Business Owner, Coach, And Thought Leader Pete Mohr Reveals The 10 Laws To Go From Operator To Owner (#277)

Welcome to the Deep Wealth Podcast where you learn how to extract your business and personal Deep Wealth. I'm your host Jeffrey Feldberg. This podcast is brought to you by Deep Wealth and the 90-day Deep Wealth Experience. When it comes to your business deep wealth, your exit or liquidity event is the most important financial decision of your life. But unfortunately, up to 90% of liquidity events fail. Think about all that time and your hard earned money wasted. Of the quote unquote"successful" liquidity events, most business owners leave 50% to over 100% of the deal value in the buyer's pocket and don't even know it. I should know. I said"no" to a seven-figure offer. And"yes" to mastering the art and the science of a liquidity event. Two years later, I said"yes" to a different buyer with a nine figure deal. Are you thinking about an exit or liquidity event? Don't become a statistic and make the fatal mistake of believing the skills that built your business are the same ones to sell it. After all, how can you master something you've never done before? Let the 90-day Deep Wealth Experience and the 9-step roadmap of preparation help you capture the best deal instead of any deal. At the end of this episode, take a moment and hear from business owners like you, who went through the Deep Wealth Experience. Pete Mohr 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. With over 25 years as a business owner, he's refined many of his tips, tools and techniques in the trenches within his own businesses. You own your business. It shouldn't own, you. It's time to start using frameworks that allow you to have a turnkey business so that you can live a life you deserve. Welcome to the Deep Wealth Podcast, and we have a friend, he's no stranger. You've heard him before. And what I love about Pete, he is one of us. He's a business owner, sold businesses. In fact, he was selling other people's businesses, so he's been in the trenches in M&A. And now he's back and, you know, offline as usual. I'm speaking with him and he's got a gazillion ideas. They're all great ideas. But let me pause it there, because Pete, you are a thought leader and a terrific leader overall. It's so terrific to have you back here. And, since we last spoke, a lot has changed here. At default, we've been growing, thank goodness and a robust community. So for our new listeners, why don't you share the story behind the story, Pete, you know, who are you, what got you to where you are today?

Jeff, it's awesome to be back with you and your listeners. And I look back, it was over a hundred episodes, so congratulations. I mean, you're, piling in the episodes and all of that stuff. It's great to see other people sharing the interest in business ownership and all the different things we do in Wealth. And so where did I start? I started a long time ago, almost 30 years ago. I'm not gonna go through the whole story, but bought my first business when I was 23. I had some smaller sort of seasonal businesses before that, and I've owned franchises and bathroom remodeling and cleaning. We had a cleaning franchise that we went from 30 to 300 clients and sold it. the Bathroom Remodeling Company, which when I look back, I'm like, 1994. Holy cow. 30 years goes quick. And I mean, it's 29 years, that business is still doing well. The person that bought it is doing phenomenally well and I'm excited for him. And I can't believe it, but I've been a footwear, a shoe store owner now since 2010, which is 13 years ago. Time flies and so been a retailer for the last 13 years. Continued to own a couple of shoe stores I spend most of my time these days, Jeffrey, around. My business called simplifying entrepreneurship, which is coaching other business leaders. And I use the framework these days moving from operator of their business to owner of their business. And it's an interesting mindset and it's an interesting way of looking at things. And quite honestly, we talked a little bit before hopping on live here, but the idea here around. The fact that your business is most valuable when you, as the business owner are not making every single decision. And I like to say decisions should be made at the lowest possible level of the organization every single time. So I'll frame that back into our shoe stores. If somebody came in and bought a pair of shoes for their husband, let's say, and she said, I think he's a nine and a half, I'm not sure, but I think he's a nine and a half, so I'm gonna take a nine and a half. And she went away and proves out he was a 10 or 11 and she came back and she wanted to change those shoes for a 10, let's say, because she thought he was a 10. If that was a problem. If I didn't have the process in place, and I know on our previous episode we talked about the five Ps around all the process and the people and the products, but if I didn't have the process in place that allowed the. The person that dealt with that person soon as they came in to make the decision, to get the exchange and to turn that person away loose and happy, and having the right product and delivering our promise within the shoe store in order to make that happen. Think about this. If that person wasn't charged with the authority to do that, then she would've said excuse me. I gotta go get the assistant manager. To make this decision and the customer's going, what the heck's going on here? And so the assistant manager comes back and says, oh, size nine and a half to a size 10. I don't know. I think I'm gonna have to go get the manager for that one.

Sure.

