Boss Your Business - The Podcast

[00:00:00] Yvonne Heimann: Hello, and welcome back to another episode of Boss Your Business. And today I have as my guest here, Pete, which you, you might bring up a whole bunch of memories. My late husband was called Pete. So if I make funny faces in between, because I see some connections, it's not you. It's me. I am one of those people that makes connections with everything.

[00:00:25] For you guys listening, watching, or even reading, Pete leverages a range of frameworks to assist business owners in converting their challenges into opportunities. Freeing them from the chaos and stress of managing a business. So, you know, I had to have him on guys, you know me, right. With a wealth of experience as a business owner spending 29 years, he has honed his expertise, tips, tools, and techniques in both the service and retail industry.

[00:00:57] His key goal is to aid [00:01:00] leaders in transitioning from business operators to business owners. And we're going to dive deep into this one, because that's a passion of mine. It is time to embrace frameworks that enable you to create a turn key business and the life you truly desire. Now, Pete, I'm going to dive right in here, because I love the combination of you and frameworks.

[00:01:30] That has been quite a topic and a thing in my realm lately, because you work with personality profiles, you were co-certified and all the things. Yet, you also talk frameworks, which I love, because it means we are taking frameworks and we are personalizing it. Am I seeing this right?

[00:01:54] Pete Mohr: Yeah, absolutely. Thanks so much for having me on the podcast today, Yvonne. [00:02:00] Looking forward to the conversation and frameworks are such a big part of what I do. And, you know, it all started years and years ago. As you had mentioned, I've been a business owner for a long time. And so I use a lot of these frameworks in my own businesses.

[00:02:15] And, I've started, you know, people started saying, well, how do you look at this? And how do you see this? And this kind of stuff? So I ended up creating a whole, so I'll call it a library of tools, and essentially I have all these different frameworks that I can, sort of, pull their, pull in, and pull out, depending on whatever strategy or whatever we're talking about, whether it be marketing, whether it be operations, whether it be one of my frameworks is called the CPA.

[00:02:42] And the CPA is: better communication, better process management, and better accountability. So there's all sorts of tools and things underneath that in order to achieve your mastery of your CPA, which a lot of business owners think about chartered professional accountants, but I, kind of, look at it a little differently.

[00:02:58] Yvonne Heimann: And I [00:03:00] love hearing. Yes, frameworks, but again, personalized, because I'm like, let's be honest. If you look out there in social media and all the marketing, everybody is running like here, this is what worked for me, it has to work for you. I'm like, yeah, my corporate profile is different than yours. My personality profile is different.

[00:03:19] My thinking is different. So I love that combination of yes, frameworks are freaking amazing. They take out the thinking you have a path to follow. Now, how does that framework combine with your personality profile, right?

[00:03:35] Pete Mohr: Right. You know, from a Kolbe perspective. I don't know, have you taken your Kolbe, Yvonne?

[00:03:40] And do you know what your score is?

[00:03:42] Yvonne Heimann: Now, he's calling me out. I wouldn't need to pull it up, because I'm a sucker for personality profiles. I got my jinkies. I got my human resources. I got my strength finder. I got my Kolbe. I got all of them.

[00:03:52] Pete Mohr: There's so many great things about assessments. I'm a junkie as an assessment junkie myself.

[00:03:59] [00:04:00] But the one I like about Kolbe, is really this idea in behind, you know, so many, there are three different types of assessments out there. One is really around the thinking, which is your IQ and how smart you are and what you've learned along the way, all that kind of stuff. The other ones, which is the great majority of the ones that a lot of business leaders like you and I, there it's around emotional.

[00:04:20] So it's more about how you think and feel, you know, it's your feeling sort of, do you prefer this? Or do you prefer that? A lot of the questions are those kind of, so your Myers Briggs and your Enneagram and your strength finders, all around that those sort of things. But Kolbe really is the only one that caters into how do you do.

[00:04:39] It's all around how you act in stress and sort of your innate ways of making decisions. And as business owners, I love that. I love the fact that you can start understanding more about how you make decisions and then even more powerfully. How your team makes decisions, how each of those [00:05:00] people makes decisions.

