that back toprocess, if I was talking about how
do we greet somebody at thedoor? We have onboarding training
that really tells people inwritten language because some people
like to read, some people likechecklists. Some people would prefer
to watch a video or somepeople would prefer to listen to
(13:18):
it because they're auditory.So Almost all of the process that
we have in place has manydifferent ways of absorbing the information
for the listener or for thereader or for the watcher. Because
as leaders, we need to providethe information in a way that they
can absorb it and most want toabsorb it. And if we're asking somebody
(13:40):
to read a 30 page document,but they are an auditory or a visual
learner, that's a real problem.
Right.
Yet we're expecting it becausemaybe we're, we like 30 page documents.
Well, that's not good enough.And you're wondering why these people
aren't doing, you're sayingyou never do what it says in the
document. Like go to thedocument. And they're like, well,
(14:00):
you know, they're thinking,they may not be saying to you, but
they're thinking, I'm notgoing to read 30 pages on this stuff.
Why don't you just do me avideo? Technology today allows us
to do this stuff so quickly.We could do and one of the best things
that we use, and I mean, I'mtool agnostic, but we do have tools
that we use that make lifeeasier currently and they'll change
(14:23):
as we as this podcast ages.But things like Loom, for example,
L O O M a wonderful digitaltool that you can just track your
mouse and go around thesedifferent things and you can just
point to the different areasand saying, go here, do this, go
that. And you're talking thisout at the same time, it's transcribing
it for somebody that wants toread it, pop it into something like
(14:45):
Chat GPT and you say, can youdo me a checklist on this as well?
Well, that would have taken useven three years ago. Yeah, like
a half day to do that. And nowyou can literally knock it off almost
as quickly as you can speak it.
Right. By the way, I just haveto share. Do you know that. Not that
I'm a, not that I'm a sellerof Zoom, but Zoom has that feature
(15:06):
now too.
Yeah, for sure. So, you know,there's like I said, tons of them.
There's tons.
They're just endless. Right.And you know, I'm not saying ChatGPT
is the right one either.There's perplexity, there's. I mean,
there's just so manydifferent, different things. Right.
The idea here is that there'sno excuse to not have your process
in many different formatsthese days because the tools are
(15:27):
so easy to use, they're souser friendly and you can provide
this to the people on yourteam in many different Formats so
that you can get the stuff done.
Right.
And that's what we need asbusiness owners, as leaders. We need
the stuff to be done,hopefully without you being involved
in every decision. Right. Andas we climb that sort of accountability
(15:49):
chart and have other peopleworking for us, we want to ensure.
And like I said, do thingshappen at Utopia? Sure, they happen
at Utopia, but, you know,ultimately we're hoping that 98%
of the time they don't,because we have good process in place.
We have people that areaccountable for understanding what
needs to happen, not just me.Why can I work only one or two days
a week, give or take, on anaverage week within the two stores?
(16:12):
Because I have good people inplace, good accountability. We have
good process, and people knowwhat to do and how to do it. And
that's the culture of the kindof business that we run.
And a key thing that you justsaid, too, I think that's also really
important is it's thataccountability piece and knowing
that you've got the goodpeople in place and what's underlying
in there is trust. You trustthe people that you have, so that.
(16:37):
And you empower those peoplethrough the accountability to do
the work. Because at the endof the day, people want to be able
to think for themselves. Theydon't like the micromanagement. They
want to have that, like thatfeeling of. Of autonomy.
If they're the right fit, ifthey're the right cultural fit, they
(16:59):
will want to make decisionsfor. And with you, keyword this.
The right cultural fit. So,right. In your process too, in. In
bringing on people.
Yeah.
You know, if you're listeningto leaders and you're taught and
leaders are listening andyou're thinking, like, how do you
grow that team? How do you.What are the tools that you use to
(17:20):
make sure you've got the rightculture in people?
Well, I mean, it starts reallyon how you send out that ad. You
know, how are you sending outthe ad? What's the language in the.