And then she runs off, and then the manager comes back and says, okay, the owner isn't in today, but I should have a decision for you three days from now. How does that look? It looks. Not so great. It doesn't sound great as far as customer experience, as far as doesn't give the air of professionalism in your business, all of these different things. So, I've created systems and frameworks with simplifying entrepreneurship all around the idea of allowing decisions to be made at the lowest possible level so that the business owner themselves isn't making every minutiae detail. and they can really work in the areas, what I call their love it zone of looking at how they want to live their life through their business instead of always propping up their business to have a better business.

Yeah, such terrific points. And Pete, for most business owners, and you've asked the question and you've said it in a different way, a Deep Wealth, much like yourself. One of the first questions we're asking, anytime we meet a new business owner, Hey, does the business run without you?

Yeah,

And there's a lot of hemming and highing, and ultimately it's no. And even if there's a management team, oftentimes all the decisions flow through my office, even though I have a president or a CEO or a management team. So for the business owners and really the listeners who are now hearing you and I talk and they're nodding their heads saying, yeah, you know, that really is me. I'll, admit it, I'll do the walk of shame. That is me. That's what's going on. Why? is that going on though? We as business owners, we're smart. We're better than that yet we still succumb to that. So what do you think is going on with the psychology behind that peach?

I think there's many of us have probably even read one of these books. There's Tiny Habits by BJ Fogs. There's Atomic Habits. There's Brandon Bouchard wrote one, I can't remember what his was, but another one on Habits. There's a lot of stuff on habits, but the reality of it is, is as founders, if you're a founder in particular, Most often, you didn't start with a great big pocket load of cash and you were lean and mean and you were making the decisions cuz you had to There wasn't anyone else to align in the sign authority too, it was you. And depending on how long that takes. 1, 3, 5, sometimes 10 years to grow to a level where you're gonna move up the chain, depending on your industry, then you know, you are habituated into making all of these decisions. So it's not comfortable for you to let decisions go. So I've got another little framework and you know, I like my frameworks and it's called the cpa and it's not the Chartered Professional Accountant, It's called. Mastering your communication process and accountability. And from that perspective, when you get mastery in communication as the business leader. In process management as the business leader and in accountability as the business leader, that's when your business starts to run on rails. Jeffrey, that's when it's kind of, it's kinda like, hmm, things are actually starting to go well. When you can communicate what you want, when you can lay out the process in a defined way, and there's so many great ways to layout process these days. It's not just the manual that sits in the back of your employee's trunk out in the parking lot, there's loom videos to show how things are done. There's all sorts of ways. Think about the way people absorb information, audio, video, I mean, we're doing podcasts here today. It's a way to absorb information and, literature, all these different things. You're gonna lay out the process so that people can understand it with full clarity Because when you feel comfortable about that, it's easier to assign the authority to, for them to make the decisions.

So it's interesting. Oftentimes we get back to the art side of business, the mindset side, and it's really a mindset. So, Pete, why don't you keep on going. I love your acronyms. I love the systems. The 10 laws or the five F's, or the CPA or the four a's of accountability. But back to the 10 laws from operator to owner. So you've talked about one of where really taking us outta the equation, where it's systematizing that people, whether it be from the frontline up to not us, but the president or ceo, whoever's running the company, whatever that title is, that they have the authority, the ability to do that. What else is going on? What are the other laws that can really help us? Grow this business and while we're growing it, increasing the enterprise value. Because as you know, we were talking offline when you were selling businesses as you said, and I've heard buyers say the same thing. Hey, I don't want another full-time job when I buy someone's company. I want something that runs on its own and that I can oversee it. I don't need the headaches and the other responsibilities if it doesn't run without the business owner. So what else what's going on with the other laws here?

One of the things that I find a lot of times so defining the guiding principles of the business, even though the business has been, around for five or 10 years, or 25 years, whatever the case is, a lot of times if you ask them specifically what they don't have sort of a set of guiding principles now. There's the mission and the vision, and most people have those, but they don't even know what they are cuz they aren't current, they don't meet, they aren't meaningful, they aren't, set out with timelines and objective goals. They don't know the promise necessarily. And sometimes a business, especially if it's been around for, a while and pre covid, let's even say

Sure.

things were different back then and we look at how things are done now and if you set all of these guiding principles up that you're looking to transfer potentially to somebody else to help you run the business or potentially even to a new owner. Having these guiding principles that are set and solid and understandable and clear and followed in your business and hired for and aligned with your clients is so crucial. And think about that. If you had that as an offering to a new c e O that was coming in to run and said, this is how it's done here. This is our mantra. And most of the time that stuff is not up to date. It's not current. It's not meaningful So a lot of times you gotta go back. That's one of the laws of law Number two is define your guiding principles. And what does that mean? It means understanding your promise. It means clarifying the critical actions that you and your team needs to do every day, and the key characteristics in order to take your business to the next level and be able to communicate those clearly to everyone. Internally and externally.