[00:05:00] And when you start overlaying our Kolbe scores and put it into a team environment and how the group is making project management decisions and, you know, setting it on top of the C suite and then going down from there, getting into even hiring, using it and really understanding who your best salespeople are and understanding what their profiles look like and understanding who would be maybe a good person in your CFO position, for example.

[00:05:27] And what does their profile look like? And can we overlay this? And even if it's not perfect, then as the leaders of these people, we can understand where we can help them and prop them up as coaches, right?

[00:05:38] Yvonne Heimann: And the funny thing is, first of all, if you have a good framework and a good system, you know exactly where you need to look, by the way, my Kolbe is 6, 4, 6, 5, because I knew exactly where I have it.

[00:05:49] We have a team folder, because again, I'm a sucker for those. We have implemented them in 2023 for all of the team members and have, would have done what you just talked about, [00:06:00] we have adjusted our positions and what people are doing based on our personality profiles and the video actually guys, as we are recording today's YouTube video that was released, my 2023 look back video literally talks about this.

[00:06:17] Which is why I was so exciting to have you on of how it has just exploded our business and has made life so much easier and placing people and hiring people based on the personality profiles. It's like, we are such a well oiled machine right now, because of that.

[00:06:40] Pete Mohr: It's one of the tools, right? And I mean, I'm sure you have many others, but when you overlay, when you overlay Kolbe onto this stuff, it really makes starts to come clear about.

[00:06:51] Oh, it's like from a Kolbe perspective. And for those of you that don't know Kolbe, Kolbe has four main nodes in there. Fact finder, [00:07:00] follow through, quick start and implementer. And when we look at those four and understanding what the power of each of those are, because none of them, everybody has different levels of these and that's all good.

[00:07:11] There's no good or bad, but understanding how your team works within that and how you can fill out the other person's areas that they're, not as dominant in and wow, you start really getting some awesome team environments and, some really productive work comes out of that and communicate, the communication that comes from that too.

[00:07:35] When we start doing what they call a to, so everybody, the first step is really taking your Kolbe, what they call the Kolbe A and the Kolbe A is your own personal assessment. And then when we start taking that Kolbe A and you mash it with somebody else's Kolbe A on your team and understanding how to communicate better with them and how the two of you can get things done better.

[00:07:55] It's like, oh, that person is a higher fact finder, which basically [00:08:00] means they need more information in order to make a decision. I'm a four on fact finder. I don't need, I need some, but I don't need a ton. And, you know, it's like, I can do with the executive summary, right? But, somebody else on our team might be like, no, like I need all of the information in order to, you know, and that's just one excuse or not one excuse, but one way of framing this and all of the other things.

[00:08:25] It's like, if it's not in a system, I'm not going to get it done. Other people are like, I don't need a system. I just, no problem.

[00:08:30] Yvonne Heimann: You told me to do it. I know how to do it.

[00:08:32] Pete Mohr: It's all of these different ways, but when we start understanding ourselves and allowing ourselves the fact that, and when we understand ourselves that appreciating the fact that those are our own unique strengths, they're not weaknesses, they're strengths.

[00:08:48] And we need to really get behind those strengths and operate within those strengths so that we can make better decisions and be a better leader.

[00:08:59] Yvonne Heimann: To me, it's [00:09:00] data points. I'm like, its personality profiles to me. And I quote the law because we all have good days and bad days and things go around and things change.

[00:09:10] But it is for me, it's a great data point. And I think one of the biggest lessons for me was I suck at the nitty gritty. I'm low on the implementation. Where it's like, yeah, the big picture, the initial startup, but finishing something, when it goes into the nitty gritty and all of the fine polishing and all of the things, I, it's not my thing. However, I have somebody on the team that freaking loves this stuff. So I get everything started, quick start here too, and then here you go, Jeremy, run with it, finish it off.

[00:09:51] Pete Mohr: You know, I think about my bookkeeper at work and her name is Michelle and [00:10:00] she's a high fact finder, but she's also very high follow through and I think she's an eight or nine on follow through and, that's what I want in a bookkeeper.

[00:10:08] I want somebody who's going to tick every box and make sure the balances are correct and look for that last 10 cents and make sure that everything's in alignment, because I'm not that person. I'm a three. So I don't want to do that kind of work, that annoys me. It takes, it takes all, I can do it.