In the ad that you're puttingout there for whatever position that
you're hiring for? I mean,that's their first general, their
first interaction. If they'venever been into your business before
(17:41):
and they know nothing aboutyour business, they're going to see
this ad, and now they're goingto go look at your website and they're
going to. You got to thinkabout the journey. Right. And so,
you know, just like a customerjourney, we're thinking about the
employee journey or thepotential team member journey. As.
As we're Attracting, just likewe'd be attracting a client, we're
going to now attract a teammember. And so having language that
(18:06):
understands the kind ofbusiness that we run, the culture
that we run, the fact thatwe're small town sort of stores and,
and we like to offer serviceand we're okay with having a chat.
And it's not just an in n outand a variety of different things
around creating a family likeatmosphere. I help people do what
they're called their heartmodels for their business. And so
(18:28):
we have a heart model. It's,you know, it's got the five Ps in
it, of course, but indirectlyit's got all these different things
of we share our heart modelwith, you know, with them right off
the bat so that theyunderstand this is what you, this
is what it's going to be liketo work here. And usually they'll
almost always either love thator that's where it ends. And that's
(18:52):
okay. Like, we're okay to letpeople go that aren't going to be
right fit before we even haveinterview one. So we want to be very
clear in our language aroundthat sort of stuff. When we do have
the first interview, we haveanother set of very clear language
and we want to go through avariety of different things. And
then we put them through theColby test, which the, the Colby
A assessment, which I'm aColby coach, so obviously we use
(19:14):
it within our own business aswell. It's one of the only assessments
that can be used as part ofthe hiring process because it's got
nothing to do with yourpreferences, which are sort of frowned
upon as far as hiringprocedures these days. But Colby
is still perfectly good to useas part of the hiring procedure.
So we're going to look and seeif their Colby A aligns with the
(19:35):
Colby description that we'relooking for for that particular position
so that we can see if there'sgoing to be some issues going into
question two. We'll take alook at their Colby. We'll take a
look at any of the areas, gapsessentially, that we want to dig
into on, on our secondassessment. If they pass that second
interview, then we ask them tocome in for a working interview.
(19:58):
We want them to work with us.Sometimes that happens, like literally
the minute after the secondinterview ends, it's like, hey, have
you got a couple of hours? Andyou can just stay and work with us
and see what it's like. Youcan see what we're like, we can see
what you're like. And Then Icall that Discovery Day. So I've
been doing Discovery Day.Years ago, I used to have a bathroom
(20:19):
cleaning business. Andeverybody says, oh, I don't mind
cleaning toilets. I mean, Ican tell you I've cleaned more toilets
and urinals. Urinals than youwould ever imagine in your entire
life. My first 15 years ofbusiness. But you know, they're like,
oh yeah, no problem. I, I gotit, I got it. And I'm like, we start
at 5:30 in the morning. Yep,no problem, no problem. I, I, I like
the idea of starting early andbeing done early. Okay, so your working
(20:41):
interview starts tomorrowmorning at 5:30. And then they would
show up at like quarter to sixand wonder why I wasn't there. And
I'm like, I told you we startat 5:30. Like we start at 5:30. Yeah,
but 5:30 is pretty early.Well, that's what time we start.
Like you've, you failed onDiscovery Day, so you're not the
right fit. You know, so how dowe work out some of these things?
And then it's like, okay, wellsometimes they would get there and
(21:04):
they would say, oh, I didn'trealize I was going to be on my hands
and knees all the time. It'slike, yeah, you're cleaning toilets
and urinals. You're going tobe on your knees almost all day long.
Oh, well, that's not what Iexpected. Okay, well then it's not
the right fit. So that's whywe call it Discovery Day. It happens
really quick and we can make adecision. They may choose not to
stay with us or we may askthem not to stay with us after that
(21:26):
Discovery Day. And it, it, youknow how much money is wasted after
two weeks or four weeks or twomonths of hiring somebody and knowing
they're really not the rightfit all along when this could have
been dealt with before youeven put them on payroll.