Interesting. And so getting that done, can you give us an example of that, Pete, because Okay, on paper or hearing you say defining the guiding principles. Sure. Get that, but now let's get into the trenches here and what would that look like exactly.

I'll just use. My simplifying entrepreneurship, for example. And I don't have it off the top of my list right here, but I can tell you basically what, the promise of simplifying entrepreneurship. I've already mentioned it. It's to help business owners move from operator to owner. So most business owners have been at it. They're in the trenches, they're overworked, they're overwhelmed. So we use at simplifying entrepreneurship frameworks to help reduce that, give them their time back, give them their life back, give them their future back, and give them what they wanted to do when they first got into business, which is I have a dream of better life and the business is now used to promote that. So that's what we do, right? As far as simplifying entrepreneurship. Now how do I do that? Some critical actions that I do, and I live this I network. Basically an hour a day. So I'm, we're networking here. I consider a podcast a network and we're spending an hour or so, and I was on two yesterday. And so if I'm averaging give or take a networking hour, a day, a week, that's part of my critical actions to have a successful business. I read and I learn at least an hour a day. And I mean, I'm always reading, I'm always absorbing different information so that I can impart that. To my clients and help them through their issues because most things have already been done before. And I mean, as much as I create frameworks and all this other stuff, it's not like they're completely new or it's not like they may just be reframed in different ways that suit what I'm doing and my language and all of these different things. But ultimately, I need to be able to know what I can plug and play for each of my clients right as I'm going through that, or we're having a podcast or give them the actionable items to take their life from. What my promise is, which is move them from operators to owners. Right? So you can see how these kind of things align. And most of the time when we go back into this stuff, what's the key characteristics? I have to be believable. I have to be, presentable. I have to be. All of these different things around the key characteristics of what I need to do in order to be front stage in my business, because that's my job in simplifying entrepreneurship is to be front stage. I'm the person that's on the podcast here today and I've got some other people that help me in the background and all that sort of stuff. So, you know, all of these things are really important to align and assign and when we look at the accountability chart, Which is, you know, you're talking about your team and all of that sort of stuff. Really important on how all of the critical actions, the key characteristics and the guiding principles align with your accountability chart. Because if you aren't hiring with those in mind, there's probably some weirdness in your business.

Hence, speaking of weirdness, I'm gonna add into that Pete Pressure. And stress and lack of focus and the end of the day comes and when we're the operator, I'm sure from many business owners, looking back, where did the day go? I didn't get a single thing accomplished and they're important things to do. So we've painted a fairly bleak picture and I'm sure a lot of listeners are nodding. Yeah, you know, as bleak as it is, unfortunately that's where it's at today. Let's put that ray of light out there. Some hope for them. So Pete, when we implement the 10 laws from operator to owner, and that's simplifying entrepreneurship through your consulting practice, you're leading the charge of how to do this with the clients. I mean, what does that look like? So I've gone through this process. Now I'm fast forwarding Pete, however long that is, and now I'm actually an owner. I'm no longer an operator. What's my day like? Let's paint that ideal picture, that ideal day of what that really looks like. we'll hear from you in just a moment. I suspect. That what it looks like is probably what we had hoped it would be when we first got into business in the first place to begin with. But let's hear it straight from the source. So what does that look like once I've mastered these 10 principles, these 10 laws?

I think your expectations are right. I mean, most of the people that I work with, we start by saying, okay, let's reel back to when you got into business and think about those things. Why did you elect to be a business owner? Cuz being a business owner is not easy. I. There's risks, but there's rewards. I mean, I've had a lot of failure in my 30 years, but I've had a lot of wins and I wouldn't change it for the world. I love being a business owner, and so I've got this framework called Love it or Leave It. And from that perspective, I use Love it or leave it. And we can talk about that in a sec, but I start off with really mapping out what is it that you want over the next 1, 3, 5, 10 years as a person, And how are we going to. Map your business into delivering that to you. And once you start getting your business on rails, once you start having the right team in place, once you start imparting some of the authority to your team so that they can make decisions for you and giving them even more, then you can start working in your love it zone. And I love this idea around love it or leave it and, I've got this little Practice essentially. And what you do is you map down everything that you are accountable for two weeks And. It's not that easy. You'll probably get 80% of it in the first go round. If you sat down for 40 minutes and just wrote down everything that actually you are accountable for, you'll get it. 80% of it in the first go round, but it's all those other little things that you don't think about that take up your time, take up your energy, take up your mental ability, take up all of this other stuff that come out over the next two weeks. And then we take that list and we map it back into the love it or leave it quadrants and there's four of them. And basically they are, I love it and I'm good at it, which is where you wanna live as the business owner, right? I love doing this and I'm actually good at it.