[00:10:25] I have a lots of business degrees behind my name. I can do it. I know I have the skills and knowledge and comprehension, but it irks me, pains me and takes away all of my good energy doing that kind of work. So why would I want to work there? I would want to do, where in Michelle's case, she could be, you know, listening to her music, doing all this stuff.

[00:10:44] And all of a sudden she finishes the, you know, fixing up the visa statement and she'll be like, woohoo. And I'm thinking, God, my gosh, that's just terrible use of my hour. And she's like, woo hoo. So we're different. We're different people. Yeah.

[00:10:59] Yvonne Heimann: Oh [00:11:00] yeah.

[00:11:01] Pete Mohr: And then the beautiful thing is. It's okay.

[00:11:05] And so, because we don't have to be the same. And in fact, it's probably best in our team if we're not all the same, because then you're missing out opportunities for all these other areas of things to be looked at when you look into project management and you look into strategy and you look into decision making.

[00:11:21] If everybody's the same on your team, then there's a whole nother area of stuff that's being missed.

[00:11:30] Yvonne Heimann: So, for everybody that's struggling, that feels misaligned. That feels like business and team is not as good as it could be. What would you recommend? Where would you have them start?

[00:11:45] Pete Mohr: Well really, in most cases, when I start working with some people, we kind of go back to the drawing board with regards to what I call your promise.

[00:11:54] So I have another framework that's called the five P's and those five P's are understanding your promise, [00:12:00] aligning your product, or if you're a service based business, your process, your people to that promise so that you can obtain the right amount of profit. And often what's happened, and especially with the state of change these days, and ever since COVID and a variety of different things over the last few years. Things are changing at such a rapid rate that things that people have been doing for a while, they'll say, well, we always did that.

[00:12:26] And it's just part of what we do. But is it really? And are your customers still asking for it? And is it still profitable? And so a lot of times we have to go back and reset the promise and make sure that in fact, it is the same promise. Is it the same vision? Is it the same mission? I, you know, vision and mission I look at is internal documents and internal things that you're going to use for you and your team.

[00:12:49] Promise is the thing that you shout out as a leader, this is what we do. This is who we help. This is how we can help you to get you through the problem that you're going through now using our [00:13:00] services so that you can live a better life, because everybody buys a better life, right?

[00:13:06] Yvonne Heimann: I really like how you just put that with mission and vision is the internal piece in the business where the promise is the external. I've been going through the process of really clarifying that, because I finally owned my dream of what I want my business to become with a nonprofit behind it and everything.

[00:13:27] We all know coming to a point where you trust yourself to actually dream big takes a little bit. I finally got there. Sweet. I've been working a lot in that mission and vision area. One of the resources I also use this, the vivid vision. I like the just putting words to it, putting words so that the team knows where do I want to take this.

[00:13:56] What, but also for me to, okay, when I bring on team members, do they [00:14:00] align with what I want? But again, that's mission and vision. So how does that affect, what does that bring the people that we work with? So I really like this idea of having mission and vision internally and having that promise externally, because it is a different writing, it is a different language to be able to convey what you are promising your audience, your community, your clients.

[00:14:32] Pete Mohr: Yeah, I mean, so kind of rolling that back, that's usually an area where we start. So we want to ensure that, you know, the, what the vision I look at is the 25 year picture. The mission is sort of the marching orders of 20,

[00:14:47] Yvonne Heimann: 20, 25?! I can, I can barely envision the next five years.

[00:14:55] Pete Mohr: Well, that's the mission or that's the vision, right? The [00:15:00] grandiose vision and which includes legacy, right? And then the next piece is your mission and your mission, I like to keep, I used to say five years, but now I'm more like, maybe one or two years, because things are just moving so quick and the mission are really your marching orders. It with the site of the vision in place.

[00:15:19] And then, so I call all these the guiding principles, right? And so we work through guiding principles, come up with sort of a one sheet page that you can share with your team. You can share with everybody. You can share on an onboarding process. You do videos about them and you start talking about it and it becomes part of your culture.

[00:15:36] But the promise really is, and I'll use the promise for our shoe stores, for example. We own some shoe stores here in Canada and they're called Shoetopia and those shoe stores are, we've narrowed it down to four words, which is look great and feel fantastic. And that's our promise. So when you come in our store, we're going to do every, and we have all sorts of ways of making this happen, but we're going to do everything we can do [00:16:00] so that when you look in the mirror with your pair of shoes on, you look in the mirror and you're going, Hmm, I look pretty good, you know, and then you close your eyes and you're like, these feel fantastic.