You know, it's a, the hiringissue and, and placement. It is a,
at least I know in the Statesit's like a $43 trillion issue where
(21:50):
people actually, and, and I'mnot even talking worldwide, I hear
so I love that because, youknow, we, we talk a lot and I, and
I sometimes feel like I talkabout this till I'm blue in the face
is that not everybody is theright fit for your company. They
might be great on paper, butyou have to have, and you share this.
(22:11):
There are certain questionsyou have to have key questions to
ask people to reallyunderstand their key values, as I
call it, their Achievementcode. Like what do they live by,
how do they operate? And if,if they're not aligned, they don't
have to be exactly like you,but they have to be enough in alignment
(22:34):
with how they operate andtheir beliefs and how they put out
into the universe basicallyinto the world that if it's not the
right fit, they should not beon your team. They, you know, and
that's where it might be rightto say, you know what, you're not
right for our company, but Iknow another company that might be
(22:56):
better for you.
For sure. And we've done thatin the past. For sure. We have. And
I think, you know, that peopleportion is interesting. It's the
fourth P of the P list there.And so when I think about the alignment
of people, it's so, so vital,right? You can have all the process,
all the product, you can evenhave the promise aligned. But if
(23:18):
the people aren't there,you've got no business because the
right people are. I break themdown into three different categories.
One is your ideal client,which I'm sure everybody's done,
at least I hope everybody'sdone their homework on. And then
two is your ideal teammate,which we're talking about here, right?
And what's the processinvolved in bringing on the ideal
teammate? Or maybe what's theprocess in training them and onboarding
(23:41):
them? Or maybe what's theprocess in, in paying them and, you
know, working through that? Ormaybe what's the process in letting
them go? You know, all ofthese things we need to look at.
But the third one, which a lotof people don't think about that
much, are any of yoursuppliers, are your suppliers aligned
(24:01):
with your promise? And if theyaren't, is there someone else who's
a better supplier that'scapable of taking that? Because if
they aren't aligned with yourpromise, just like a bad employee
or just like a bad client,they can suck every living juice
out of you and a lot of moneyout of you and take up all of your
time so that you don't havetime for your best clients, your
(24:24):
best teammates and your bestsuppliers. And so we need to be actively
working on bringing on bettersuppliers every single day as whatever,
whatever business you arethere, you have outsourced suppliers.
Maybe it's a marketingcompany, maybe it's a bookkeeping
company, maybe it's a, a shoecompany that you're buying shoes
from. Whatever the case is,everybody's dealing with outsourced
(24:45):
suppliers, or are they alignedwith your promise? Do they even know
what Your promise is, have youever even shared it with them? If
they're true partners withyou, they should know what you're
working towards and theyshould know when they're suggesting
products that they have intheir bag of tricks that, that it
should align with your promiseso that they can help you deliver
your promise so that you canget paid, so you can pay them.
(25:07):
Right. You know, keeping youjust, you just said is shared, right?
I mean it is like sharing thatpromise. It's, it's something that
needs to be done and done. Sohow often do you share that promise,
like with your team and yourclients and your suppliers?