Okay.

And then there's, I love it, but I'm not good at it, which means I really enjoy this. I'm probably not as good as some other people on this, but it's something that I just really enjoy doing. And then there's, don't love it and good at it, which means, and I'll use bookkeeping as an example for me. I'm actually pretty good at numbers, but I really just don't like doing it. It's dreadful for me. I don't have any hair on top of my head, but I'd be pulling up my what, whatever there is on top of my head every day if I had to do the bookkeeping, even though I'm good at it, And then there's, I don't love it and I'm not good at And most business owners listening to this podcast of your leader, and you're, that's a hard box for most business owners. You know what? Accepting the fact that I'm not good at it and I don't love it. So, I often will see this one a little less full than the other ones. There's lots of, I don't love it and I'm good at it. There's not as much love it and not good at it, but all of these things, just understanding where it fits and then what you do once you overlay all of these things into these boxes are onto their own individual sheet of paper. You give just a general idea of how much time you're spending in each of these boxes, in each of these quadrants. And what I'm seeing and what I have seen over the years is that there's a lot of, don't love it, but good at it. And that's not a zone you want to live in. And that's a zone quite frankly, where most people, if they're spending a lot of time and they're, don't love it and good at it, feel like they wanna sell their business cuz they're fed up and tired.

Interesting. Let me ask you this. If we deal or dial into the minutiae for just a moment, And I suspect that 80, 90, 90 5% of the time, what you're putting out there, it's actually where we should be. I mean, let's really be in the areas that move the dial. I love it. I'm good at it. I'm terrific at that. Wonderful. And I love how you're saying, how much time am I spending? And it's a great way to really visualize exactly what's going on, and you're mapping your time over a two week period and Yeah, maybe you'll miss a few things here and there, but it is, it's probably accurate. But let me take a little twist on this. Let's suppose a business owner loves a particular activity, is really good at that activity, but in some ways it blinds the business owner because that activity doesn't move the dial for the business. Let me give you an example. So let's suppose that the business owner really good with customers and the front facing with customers, and when the big problems come up. It's there, but maybe it's a smaller customer that particular day, or maybe it's a larger one or someone in between, but they're really good at it, but they're spending most of the time there probably because they're still an operator, not an owner, but it's not moving the dial. Let's talk about growth of revenues, profits, creating a blue ocean, having the time to see these inflection points. I mean, we talk all about this in the Deep Wealth nine-step roadmap, and so there it's a Love it. Good at it. But in some ways it's a blind spot or a skeleton for the business owner I'm gonna make it ridiculous. Jeffrey, you're really good at weaving these wonderful croquets or blankets or whatever that you hang up in the front office there. Clients love them, the staff loves them. That doesn't really do much for the business. Now, I'm overly exaggerating. That's being ridiculous. But just to make the point, so how does a business owner. See through that and say, you know what, yeah, I'm really good at it. I do love it, but I really probably shouldn't be doing it because it's not moving the dial or it's getting in the way of other things, or the businesses being held back from that. Do you ever come across that?

I do. And there's a few different things that you can sort of model around that. One is that, Often business owners, and this is why there are coaches like what I do essentially. But because their partners at home don't want to hear about it anymore, Their friends don't really understand the issues that they're going through, and their team at work generally isn't as open, even though you have an open door policy. But you're hoping that if you've build and aligned and assigned the right management team, that you're gonna have an open enough conversation that your management team, cause I know, like I'll just even say at Utopia, if my management team saw me doing something that I was just wasting my time, they would say, Hey, do that on your own time. When you're here, you, we need you to do this.

Ah-huh. Yeah. That's

So, I mean, that's kind of what you want, right? you want this open dialogue with your management team. When you sit down in your structured meetings and you're talking about strategy and you're talking about these different things, you gotta have this sort of combination of the people power that fourth p of the five Ps of really understanding, this is not where you're good and we need you to do this, and I'll use an example. In my stores when I go in and if I'm working on the floor, cuz I am a decent salesperson on the floor. And they will say to me Pete, you need to do this. We need you to do a video or we need you to do, I'll take the sale. You need to do a video so that, cuz you're better used on doing the videos to promote the store. And so as leaders we often will need somebody to check us. On those kind of things. And so hopefully you have an integrator in place or like you were talking about a president in place or whatever, and you guys have this sort of situation where you can be bantering back and forth about best use of time because the love it or leave it. Sort of framework is really even better when you can allow the rest of your team to be working in their love zone too. Cause that's when you get the most productivity. But understanding that we're talking about loving it or leaving it within your job at work, not sort of, I just love to crochet and I'm gonna crochet all day. So it's one of these things around we need to understand the nodes of our business on the accountability chart first, and if my name is on the accountability chart of marketing, I need to get that marketing stuff done.

