557 – Transform your frustration into freedom: Tom interviews Pete Mohr

Episode 557 – Pete Mohr
[00:00:09] Welcome to Screw the Commute. The entrepreneurial podcast dedicated to getting you out of the car and into the money, with your host, lifelong entrepreneur and multimillionaire, Tom Antion.

[00:00:24] Hey everybody, it's Tom here with episode five hundred and fifty seven of screw the Commute podcast. I'm here with Pete Mohr and he's going to help turn your frustrations and business into freedoms. That's what this guy is all about, so we'll bring him on in a minute now hoping to miss episode 556. That was Adam Strong. Now this is not the Adam Strong who is also from Canada, who is a serial killer and eats up the first page of Google for this poor guy. But anyway, this Adam Strong is the game changer guy, so he's got a podcast, the Game Changers experience, and he gave us a lot of insight on being disruptors. All right. How'd you like to make money referring our stuff? Well, you can make. I mean, just a speaking engagement can get you more than five thousand bucks, and we have products from all levels and we never get refunds because we take care of our customers and give good customer service and high quality products. So if you're interested in that, email me at Tom. That's critic Mi.com and pick up a copy of our automation e-book. I've been hammering you for a long time to get this thing because you will thank me if you just implement part of what's in it, or it'll just knock your workload down and help you get. Take care of customers so much faster and it'll really bring in more money for you. So pick that up at screwthecommute.com/automatefree while you're at it. Pick up a copy of our podcast app. It's screwthecommute.com/app, you can put us on your cell phone and tablet. Take us with you on the road. Now we're still going strong in our pilot program to help persons with disabilities get trained in internet and digital marketing. It's just perfect for them so they don't have to travel to school. They can get high quality distance learning and legitimately get hired and or start their own business or both. So please give us a hand on this. You can go to IMTCVA.org/disabilities. Of course, that'll be in the show notes along with Pete stuff. And check out the Go Fund Me campaign. When I hear you crying, the blues like, Oh, I can't do videos, I can't do. Video Two of two of the people in our program are blind, and they're shooting videos that are nicer than mine, so. So they're very inspirational and something you can really be proud of to help out with.

[00:02:47] All right, let's bring on the main event. Pete Mohr is here. He helps entrepreneurs transform their frustrations into freedoms by using a variety of frameworks that help them cut through the chaos and overwhelm of running a business. Now, he's refined his tips and tools and techniques within his own businesses, and he loves sharing them so others can live the life they deserve as business leaders. Are you ready to screw? The commute?

[00:03:17] All right, man, how's it going up there? You shoveling snow today? Up in Canada was doing.

[00:03:22] I was shoveling snow just before we came on. Today we are getting a snow storm. It has been above zero and it's been melting like crazy the last couple of days. But on the back end of that, we're getting a little bit of snow today.

[00:03:33] Man, you can have my share. I know part of that at all. Yeah, I grew up in the north outside of Pittsburgh, and I never go back anymore.

[00:03:45] So you know, I'm I'm I'm escaping. In another week, we're heading to Florida for a month to to, you know, to screw the snow.

[00:03:53] There you go. That's right. Yeah, yeah. So so tell us about this. This program, you know, I know there's a lot of frustration in the business world, especially with costs going out of sight and and the giant inflation. I don't know if it's hit Canada or not, but it probably does. So tell us how you, how you work with people,

[00:04:15] You know, really, I work with with small business owners for the most part and people that are kind of doing between one and 10 million, as is most of my type clients and work with. I'm a retailer, so we own some shoe stores. So I work with retailers. I work with service businesses because I've had service businesses in the past for multiple years and, you know, work with people and a lot of business owners get into business. Well, all business owners get into business because they want a better life. They look at the business to that. You know, when they first start, they're like, I think this is going to give me a better life. And what often happens Tom and I mean, I'm sure you've seen this over the years where people, you know, 10 years go by and they look back and they're like, OK, well, maybe have a nicer car or a nicer house or whatever the case is, and I have a bit more money. I haven't had a life, I haven't had good relationships. I'm not that healthy. I haven't had a vacation forever. I'm feeling tired. I'm feeling worn out. You know what happened here? My kids are grown up and I didn't even see them. All of these sort of things are sort of regular things that entrepreneurs come across. And you know, what I try to do when I'm working with entrepreneurs is to free them up of some of that so they can actually enjoy why they got into business, which typically isn't just to do business and just not typically just to grow a business. It's around having a better life. So understanding what that better life is is sort of the first step and what you want out of your health, what you want out of your relationships, what you want out of your wealth, what you want, your mission and purpose to be personally so that then we can create the business underneath that to prop it up for you as the entrepreneur, because you own your business and it shouldn't own you.