(25:29):
Yeah, well, I mean on mypodcast and on all the things I do
from a coaching side ofthings, I share my promise every
day. From Shootopia, theShootopia side of things. It's an
interesting thing. We havewhat I call a supplier scorecard
that we've developed and Istrongly suggest everybody do one
(25:50):
for whoever are theirsuppliers. And it goes through our
sort of our guidingprinciples. It goes and it and it,
and it actually lays it out ina 12 step process. Does this person
align with what we're doing?Do they provide what we need? Are
they on time? Are their peoplegood? Is the price right? Like a
bunch of different things. Andthen we'll take that when we go to
(26:11):
do our buys and we'll say,hey, listen, you're 73% and I don't
do it with every supplierbecause, you know, quite honestly,
the really good suppliers youalready know. And it's like, I don't
even need to show you this. Wealready have the best relationship
ever. If you want to see it,I've got it. But you know, it's more
about the ones that are alwaystelling you, why don't you give us
more business? Why don't yougive us more business? Like, what's
(26:33):
going on here? You should be,you know, you should be. Everybody
else gives us more business.How come you don't? It's like, well,
because you don't look afteryour returns, you never ship us the
stuff on time. You like,whatever they may be, you've got
a scorecard, you can say, butthis company does. And so if I'm
looking at my budget ofwhatever, a million bucks worth of
shoes to buy, am I going toallocate, how much am I allocating
(26:55):
to you? When you're 72 andsomebody else who's got a very similar
brand is a 94, I'm probablygoing to give them more. And that's
the Reality of how you startlooking at this, because it's, you
know, if you're scorecardingthe people, you're scorecarding your
best clients, right. Do theypay on time? Do they. Do they give
you hassles or not? Do theylove your product? Are they bought
(27:18):
in all this stuff? Or you'rescorecarding your team? Right, right.
Are they living up to theaccountability? Are they doing what
they said they're going to do?You know, do they have the capacity,
the capability, theconfidence, all of these things,
so that when it comes time tosit down with them and they're saying,
hey, I want more money, you'resaying, well, you know, here's all
this is what we need to do inorder to get the more money. Because
(27:39):
it doesn't work if we don'thave this happening. You've agreed
that part of the job ofgetting paid is that you're accountable
for these three things andyou're only doing two of them until
the third one's up, then wecan't give you more money. Or maybe
we have to do even worse thanthat. Right, Right. But, like, if
we're not scorecarding thingsin our process, if we're not, you
(27:59):
know, communicating to ourpartners, the people in our business,
whether they're clients, theirteam or suppliers, then it's very
hard to have a profitablebusiness that's going to stand the
test of time and hopefully oneday be at a point where you can sell
it for a tidy sum.
Right. You know, it's. Yeah,it's. That is just. It's so important
(28:23):
to have that and to create.And you're creating such a great
culture, you know, with whatyou're doing. And by creating, you
know, all around with, withyour team, the people, your clients,
your suppliers, I mean, thenwhen people look at the business,
(28:43):
they have a certain idea ofwhat, like a, A certain belief and
thought of the comp of the company.
If you, if you were, you know,putting a marketing plan together,
you should probably, you know,like, if you, if you wanted to do
a spread in a local newspaper,just say. Not saying that everybody's
doing newspaper these days,but just as an example, you'd probably
(29:05):
send the newspaper, your brandguides. And the brand guide says,
this is how to use my logo.This is the color we want, this is
the font we want, this is allthat stuff. And it's like I'm. I'm
giving them everything theyneed to represent me in this guide.
That's the process. We'vealready got this Process piece. Now
I'm going to hand it over. Andif they don't represent that properly,
(29:27):
then that's a problem. It'slike, I've got a reason. It's like,
I've got a reason not to paythat bill even, because it's like,
hey, I gave you the brandguide. What were you doing? What
were you thinking when youmade our logo purple when it's yellow?
Like, what's going on here?You know, so, but if we're not clear,
getting back to clarity,getting back to communication as
leaders, something like that,and we're not clear with our team
(29:51):
and we're not clear with ourclients, and we're not clear with
our outdoor suppliers, how canwe expect them to be accountable?
Just because we know what todo doesn't mean that they know what
to do. If I didn't give themthe brand catalog and they just came
up with that, like, what couldI say, right? Oh, well, you did the
best you could, I guess.Thanks. But. But if I'm laying it
(30:11):
out how it's supposed to beand they're not doing it that way,
now we've got something totalk about.