Pete, what's terrific with what you're sharing, and for the listeners, I really hope you picked up on this because Pete, what we're talking about, and at Deep Wealth, we say it in a different way. Same outcome as what you're talking about is step two. X-Factors, X-Factors, insanely. Increase the value of your business, like grow your business. It's

For sure.

So if we have an open culture, and number one, if your culture perhaps isn't where you want it to be the change that you want to see. And you can start. For all our listeners out there, they can start by having a leadership meeting. Hey, let's put this quadrant out there. Love it. Don't love it. Good at it. Not good at it. Everyone's gonna do this, and I'm just making this up. I'm putting myself under the microscope with that ridiculous example of crochet. But team, I know I spent a lot of time doing crochet. I love it. I'm good at it, but if we're honest about it, it doesn't move down on the business. I need you to call me out on that. So please, can you help me? Because sometimes I just get overcome by my excitement to do that and I'm not doing it. Please call me out and maybe we can make the commitment as a team. Together. If we see someone who's really good in an area, but it's not what the business needs, we'll call them out as well in a respectful and professional way. And wow, what a culture that creates.

Gina Wickman is where I first heard the word accountability chart from his book Tra. Action years and years ago, and I always liked the calling it an accountability chart, not an organizational chart. And I've kind of lived that one along the way. And when we look at the idea of having somebody's name in that box Or the accountability chart, it's not a title. Titles for me are, I'm entitled to my entitles, you know, and maybe that's the small business part of me as opposed to the corporate side of me. It's just like titles, okay. I don't really care about what your title is. I care about what you do. And I want to know the accountabilities around that. And if your accountability, like I said, is marketing, let's say, or even social media, or maybe it's accounting or whatever the accountability is, let's understand that and how we're going to map that into the future of the business, which is the guiding principles which align our mission, which align our goals, which align all these other things. How are we working together to get to where we need to be within our business? And if we don't have ultimate clarity, then everybody's kind of running around with their heads cut off.

Yeah. Yeah, no, some incredibly powerful strategies here. And Pete, let me ask you this. So we've got that out there. We're starting to move along here. And again, I'm a big believer in what some people call the minimum effective dose or ritos law or the 80 20 rule. So let's apply that here to your 10 laws from operator to owner. And I, I just love how you position these things and you come up with these memorable, snazzy kinds of titles and insights when you're working either in your business or with your clients and you're looking at a whole number of other businesses. Of the 10 laws. Where are most business owners really, I don't want to use the word failing, but having challenges That, okay, Jeffrey, you know what, you're not alone. Don't worry so much about this. A lot of my clients do this. Most of the business owners they're doing this, please think about, stop doing this and start doing that. What would this and that be from the 10 laws?

So if I'm gonna pull a couple leadership oriented ones, There's law number three is cultivate your leadership skills, and we talked about those skills. What were they, your cpa? Cultivate your communication, your process management, and your accountability skills this year. Like how important is that? Do whatever you can do to learn more how to be a better communicator. Because as a leader of your business, your number one job is to communicate the promise So that everybody knows internally and externally what it is you do and how you do that. So I would say that's definitely one of them. One of the other leadership ones, Lana number four, is champion continuous improvement.

Terrific. Okay.

I don't know whether you know of the rule of Kaizen. It's, Kaizen is a Japanese sort of framework. And as I told you earlier in the podcast, we used to have a cleaning company and we had a machine that was like a power washer that we'd go into bathrooms with. And this power steam, power washer and everything, it was called the Kaizen Unit. And the idea there was every time we power washed these, Commercial bathrooms and everything we were doing. Just tiny bits of improvement over what was already there and always making it one step better. And this idea behind making, it's like compound interest. We're talking or Deep Wealth, Podcast here, it's This is compound interest, continuous improvement on all of the different things that you do all of the time. So important.