[00:16:12] So we actually ask questions around that, right? So how do you feel? You look, how do you feel? How do they feel? And if we get them going, yeah, these look pretty good. And if we get them going, ah, these really feel awesome. Then we know we've done our work. And when they take that up to the till and they've been reaffirmed with the fact that yes, I look good. Yes, they feel good.

[00:16:36] They don't have a problem in paying that bill and they walk out of the store. If the service was good and all the other stuff and they're thinking, you know what? I'm going back to Shoetopia next time I need a pair of shoes, because that's my favorite shoe store. So all of this has been pre thought about.

[00:16:50] We have different systems around it, which I call the heart of Shoetopia, which I also help a lot of my customers develop their heart models so that it drills them down into the [00:17:00] center phrasing, which is your promise. So that you have process in place within your team and your sales team in order to make that all happen.

[00:17:09] And of course it has to have the right people behind it. It has to have the right process behind it. We have to communicate all of that properly in order to get the end result. Because if we can't get the end result with that very clear picture, nobody's going to spend money with us. And it doesn't matter whether you're pairing, selling a pair of shoes, whether you're selling coaching services like I'm talking about here, or whether you're selling anything.

[00:17:32] We used to have a bathroom cleaning business and, you know, I've cleaned more sinks, toilets and urinals than you could ever imagine in your entire life. We did had that for 10 years. We had a promise behind that business and what we did for our clients. And we grew the business from 30 clients to 300 clients before we sold it.

[00:17:48] And so those kinds of things are how you grow a business is understanding the clear vision, the clear mission, understanding the promise that your clients will equate and that your [00:18:00] team will get behind so that you can have a business that spits off the right amount of profit. And you can live the life that you want to as a business owner.

[00:18:08] Yvonne Heimann: Please tell me I'm not the only one that struggles a lot with coming to the promise because it's like that quick little, it's not just a tagline. It is a promise. It is what you deliver. And it's like, Oh my God, I've been stuck on just getting into words and getting precise on. What it is that, that I do, that we do, please tell me I'm not the only one struggling with that.

[00:18:39] Pete Mohr: You're not. And you know what, depending on the business that you offer and have, you could have a couple of different promises. You could have departmental promises, right? And when you think about your marketing, and I do a lot of sort of languaging and things like that as well, but because language is very important when we think about all of [00:19:00] that.

[00:19:00] And, you know, if you think about departmental marketing, you could have a promise. Like I could have a promise around if I was thinking about the shoe store again, because it's easy. Everybody can associate with the shoe store. But if I think about the kids department, or if I think about our hiking department or men's workwear department or whatever the case is, we could have separate promises around there with the overarching promise of look, look good and feel fantastic right?

[00:19:28] And so, so long as those over, you have your overarching one, you can have sub promises. And those are what you're going to drive your marketing. That's the language that you're going to use. That's the language that your sales team is going to use in around those subs. So you can have key phrases for other areas of your business.

[00:19:44] So long as they're in alignment with the overarching theme.

[00:19:48] Yvonne Heimann: So, where my brain now just went for digital businesses, we have your company promise. What, what is it that, that we do, what we deliver, but then for the different [00:20:00] offers, just like you have for the different departments for the different offers you have that promise for the offer that aligns with a company promise.

[00:20:11] Pete Mohr: That's the part. That's the part, it needs to align with the company promise or else there's the misalignment causes confusion.

[00:20:19] Yvonne Heimann: And then the question that I would bring up the question, if there is a misalignment, yes, it could be a misalignment of just clarifying the language and just rewording it.

[00:20:28] If it's not just a language and a rephrasing, if there's a misalignment between your offer promise and your company promise, there might be more behind that. Maybe that is an offer you shouldn't be offering.

[00:20:43] Pete Mohr: It's kind of like we said, when we started this part of the conversation around, you know, a lot of stuff has changed.