Right? That's. Yeah, that'sso, you know, I love that because,
you know, I love how your sixp's actually really come, really
help illuminate the entire,the, the biggest thing of all, which
(30:31):
is that communication piecewithin leadership. Because in leadership,
you, you know, as a leader,you have to be able to communicate
all of those things toyourself. You have to be able to
communicate it to your teamand you have to be able to communicate
it to your clients and as youlike, in your suppliers. So that
is so important. So, you know,not necessarily to switch gears,
(30:51):
but, but I, but I want toactually it kind of goes into the
whole idea of communicationbecause it's, it's a really big topic
and we, you, you, it's onsomething that you coach on and that
is the exit ready business.Right. And that's. And so communication
is a huge chunk of that.
(31:13):
It is.
Right. So, you know, so I'mcurious, how do you feel that cultivating
those Right. Relationships,advisors and peers and customers,
you know, play a role inpreparing for that successful exit?
Well, there's a couple oflittle things before that, I think.
(31:38):
Yeah. Yeah, probably, yes.
One is that, you know, I do alot of work with people. Not, I mean,
the business, that side of thebusiness called the exit ready business.
But ultimately it's notbecause you're ready to sell your
business. It's because youwant your business to be exit ready.
There's two different things.Maybe you do want to sell it, maybe
(31:58):
you are getting ready to sell,but your business should always be
exit ready. And the reason whyis, and I've seen this, and Jaclyn,
you probably have too. There'swhat we call the five Ds, and the
five Ds are death. Death willcause you to exit your business and
probably cause a lot ofproblems in your business if you
(32:20):
aren't exit ready and yourbusiness isn't exit ready. So premature
death has caused a lot ofproblems. Okay.
Yeah.
Two, Divorce.
Yeah.
With so many people gettingdivorced and, you know, the numbers
are sort of whatever you wantto call them. It depends on who's
playing stats, but. But let'sjust say one in two people getting
(32:41):
divorced. Divorce can causedramatic problems within the business.
And you may have to sell yourbusiness in order to rectify the
divorce. And if it's not exitready, you are both, both you and
your partner are going to loseon that deal. And that's not good.
(33:02):
Right. The next one isdisagreement. And if you have a partnership,
a partnership disagreement islike a divorce. It's the same sort
of thing. One day, one of youor both of you will exit the business.
Is it prepared? Do you havethe right documentation, the right
legalese? Do you have, do youhave your buyout clauses? Do you
have all of that stuff set up?Right. And then the next one is disability.
(33:28):
What happens? And I just had afriend of mine, in fact, my. One
of my store manager's husbandsjust had a heart attack, and he's
my age, 53, and had to haveopen heart surgery. Not even just
the stent, like they tore himapart. And because of the, the valve
issues that he had. And heworks a physical job and he's not
(33:52):
going to be able to work fornine months. Right. Are you ready
for being out of your businessfor nine months? Maybe it's cancer,
maybe it's a car accident. Theproverbial hit by the bus syndrome,
you know, on my way to bandpractice last night, I saw two car
accidents. Two car flip overswithin five mile radius. Very unusual
(34:14):
on a super hot day. That wouldbe more like in the slippy days of
winter when there's freezingrain. But I mean, stuff happens,
right? And I'm not saying wewant this to happen to you. I am
saying you do need to beready. And the last one is distress.
So we went through Covid.We're going through tariffs, we're
going through like all ofthese different things that are out
of our control distress issuesthat can cause major havoc on your
(34:38):
business. So 50% of thebusinesses out there exit because
the person wants to. The other50 exit because the person has to.
Right? Because one, yeah,there's a D that happens. Okay, so
I'm just going to share thiswith you. Like this is like, it's
like your, you know, it's yourinsurance plan.