Yeah, it is. And as you're saying, compound interest. Pete, I know you know the story for our listeners are gonna share it because what you're saying, it's so valuable, but it's so easy to overlook as well. I mean, with compound interest I'm always reminded of the magic penny story. And for the listeners that aren't familiar, maybe you forgot the story. Imagine you're walking down the street, you see the shiny object on the sidewalk. You go over and the shiny object is a penny. But it's not just any penny. You find out there's some instructions with it magically, and on the instructions it says, okay, congratulations. You found the magic penny. You're able to keep this penny for 31 days, and if you decide to keep the penny for 31 days each day it doubles. So day one, it's 1 cent. On the second day, it's 2 cents. On the third day, it's 4 cents. On the fourth day, it's 8 cents. On and on. Or today's your lucky day. You don't have to keep the magic penny. If you put the magic penny back, you will receive a million dollars cash. And what do you wanna do? So for most business owners, it's okay. Let me take the million dollars. Thank you very much. But for the few that say, I'll keep the magic penny and the magic penny, what ends up happening? When you get to the 31st day, my numbers may be a little bit off here, not too far off. It's somewhere in and around 15 to 16 million,

Amazing.

but, and it's a big one, it doesn't really begin to happen until the last three to four days. So in other words, day 26. Not really much happening there. Yeah. Is something there, but it's not in the millions because remember, it doubles every day. And here's the other thing. So if I'm hearing ya, Pete, and every day it's like compound interest. Make a change. I'm busy, I'll do it tomorrow. I'll get to it in three days from now on the magic penny. Okay, I'll do the magic penny. But I'm really busy today. Let me start it in three days. If you start it in three days, Then the magic penny isn't worth the 15 or 16 million. I'm making the sepsis number. It's not too far off. It's a fraction of a fraction. It's less than a million dollars. So from less than a million dollars, which isn't bad in and of itself, but it's a rounding error compared to 15,$16 million. You be the judge. So for our listeners with what Pete's sharing, do it today. Don't wait. Every day hurts you. Or it can help you, but you decide on that. Thoughts about that, Pete, what do you think?

I couldn't agree more. And that's what I said, my structure of my guiding principles, I mean, I'm learning every day, right? I'm networking every day. I, if I don't do those, I lose all of those compounded, my reach is not as far, my understanding is not as great. All of these different, I won't be able to help my clients as good as I. Could. And so all of these things, so, so important. One of my other ones leadership wise, law Six, embrace Technology. A lot of leaders are scared of technology.

Let me ask you something, Pete, because you read my mind. My very next question to you is gonna be, whether it be leadership or business, you're a bright guy. You're right there in the trenches. You're working with a lot of business owners. You're seeing what's happening out there. What's your take? I mean, artificial intelligence. Every day there's a new headline and it seems to be getting better and better, and I'm sure we'll be at the point where some negative things will start to come up, but let's focus on the positive. Where is ai heading for us as business owners, what should we anticipate and more importantly, what should we be doing so that we're not that proverbial hat maker, today making hats when everyone else has moved on, or that carriage maker for horses when the car has just come out. So what's going on with ai? What do you think we should know?

I love ai. I'm not a technological junkie. I don't know how to code. There's so many things I don't know how to do. But when I look at it from a leader's framework, You don't necessarily know how to do these things. You just need to know what the outcome could be if you use them. And so I jumped on chat, G P T, and right off the bat, And I have used it extensively. I love it. I think it's a great tool. I don't know Mid Journey as well. I don't know some of these other ones as well. I haven't had, there's only so much time in a day and there's only so much time I'm willing to commit to learning that stuff. But one of the things that I did do this year is I joined a group who I know and I know the whole. Philosophy behind his business is all around the leading edge of technology. And when I joined that group, I basically said, because, I'm a coach, but I am coached as well in a variety of different areas, right? And so I said to this leader, I said, I. You know me cuz we've dealt before. I'm not the technological guru, but the reason I want to be involved here, and a lot of the people in this group are, the reason I want to be involved in here is because I want to better, understand what AI and what technology can do for me and my clients, And then we'll go out and find the right person to be actionable about those.

Sure.

So I love ai. AI is here to stay, and for people that are worried about all of that stuff, all I can say is it's not going anywhere. It's just going to become more. And if you shy away from that as a leader of your business, then you need to put somebody in place that's going to understand it and understand what it can do for your business, or else you will fall behind and probably fall behind quickly.

Yeah. And for our listeners, if you're on the fence on this one, two things to what Pete is saying. I want you to go back to the first time that you heard the word email address or worldwide web. We call it the web now, but back in the day, worldwide Web and so many people, oh, you know what? It's a fad. It's not gonna be here. I'm not gonna worry about it. I'll get to it when I get to it. What did that do to your business? I mean, Microsoft was almost put outta business, a tech giant, tighten the business. And so if you're there and you've done that, don't repeat that mistake, Pete, back to your leadership side. Jump on it, get that going. And you know what everyone in AI is saying? The leaders thought leaders, the people who are in it, they may disagree on certain things, but they fairly are, they're fairly consistent and they agree on the following. Big picture wise, whoever masters AI today, so whoever creates the chatbot or the AI algorithms and they are the quote-unquote winner today, they will rule for the next a hundred years. Think about that for a second. Now, you and I, Pete, we're not out there creating the algorithms and the backend and all of that, but if it applies to them, it also applies to us in our space, in our industry, if we can leverage ai. That we can really put this to the test and automate and save time and put our thinking to where we should be, will lead the industry. And it's no different. The example that they gave. When you speak to the AI thought leaders, I love it. Go back to when ships were originally invented. And it was the English who dominated the world because they dominated the seas for the next century. So ai, it's a golden opportunity. So for all the listeners, jump on that. Get going. Don't waste any time. Ai, you know What kind of resources, so when it comes to ai, whether it's groups like you're talking about or things to read, what would you recommend? Where would someone turn to start learning about AI and how to integrate that into the business?