[00:06:03] Well, you know, there is a there is a bright side to that part about being frustrated and and having many relationships. I mean, that means you get to practice through many divorces, you know, to get where you're going. Hey, did you ever do you ever hear that show married with children?

[00:06:22] Oh yeah. Al Bundy.

[00:06:23] Yeah. So do you have any employees like that? Your shoe stores?

[00:06:26] I actually don't, and we own shoe stores,

[00:06:29] So that's what I was thinking about it.

[00:06:30] Yeah, yeah, man. I absolutely. I mean, if I could only show and post some of the great clips from Al Bundy, but, you know, sort of an absolutely politically incorrect these days.

[00:06:41] Oh, totally. Yeah. My favorite line, though, is Peg came to Al one time and said she was pregnant. And Al goes, Oh my God, it's just like Exxon once one spill and you pay for it the rest of your life. Oh yeah.

[00:07:00] I mean, so

[00:07:00] What's it like running a shoe store?

[00:07:03] Well, you know, to be honest, I really live sort of what I coach to, which is, you know, you want to set your business up to be a turnkey business. And I won't say that it's always been a turnkey business, but that's where we're at now. And you know, I have great people in place. I have great process in place. I have great, you know, things lined up that allow me to do what I truly want to do within my business and, you know, business. We were closed for twenty two weeks over this pandemic. Oh my goodness, Rio, right? It's been a big time of closure. But since then, you know, we came out of the closure last May and we had eight of our best ever months we've ever had.

[00:07:44] Well, it's because everybody wore their shoes out and they were, you know, you couldn't.

[00:07:49] We were still doing some online business, which is great, but couldn't our online store. I mean, it grew substantially during the closures and stuff.

[00:07:55] Well, you could have had 'em wear, wear mask on their feet, could you?

[00:07:59] We're still wearing masks where we are down to. I mean, that hasn't gone away.

[00:08:02] Oh, my goodness. So, yeah, so, so pitiful. Southerners here are picturing like the shoe store in Canada. You just smell like sell like snow shoes and giant boots.

[00:08:15] Yeah, yeah, exactly. You know, and people, you know, we'll even bring them out to your state of.

[00:08:20] That's good.

[00:08:21] No, the reindeer will pull you in.

[00:08:23] My favorite one of my favorite comedians is Kathleen Madigan, and she did a tour up in Canada, and she said, You know that Canada, it's kind of like the attic to the United States. It says, you forget it's up there, but there's a lot of cool things up.

[00:08:37] There are a lot of cool things for sure. And you know, I'm a I'm a proud Canadian and you know, it's a great place to live. But there have been, you know, some some definite things that are out of our control as retailers and as other business owners. I mean, our restaurants just reopened again last week. We were closed because of the al-Muqrin stuff for about four weeks for restaurants and gyms and all that were closed back down completely, at least in retail. We went to a lower capacity. We didn't have to close completely. So a lot of these things come up and prop up. And, you know, they're all part of running a business and being an entrepreneur. Being an entrepreneur isn't for everyone. You have to be able to be able to deal with this kind of stuff and not lose your mind. I mean, for anybody who takes a peek at my site or anything, you'll see, I've already lost all my hair, so I've kind of pulled it out in the past and kind of worked through some of this kind of stuff.

[00:09:30] But these shoe stores are run without you being there

[00:09:34] For the most part. You know, I was saying, I'm going to head to Florida for a month. And, you know, when I said to my team about three weeks ago, I said, You know, I think I'm going to take the month of March off and go to Florida. They said, Great, have a good trip.

[00:09:47] Yeah, beautiful.