[00:20:48] And if you've been in business for five, 10 years, and you've been doing things, let, I'll call legacy things for a long time. Often we have a hard time getting rid of those, because they created and were maybe, [00:21:00] you know, 50%, 70%, 80%, 90% of our business at one time, but are they still? Are they still as relevant? Are they still?

[00:21:07] And so that's when the idea about coming up with how is your business changing? How is it morphing? What's going on? The strategies around that very important pieces of the puzzle. And sometimes, your promise changes and it's like, this is what we promised, but due to everything that's changed in the last 10 years, it's no longer relevant.

[00:21:27] Well, if it's no longer relevant, then it's time to change the promise. Like,

[00:21:31] Yvonne Heimann: Are you going to be the next blockbuster

[00:21:35] Pete Mohr: Time to change the promise. I mean, things change. And so people that are so stubborn, not to sort of change something, because they've done certain things in certain ways for a long time, are the ones that tend to get bypassed in business.

[00:21:49] Yvonne Heimann: And it, it can get comfortable. Don't give me wrong. It's running your business as it has been is it's the unknown. It's the known Holy moly, [00:22:00] a tongue twister staying in the known, because you were doing something that you have done for two, three, four, 10, 20 years. Who knows. It's comfortable. It's the known, doesn't mean it brings money.

[00:22:14] It doesn't mean it brings profit. Doesn't mean that you should be doing it, but it's the thing you know how to do. So, I do get that change can be difficult, because now you are suddenly potentially stepping into something that you've never done. You don't have a framework for you. You haven't sold anything yet.

[00:22:32] You haven't marketed anything yet. It's uncomfortable. And our human response is like, but it's like, that's, that's what we say. The magic happens outside of our comfort zone.

[00:22:47] Pete Mohr: Yeah, that's true.

[00:22:48] Yvonne Heimann: And I love being able to, especially as we just talked about with the whole idea of the promise, if things suddenly don't align and they don't [00:23:00] match into your company promise, now you'll suddenly have a data point to dive into all.

[00:23:04] Okay, why? Why doesn't it align?

[00:23:09] Pete Mohr: And that's, you know, when we talked about the five P's, the people portion, I usually break down the people portion into three different areas and you have your ideal customer, which pretty much everybody listening to the show probably understands that concept. You have your ideal teammate, the people working with you, right? Which a lot of people haven't dug into that much

[00:23:31] Yvonne Heimann: Do you.. Now you are bringing just something up. So we write client of accounts, right? Who is the person we are selling to. What's their story, all the things. Do you do the same thing with team members? Ooh..

[00:23:45] Pete Mohr: Right. And that's part of Kolbe too, right? You can overlay Kolbe onto that. It's part of the process. And then here's the other one, which is your ieal supplier or outsource supplier or anybody else who [00:24:00] helps deliver your promise. Right? So anybody that's helping you deliver the promise that you're promising to your clients in order to make that success happen is an important piece.

[00:24:12] And do you want to work with crappy suppliers? No, you don't. So better understanding of your suppliers and aligning and making sure that they understand what you're promised. They understand what you're working towards and who you're working for, so that they can get in behind that, makes your whole operation a whole lot easier. It gives you more freedom.

[00:24:34] Yvonne Heimann: And we've done that in the sense of, yes, we have the position and then check with people, how do they align. But being proactive about it and actually paint that picture of who am I looking for and building, writing out that team avatar and what are the personality traits that I'm looking for and really [00:25:00] going into that practice of building that avatar, writing that avatar.

[00:25:06] You're so much more proactive than just like, here, take that personality test and we see if you fit. If I have the avatar down, I already know what I'm looking for. So when I'm talking with them, I confess that, okay, I guess I just got myself some homework

[00:25:21] Pete Mohr: for those of us who have been in business a while, you can think back and I'm sure you remember the name of your worst ever employee. And you probably remember the name of your best ever employee. And that's where you start, right? You write down all the qualities of your worst ever. And you're, write down your list of your best, your, the person that you would hire every single time and actually probably deserves to get paid more than you're paying them, that person.

[00:25:54] And who do we want to hire? We want to, and when we think about our interviewing process, [00:26:00] we list our, we list all of our questions, all of that stuff around attracting this type of person and around repelling the other one, right? So that we're going to literally have the language again, that we need in order to hire the right people in alignment with our best ever team members so that.

[00:26:21] Hiring and firing costs a lot of money.