YouTube.

Love it, YouTube. Okay.

Why do people overlook YouTube? I don't understand. you can watch videos on anything. You can fix your car with YouTube. You can learn how to use chat, g p t with YouTube. I mean, there's so much information on YouTube and it's free. And it's easy to search. So a lot of those things, if you just go to YouTube and type in ai, you're gonna see all sorts of different things, and you can take your pick on who you like. There's a gazillion hours worth of content being put up there every day. And yes, there are certain areas that you want to go through and, look at and you can be, down the garden path with YouTube and given the wrong information. But quite honestly, you can. That's the same with Google or with any of the other ones as well too. So for me, I like to absorb video when I'm looking at technology type stuff cuz I wanna see how they're doing it. I like to actually physically see the step-by-step sort of process. If I was looking, if we're gonna use the frame of chat G p T, if you open ChatGPT, you see a black screen in a little box there and it's okay, what do I do now? Right. And so I want to be sort of taken by the hand the first few times I use any piece of technology, and then I'll start branching out on my own. And if I need to go deeper, then I'll look for somebody that can take me deeper with specific search questions into YouTube, and I'm usually gonna find the answer.

Terrific. And you know, when I speak to various CEOs, presidents, thought leaders, business owners, what they're saying, you know, Jeffrey, I look to AI and whatever the bot happens to be, because Pete, we're throwing around names now a year from now, maybe they're here, maybe they're not, maybe it's somebody else, but whatever it is, I look to that ai, that bot as the smartest management consultant. And so I'm having a meeting with my board of directors, or I'm having a meeting with my president and leadership team, and so the computer's open, I have it on the screen, everyone can see it. We're discussing a topic, and I'll put that. Into the chat bot. I don't have to know how to program and most people don't. I do know how to ask a question and I ask the question, and now we have the world's smartest management consultant. The price is right, right there in the meeting that can pull in milliseconds in the blink of an eye. What would take us hours, if not days or weeks, to be able to do. And it's little things like that, that we start to build that into the culture and you better believe the people in that meeting, they're not taking that back to their departments and when they're having meetings, okay, let's get the chat bot open for ai. Let's put that question in there. And so it's back to the leadership, be the change we wanna see in other people.

Yeah. Yeah, I think So, so important. one of the other laws that I have that we hadn't chatted about today, law number nine, is to stay adaptable and. Isn't that one of the beautiful things about being a business owner and being in, let's call it small to medium business, that we can still change the way we do things. We can still be adaptable, we can still modify, you know, some huge conglomerates and I'll just use the educational facilities as one of them. When we look at how we've just talked about chatbots and stuff, but how that is affecting. Universities and colleges and the way they're going to have to present and the way they're going to grade and the way they're, I mean, how much they've done things a certain way for 200 years and now in six months things are completely changed. And to move a big ship like that is very hard and to move a smaller, more agile business. Should be easier. And that's why I say stay adaptable because a lot of business owners get sort of stuck into doing things the way they do, and they aren't looking for better ways to make it either bigger for their customers, better for their customers, faster for their customers, or easier or more simple. Hence simplifying entrepreneurship, right? We're always trying to simplify it for our customers because customers want. To have an easier life. I mean, at the end of the day, whether people are buying your services, Jeffrey, my services, or anyone else's, why are we buying a good or a service? Because we want to have a better life.

Sure. really, our modus opera operandi, our mo as business owners solve people's problems, take that pain away, make life so much better for them. And Pete, let me ask you this as we begin to wrap up here, and again, the 10 laws, we could easily have an episode on each, and perhaps we should, if a listener coming out of this episode, because for every episode we like to have one actionable takeaway. So imagine that a listener now finishes hearing us talk, and before they go into that meeting, that next email, that phone call, whatever is going on in their day. If they could do one thing and one thing only that, let's use the minimum effective dose, not a lot of effort. That said, it has a fairly sizable result. It really moves the dial. What would you suggest? What should they think about doing?