[00:09:49] And and to me, that's what I want for my the people that I work with, right? It's like, let's try to set that up for you. I'm able to live that now because I've set my business up to that point and and will I be completely off grid that entire month? No, I won't. I'll still be available. And. Stuff like that, but I don't have any set meetings I don't have, I'm not on the floor, I don't like all of that sort of stuff in my shoe stores now I work probably on average about eight hours a week, you know, six to eight hours a week, I would say, with the shoe business. And then I'm doing what I truly love. And I love the shoe business too. But I've set it up to be more of a passive investment for me, and I'm involved where I truly am most beneficial to my team and to my clients. And that's the area what I call the Lovett Zone for me in Zootopia, and I try and my love it zone was simplifying. Entrepreneurship is having conversations like this, whether I'm on a podcast with you or hosting my own podcast or having the conversations on Zoom with all my clients and talking about their frustrations and turning them into freedoms and working through these different processes that enable us to free them up of their time, reduce their overwhelm and all that other stuff that we were just chatting about.

[00:10:58] Well, well, here's the dumbest joke on Earth, but how do you keep? Things from walking out the door. I mean, because I mean, I had one retail business and that was the end for me. It was a nightclub where I was in gunfights and knife fights and I'd find a big case. We had a pizza shop to a big case of cheese up by the dumpster that the kids took out there and they were going to pick it up after work and steal it. You know, so how do you keep control of a business like that?

[00:11:28] Well, you set up the right processes and you have the right processes in place. You know, sort of this. The five piece structure, which had a little bit about is is setting up the right promise. I'll give you the five piece.

[00:11:39] Yeah, go ahead. Yeah, this is this is your turning frustration into freedom. The idea here, the framework.

[00:11:46] Yeah, and the framework is really having the right promise, aligning the right product process and people to that promise so that you can enjoy the right profit, you know, and from that perspective, when we look at things like that that we just talked about, you've got two issues right there. You've got a process issue and you have a people issue. Like, it's using this framework, you can then start taking these things and pulling out these little areas that that cause red flags and say, OK, well, if I'm having an issue with theft, then I've got a process issue and that maybe what are we do? We have to install cameras? Do we have to have rules around opening and closing doors? Or when do we need to do bag checks on the way in and out of our stores and all of these different? We have to align the process. And the other thing is, are we actually hiring the right people, right? Come on. You know, like we've got to do some work and hiring the right people if we actually have people stealing from us. So, you know, there's process to do there, and all of these things don't happen overnight. Like, it's not a way we go. It's there's little baby steps, right? And and you have to start working through these things and thinking about them and how they align to your promise because you're first of all, if so many of the entrepreneurs that I deal with right now, especially over the last couple of years, their business has absolutely changed. Right? Right. And that means the promise that they made to their clients to deliver their services and goods to make their life better has changed, too. But they haven't changed it. The world has changed

[00:13:20] Around, haven't changed their promise. Exactly. Yeah.

[00:13:23] Ok, so a lot of what it's like, OK, let's go back and see what are you actually doing now? And when we when we assign a promise, I mean, there's a whole there's all kinds of stuff around a promise, but the easy way for a podcast is, OK, what problem do you solve for your clients? What what is their problem and how are you solving it uniquely? Is it faster? Is it cheaper? Is it a better experience? What is it? How is that problem being solved by you in a unique way so that? That person is going to live a better life because the only way they're going to spend their dollars. Is if you can show them the transformation from where they were to where they could be by using your service or goods or product.

[00:14:07] Now, have you I'm sure you have heard this on the news, all this smash and grab stuff that we've been seeing in the United States is any of that hit Canada?

[00:14:17] Not really. I mean, we're dealing yeah, we've got we've had over the last few weeks a pretty big trucker protest in downtown Ottawa and stuff like that. But you know, outside of there being some blocked areas and a few arrests and stuff like that, there's been no vandalism. There's been very little, you know, real let's call it anarchy.

[00:14:37] Are your stores in that area or where are your stores?

[00:14:41] Yeah, my stores are about an hour outside of Toronto. So for a lot of people in nowhere, Toronto is so we're about an hour outside of Toronto, and it was about five hours away.

[00:14:50] Yeah, OK.

[00:14:50] So you know, it's none of my stores are there. So they have had to close the downtown block like some of the couple of blocks around the thing, but there hasn't been smash and grab stuff.

[00:15:00] I would have thought the business would be going crazy because all those people would have nowhere to go to buy stuff.