[00:26:23] Yvonne Heimann: Oh God. Yeah.

[00:26:25] Pete Mohr: So if we can do some of this homework upfront with Kolbe and with setting these kinds of things and interview questions and the variety of different things that we can do to attract the right person to come work for us and help us deliver our promise, then Holy cow.

[00:26:39] I mean, that's, and think of the lowered frustration. It's like, that's one of the things that for me, it's like, I, you know, it's the frustration portions that just drive me crazy around some of this stuff. And it's like, that's why I've come up with so many frameworks because I want to reduce frustration, not only for myself and my operations, but for the people that I [00:27:00] work with.

[00:27:00] Yvonne Heimann: And frustrations just means misalignment. And I'm like, again, we had a lot of that in 2023, where with my core team of three, we were fairly well aligned already, but there were a couple of pieces of friction. And we are like, why are we doing this? And now it's like, it's a full on well oiled machine.

[00:27:22] Literally while we are recording here, my mini me is taking care of some client work, just, just backing me up with the bottom row of implementation because not my thing. The other one is taking care of my marketing. It's like, and everybody loves what they are doing. It's coming back after Christmas.

[00:27:41] It was so much fun watching them having taken December off. I was close to burnout. So many projects were just at the end. We took December mostly off and they're coming back with so many ideas and Hey, what do you. What if we do this and can we adjust this? And suddenly my podcast has new images because my VA, [00:28:00] my kitty was like, Hey, I want to play.

[00:28:02] I'm being creative. And it's just like, huh? So good. And it's fun working with them because they are excited about what they are doing and not like, Oh my God, she's asking me to do that again.

[00:28:16] Pete Mohr: I think those kind of alignments are such a critical piece, because even from a team perspective, when you're dealing with the, if your team is touching your client in any sort of touch point along the customer journey, clients pick up when your team is not feeling that love.

[00:28:36] And so what can we do as leaders in order to put them into the position, understanding that we have a promise to deliver and, you know. Some people are going to have to do some things that they don't like, but the bigger the team gets, the more you can put them into their own unique ability to really, you know, flourish in that area.

[00:28:57] And when you know, people [00:29:00] ask me, well, how do I know when this is happening even for yourself? Well, you know, when it's happening for yourself, when it doesn't feel like work anymore. When at the end of the day, you do not feel as though you're tired and worn out and ready for bed. When at the end of the day, you've had a long day, you've put in your eight or 10 hours and you're still going, Oh my gosh, that was awesome.

[00:29:21] I could do it all over again.

[00:29:22] Yvonne Heimann: And you jump out of bed next morning at 6 a. m. ready to do it again.

[00:29:26] Pete Mohr: It's when you, it's when you know you're doing the right thing, right? And you're doing what you truly love and what instead of it sucking the living life out of you, like I said, trying to rectify my visa statement would do for me.

[00:29:40] I have the capability. I can do that work. I'm trained for it. Doesn't mean that I should be doing it. So having the conversations with you, Yvonne, having these kinds of things, this is what gives me energy. This is what excites me and so I try to lay out my days and do these kind of things that I'm spending as much [00:30:00] time in the areas that give me excitement and give me power, give me energy in the work that I like to do as the part of work I do as a leader of the organization that I run, so that everybody else can do the same.

[00:30:13] Yvonne Heimann: So for everybody that wants to dive deeper into all of this, where can they find you?

[00:30:21] Pete Mohr: Best bet is just go to my website, which is, it's a long one, but it's simplifyingentrepreneurship.com. So simplifyingentrepreneurship.com. On the social side, I hang out on LinkedIn. So it's Pete Mohr, M O H R, and you can catch me either, either place.

[00:30:38] Yvonne Heimann: And you guys, you know, as always, all of the links are going to be easily accessible for you in the description. We're going to have all of them. Pete also has a freebie for you. The 10 laws of moving from operator to owner. His website is going to be there, all the things, so you can just literally click on it.

[00:30:57] Pete, thank you so much for joining me [00:31:00] today. I got my work cut out now for the weekend, because I'm going to go write at least my business promise. Thank you so much for joining me. Everybody else, thanks so much for listening and watching and make sure you hit that subscribe button so you don't miss the next episode. Bye everybody.