Clarify your purpose, clarify your promise. And I'm speaking to the leaders here, the business owners themselves. If you haven't clarified your promise recently, And shared it with everyone. every meeting you have doesn't start with that promise, this is what we do at X Corporation,

Sure.

then I can tell you that there are people in your corporation that aren't doing that, And there are customers that don't know you do it. So if that isn't super, super clear and shared to the world, Then. It's nothing bigger than that to make all of the decisions in behind the fact that this is our promise. This is the problem we solve. This is how we solve the problem in order to take that customer from their pain point to a better life. That's your job as a leader. And if you haven't been doing that, and I'm saying this because I know a lot of leaders aren't doing this. And it's really, they're wondering what's going on and why aren't people getting it? And if you're asking yourself, why don't they just do it? Why don't they just get it? It's probably cuz they don't understand with ultimate clarity what the promise of the business is.

Sure. Wow. Terrific. Clarify your promise, your purpose, really make that crystal clear. You know, As we like to say here, I like to say, Hey, is it clear as crystal or is it clear as mud? Hopefully not clear as mud because we have some issues there. Some sage advice there. So, Pete, as we go into wrap up mode, this is a repeat question for you. That said, the only thing constant in business and in life is change, change itself. And perhaps you've changed or not. No judgments here. Both are really good. Let me remind you, and for a new listeners as well, I have the privilege and honor of asking every guest on the Deep Wealth Podcast. So Pete, if you remember the movie Back to the Future, you have that magical DeLorean car that will take you to any point in time. Guess what, tomorrow, Pete, it's your lucky day and you look outside your window first thing in the morning. There it is. The DeLorean car. The door is open. It's waiting for you to hop in what you do, and you can now go back to any point in your life, Pete, as a young child, a teenager, whatever point in time it would be. What would you tell your younger self? In terms of life lessons or life wisdom or, Hey Pete, please don't do that or do this, what would that sound like?

From a business framework because I started a business as a young person. I'd probably say to get a mentor, get a coach early on, as opposed to waiting till later. It's like the compound interest we talked about, Jeffrey,

Sure.

and, I've had a lot of great people to help me along the way, and I am so ever thankful for that. But at the same time, I may not have even asked the questions that I should have, even though they were willing to offer good advice, or I may have thought I was too, I don't know, pigheaded or whatever the case was at the time, that I didn't need their advice and maybe not absorb it as much as I should have when they gave it to me. And, all of the people I've had a chance to spend time with and everything, and I, am very conscious of that stuff and have been almost all my life, but I probably could have been even more conscious about that along the way. And I think that's one of the things, it's like people, there's a beautiful thing about business owners, Jeffrey. Want to see other people succeed. They want to see, they want you to do better than they did. They don't want you to make the mistakes that they made, and they are always willing to help you get through those steps of the ladder faster and easier than they did. And that's a beautiful thing about business owners. I just love it.

Yeah. We are a unique crew. Certainly are, and some terrific traits in there. And really, Pete, as you're talking about that, it's such terrific advice because a mentor. Coach, whatever you like to put around that's someone who's in your life, presumably you're spending a lot of time with. And I believe it was Jim Ron who said, we are the average of the five people we spend the most amount of time with. And so if we're picking a mentor, I'm gonna make a big assumption here, but that assumption is that mentor is successful. They're integral, they're an honest person. They're a great person. That's one of the five. That's terrific. You're well on your way. To checking the boxes and leading a successful, meaningful, prosperous life. You're making a difference out there. So, Pete, before we wrap this up, for listeners who are saying, wow, Pete, I love your frameworks. I wanna learn more, I have questions. Help me outta my business, become my mentor, or coach me. If someone wants to reach you online or they have a question, where is the best place that they can do this?

you type my name in Google Pete Moore, m o h r, you will find a plethora of things. My website is simplifying entrepreneurship because that's the name of my business. And we talked a lot about the 10 laws today. I've got a little download there on the 10 laws, a little PDF download outlining those, and it's that simplifying entrepreneurship. Dot com slash laws la w s so pretty easy to grab that and that will put you into the network. Always happy to have a chat with anybody, I don't coach because I have to coach Jeffrey. I coach because I want to coach and it's just something I love to do. I love to talk to business owners like we have here today. We have a, kinship already after a couple of podcasts and, you know, it's just great digging through people's Issues and trying to help them move up the ladder and give them a better life through the business that they own.

Awesome, terrific insights and resources for our listeners. It really can't get any easier. Come to the show notes, click on the link and you'll get to the website. Simplifying entrepreneurship. You'll get the 10 laws, the ebook, all the other information you'll get put into network. And with that said, Pete, it's official. This is a wrap, and as I love to say, on behalf of myself and the entire Deep Wealth team, may you continue to thrive and prosper while you remain healthy and safe. Thank you so much.

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