[00:15:06] So some of them have, yeah, for sure, and other businesses have been forced to close. Oh, government around them has just closed them down and saying, Hey, we're under a lockdown, so we're locking you down. And so it's it's, you know, it's affected a small amount of people there, but it's not like the Ambassador Bridge, which just happened in Windsor as well. Windsor, Detroit, which for those of you listening in the states, is the largest bridge, the largest border crossing for commerce between our two countries.

[00:15:39] Yeah, there was three hundred and seven million dollars a day

[00:15:42] Going back and forth. Yeah, yeah. And and and you know what? Canada is still the state's biggest trading partner. So from that perspective, if you're closing down the biggest bridge for the biggest trading partner, there's issues not only for Canadians, but for Americans too, right? And so that was a big problem. And so that that was more of a problem around all of the stuff that's creating commerce issues. And in Ottawa, it's more sort of a political thing and that sort of stuff. But there's. We can go on and on about all this stuff there and why it's happening, but.

[00:16:15] Well, I'm not I'm not going to piss off any truckers. I'm going to put it that way because I want to eat.

[00:16:21] Yeah, for sure. You know, and that's, you know, from from from that side of things, there are certain things there that you can't control as a business owner, right? So what are your workarounds? Well, you have to work around what you need to work around and have good relationships and have good people. You know, that's that people portion. So we start off with the promise and then the next part is aligning once and again. Like I said, a lot of people have to actually go back and rework their promise. Now, a couple of years into this, because business has changed, people are have changed. The things have changed. And if you haven't done that, you have to go back, reassess that, go through that step and then you're looking at your products. That's the next step. Looking at the products, do the products and services align with your promise? And if the new products and services that you have don't align with your product promise, then you need to actually either change your promise or change your products.

[00:17:16] Now are your products in the shoe business on consignment?

[00:17:20] No, we pre-buy them.

[00:17:22] Ok, and then what if they don't sell? You're stuck or you just

[00:17:25] Then I am stuck. Yeah. So I discount them and flood them and lose money on the ones that we sell for less than we paid for them.

[00:17:33] So but I want to see how you got into the shoe business, but I want to take you back. Did you ever have a job, the dreaded job?

[00:17:41] Yeah, I I on a full time basis, I had a job for six months after university and loved loved the guy I worked for. It's my dad's best friend. His name is Peter to great business, great boss. All that sort of stuff. But at the same time, I realized during that six months because I had already owned businesses before that. Okay, you know, oh, good little startup businesses and all that kind of stuff. And I realized it's just like, You know what? I just can't see myself doing this forever, and I'm going to start my own business. And that was in 1994. You were talking about 1990 for firing up your internet business. And so I started my first business in 1994, and I'm virtually unemployable now.

[00:18:25] Yeah, me too, for sure. So how did you how did you pick choose? How did you get into that?

[00:18:30] Yeah, long story short, I had a service. We did bathroom renovations and that sort of stuff. I had a cleaning company as well that we grew from 30 customers to 300 customers. I sold both of those businesses as I was taking my executive MBA. I kind of wanted a change after 12, 15 years of doing those businesses and became a business broker, helping people buy and sell businesses. And in fact, I just was on a call today with I don't do that officially anymore, but I was on a call today with the person that I know. And she said, You know, I need you to coach me through getting my business ready to sell, which is another big thing that I do is opening up the systems in order to create a turnkey business. Well, you want to have a turnkey business so you can back out of your business and not be so reliant upon. But you know, from that perspective, do you actually want out if

[00:19:20] If you're having if it was that simple to run?

[00:19:22] Yeah, yeah, yeah. So this is this, and she's like, Well, I don't know if I could actually do what I really like to do and only work maybe a day a week. Maybe I don't want to sell it. I just don't want to work 55 hours a week. And it's like, OK, well, like, we can work on this, right? And then and then once you get it to a turnkey position, you make the choice. You have the freedom to either say, Yeah, I still want to sell it, or because it's not sellable if it's completely reliant upon you. Right.

[00:19:48] Right now, now take. If a business has no systems in place, what's the average length of time it takes them to get to the point where they are saleable?

[00:20:01] Yeah. So that depends on your business and it depends on how many processes there are. So that's the third p, right? You got your you've got your promise, your product and your process and all the processes. I mean, hiring and firing and marketing and sales and operations and bookkeeping. And there are a lot of processes and off all the processes are in the owner's head. Then there's no saleable business.