(34:59):
It totally is. Totally is. Andyou know, the work that we do to
build the value in yourbusiness, which is the value building,
coaching side of things andwhatever that is, we're always working
to build the value in yourbusiness so that we can free you
up and get you out of beingthe cog of every decision and set
up the process, set up thepeople, set up all these things that
we've been talking abouttoday. Align the communication, the
(35:22):
process and the accountabilityin the leadership wing of everything
and have the 6Ps underneaththat. And then what we're doing really
is setting this up so that ifand when you are ready now, it becomes
a choice. If and when you areready to exit your business, you
can. And a lot of the timeswhen people say I want to exit my
(35:43):
business, it's because they'retired of doing whatever it is they
don't want to do anymore. Idon't want to do the sales anymore.
Maybe I don't want to cleanthe toilets anymore, maybe I don't
want to sell the shoesanymore. Whatever the case is, you
just don't want to do thatanymore. But if we align and assign
the accountability, if we workall this stuff through, we get everything
in an organized, functionalway so that anybody who's looking
at this business, includingbankers, if you want to expand the
(36:06):
business, because just likeexiting a business, we need to do
the same work in order to getthe business ready for expansion.
That's the value building sideof things. Right? I'm going to open
another location, I'm going tomove to a new city. I'm going to
whatever the case is. We stillneed to build this structure, same
thing, so that we're not therebecause we can't be in two cities
at once. We can't open twodoors at once. We can't be on two
(36:28):
zoom calls at once. There doesneed to be process and other people
and other things involved sothat we can grow this business, but
that's also when it's mostvaluable. So then we building this
up. And at the end of the day,I've literally had clients that say,
listen this is a good,profitable business. I am actually
loving what I'm doing in mybusiness now. I work what I want
to work when I want to workwithin my business. Other people
(36:51):
are doing what I always hateddoing, and I'm going to keep it for
another five years because,like, why would I get rid of it?
The reason I wanted out of itwas because I wanted more time or
I wanted whatever they wanted.It doesn't matter there. It's all
unique to the individualperson. But if we can give them that
back, then they can make thechoice as to when they want to, as
opposed to when they have to.
(37:12):
Right? That is so important.You know, Pete, I could talk to you
for hours about all of this.You have a wealth of information
and a wealth of knowledge andlisteners. I think you need to connect
with Pete and. And, you know,take his Colby test. Like, get this
assessment. Not test, notassessment. Have the assessment done.
Get, you know, you know, jumpin and what he's, you know, he wrote
(37:38):
the book on the. The five P'sand is adding the six. You really
need to get that. It's reallyimportant what you are offering and
what you're sharing. So, Pete,tell us how people can connect with
you.
Best way is just go to my mainsite, which is pete-mooremohr so
pete-mooremohr.com underneaththat, you can get to the Colby coach
(38:02):
and understand that or theExitReady business and take the value
builder assessment, which isgoing to help understand what you
need to do in order to getexit ready. And I think that's probably
a really good spot to startfor any business owners on the Colby
side, always love chatting andoverlaying Colby on executive teams
and on your team and helpingyou understand right fit hiring,
which we were talking about,and using Colby as part of the hiring
(38:25):
process or part of thecommunication process, or if you
just want to build the valuein your business and you just need
to have somebody to shoot thebreeze about, you can always go to
speaktopeat.com and I'm happyto chat with you for free for half
an hour, and we can just kindof toss around a few ideas and see
if we're a right fit.
Oh, that is absolutelyfantastic. So, listeners, I'm sure
you've gotten a lot of valueout of this. I know I have. So please
(38:47):
do me a favor. Connect withPete, go to a site, and then do me
the other favor and hitsubscribe. And then the third favor
is actually to take thisepisode and share it with your friends,
your business colleagues,because this is so important. I mean,
like, the whole the entireexit strategy is so important. And
having a plan, like I said,it's your insurance plan for your
(39:07):
business. And having all thoseP's aligned is going to help you
have an amazing businessculture to help you have growth in
that business. So I'm JaclynStranger, your host. Thank you all
for listening. And again,Pete, thank you so much for being
an amazing guest.
Thanks for having me, Jaclyn.Make it a great day.
Thanks.
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