[00:20:25] Yeah, that's for sure.

[00:20:26] You know, so they've got to get out. They've got to get onto paper. You need to assess them, you need to address them and then you need to have somebody else be accountable for them.

[00:20:38] That's the way it works, and it's so hard for, you know, people that, you know, it's their baby. So, you know, when emotions get involved, that's why a lot of family businesses go under because a lot of the decisions are made on emotion, not because it's good for the business.

[00:20:55] Exactly, exactly. And I mean, we see it so many times. So, you know, just even letting having that discussion around the fact that somebody will come and say, Hey, listen, I'm thinking of selling my business and it's like, OK, well, how reliant upon you? Well, I do all the sales. I do all the buying I do, I do all the blah blah blah. And it's like, OK, well, you don't have a sellable business. Well, what do you mean? We do a million dollars or we do $3 million? Well, nobody cares because they're going to have to come and work 60 hours a week. And that's not what they want to buy. They want to buy a cash flow.

[00:21:22] Yeah. See, they don't want to be an employee of the month every month and have their picture up on the wall all the time.

[00:21:29] That's buying a job.

[00:21:30] J-o-b, J-O-B. Yeah, that's that's cussing on our podcast.

[00:21:34] Yeah, right. And and I'm not saying that you don't want to do anything in the business that's not really healthy either, but you want to be working in the area. What I call the love zone, the love, there's the love it zone and the leave it zone. So if you're if you're finding you're working 80 percent of your time in the Leave It Zone, the area that you really doesn't give you that drains and sucks all the energy out of you and doesn't give you strength and energy and excitement, then you're just working in the wrong area of your business.

[00:21:59] Yeah. Now on this book that you're working on, is that the name of it, the frustration and the freedoms? Or what's the title

[00:22:06] At this point in time? That's the working title. I'm hoping to release it this fall and I haven't pinned it, but I think it will be turning frustrations into freedoms or maybe entrepreneurial freedom, something around that. Got it. Yeah, got it. But you know, the subtitle is probably around the five P's to create freedom in your business.

[00:22:24] Got it! All right, we got to take a brief break. When we come back, we'll ask Pete what is typical. He has a morning routine, how his day goes, how he works, family obligations through. I guess he's taken a month in Florida, so that's pretty cool. And then he's got a really cool assessment for you that he's going to give you and tell you where to find it. So. So folks, about about twenty five years ago, I kind of turned the internet marketing guru world on its head and the guys at my level were. Charging 50 or 100 thousand bucks up front for small business people to teach them what they knew and I knew a lot of these people. You give them $50000 up front, they'd be hiding out in Canada or somewhere because they never help you. So I said, you know, that's too risky for the small business people. So so I turned everything on its head and I just charged an entry fee to get into my program. And then my success was tied to your success. So for me to get my 50 grand, you had to net two hundred grand. Well, guess what? People kind of like this idea and seventeen hundred students later, it's still going strong, and it's the longest running, most unique, most successful mentor program in the field of internet and digital marketing ever. You spend an immersion weekend at the Great Internet Marketing Retreat Center here in Virginia Beach. You have a separate trip to shoot videos in our TV studio. You get a scholarship to our school that I talked about, that we're helping the persons with disabilities that you can either use yourself or gift to somebody.

[00:24:00] And it would be the best legacy gift you can because you know the way colleges are doing nowadays, just putting kids in debt and then they're competing for jobs at Starbucks when they get out. This is not the case. This is the highly in-demand skill, and they can start their own business or work for companies or both. So. So also, everything is one on one because, you know, I tried group coaching at times. And, you know, if I'm talking to the beginners to advanced people are bored, and if I'm talking to the advanced people, to beginners or lost, I said it's not up to my standard. So everything is one on one with myself and my whole staff. So, so like I said, it's nobody will put their program up against mine. They're too scared. So, check it out at greatinternetmarketingtraining.com and I'm easy to get a hold of and would love to help you.

[00:24:52] Let's get back to the main event. We're here with Pete Mohr. He's a guy that has figured out how to do processes to make sure your business runs smoothly without you being the employee of the month every month and frustrated. And you know and all the bad things that go along, he helps you get rid of those so that you can have your freedom. So Pete, do you have any kind of morning routine that you go through?

[00:25:18] Absolutely. I mean, I have another download as well. We can pop in the show notes, too. Sure, it's called the one page planner, and I've created a journal for entrepreneurs, basically, and it's free. So it's at simplifyingentrepreneurship.com/planner.

[00:25:42] But that's anybody can just download that. No problem. And I have a little video to guide on what I do every morning with it. And you know, it talks about all these things that we started off with. You know, what do you want out of your health? What do you want out of your wealth? What do you want for your personal mission and goals? What do you want for your relationships? You know, how do you want to spend your leisure time? Do you have any leisure time? What are you going to do? Plan this stuff? Set your priorities both for the for your life, which I consider a twenty five year framework and then break that down into your year, your quarter, your week and your day so that you can actually see an accomplishment of things happening.

[00:26:26] Wait a minute. So what's the twenty five year framework? So you're going to die at twenty five years old or what?

[00:26:32] No, I just I just said, what is that twenty five year framework and use that as sort of my long term goals? Ok, got it.

[00:26:40] Yeah, yeah. But but we want to know, like, do you get up early? Do you meditate? Do you work out what? What do you eat and all that stuff?

[00:26:48] Yeah. So I'm a big sleep guy, so I tracked my sleep. I use an aura ring. I have an eight sleep mattress. You know, I'm very conscious of that. I go to bed early. I get up early, typically around 5:00 in the morning. You have kids. I have three kids. They're all men now, though. Oh, OK, so they're all in the twenties, OK? But but basically, you know, I I get up early. I love my morning time. I love my alone time. I hop in the hot tub. I read in the morning at, you know, every morning, do do some reading, often meditate in the morning, set myself up with my one page journal. I have a specific routine of of having certain drinks and and stuff like that. I drink a ton of water through the day, start my morning off right in in the right mindset so that I can get a ton of done before anybody's even hitting their snooze on their alarm.

[00:27:45] No, the family in the business at all or

[00:27:47] My wife, my wife does do. She's not active as far as on the floor and stuff like that, but she does some social contact. And forest and things like that, all of my boys, I've had one of the boys work in the business, but none of them currently are, nor do they want to, which is perfectly good. They've got their own lives and they've got their own goals and wants and wishes, and I encourage them to go explore those.

[00:28:10] That's awesome. And what about you said you had or I told folks that you were going to give them some kind of assessment? Tell us about that.

[00:28:19] Yeah, yeah. So the assessment is is on my website, too. It's simplifying entrepreneurship. You just go to the site and hit the button, take the assessment. And the assessment really is just a wonderful little tool. It takes about 12 minutes to do the business assessment for entrepreneurs and what it will do after you fill out 40 or so sort of multiple choice. Very short answer questions is that it spits you back between depending on how you answered between a 50 and 60 page PDF that really outlines the things that you're doing in your business really well and the things that you need to work on. So it gives you a plan of action so that you can take some action, set your priorities and be working towards having a better life in a better business. And it's all sort of around execution and marketing and sales and overhead. And, you know, the the people side of things, we didn't dig into the people and the profit side of things. We got to the first three piece. But you know, it takes on that sort of aspect to and you sort of overlay the five P's on top of this. And it's like, now I have a plan of what I need to do to make this happen.

[00:29:25] Wow, what a deal. I mean, they charge you 160 dollars U.S. for that, for that around here. Yeah. What a great, great deal. So wow, just you're perfect for this show. You only work six months out of your whole life. That's good at a job for somebody else.

[00:29:43] And working in my love, it's own the rest.

[00:29:45] Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah. And taking a month going to Florida, that's the lifestyle lifestyle business, that's for sure. So. So thanks so much for coming on, man.

[00:29:55] It's been an absolute pleasure Tom and really happy to have you on my show at the Simplifying Entrepreneurship podcast as well to my pleasure.

[00:30:04] And so everybody check out simplifying entrepreneurship and then forward slash planner for the one page planner. And then just on the home page, whether they click on on the homepage for the assessment, the assessment. Take the assessment there. Yeah, that's pretty right in your face. Yes. All right. All right. So thanks so much and I can't wait till you get out of the snow, but don't drop any on me as you fly to Florida. All right. If there's any left over on your boots. All right. Catch you later.