From Startup Grind to Freedom: Building a Business That Runs Without You with Peter Mohr

Pete Mohr draws from 30 years of entrepreneurial experience to reveal the crucial shift every business owner must make – transitioning from operator to owner. Having grown and sold multiple successful companies, Pete shares how he now balances owning footwear stores while coaching entrepreneurs through this pivotal transition.

The conversation centers around Pete's powerful "six P's" framework: Promise, Process, Product, People, Promotion, and Profit. Rather than focusing on internal vision statements, Pete emphasizes that businesses must deliver on their external promises to customers who "only buy one thing – a better life." When these six elements align perfectly, owners gain both freedom and profitability.

For those feeling overwhelmed by day-to-day operations, Pete offers practical advice on developing Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) and creating accountability systems that allow businesses to function without constant owner involvement. His simple yet powerful question – "What would you do if I wasn't here?" – helps transfer authority to team members, gradually freeing owners from routine decision-making.

Beyond tactical advice, Pete delivers a sobering reminder that drives home why this transition matters: "You will exit your business one day." Whether through planned retirement or unexpected circumstances, every entrepreneur eventually leaves their business. By systematically building a company that doesn't depend on your presence, you create greater freedom today while establishing a valuable, sellable asset for tomorrow.

Ready to break free from being the bottleneck in your business? Download Pete's free guide "The 10 Laws of Moving from Operator to Owner" at simplifyingentrepreneurship.com and connect with him at pete-mohr.com to explore how his coaching can accelerate your journey from operator to owner.

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Pete and His Experience
• 2:26 Moving from Operator to Owner
• 6:12 The Six P's Business Framework
• 10:58 Setting Up SOPs and Productivity Tips
• 14:38 Creating a Culture of Accountability
• 21:02 Leadership and Exit Strategy Planning

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hello there.

Speaker 2: 0:02

Hello.

Speaker 1: 0:03

Welcome back to the next episode of Overcome Yourself, the podcast. As you know, my name is Nicole and I'm so excited to be here today with Pete. And now Pete has a very interesting expertise and we're going to talk a little bit about how to elevate your business. I guess how to elevate your business. I guess how to go from what you know what. I'm going to stop and I'm going to go ahead and let you take over Pete. So please introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about what you do and how you help business owners go from operators to owners and what's the difference there. So let's talk a little bit.

Speaker 2: 0:44

For sure. Well, thanks so much for having me, nicole. I'm excited for our chat here today, excited to be with our listeners too. And yeah, 30 years I've been in business now. Time flies, nicole. I can't believe it.

Speaker 2: 1:00

I ran small businesses that were service oriented for the first half of my career. We had a cleaning franchise that we grew from 30 clients to 300 clients and sold it. We had another franchise that was bathroom renovations that we defranchised and moved on and then sold it, grew it to a multiple truck operation and it was interesting. You know, in September, on the 30th anniversary of that business, the now owner of it called me up and he said Pete, you owned it for 15 years. I've owned it for 15 years. It served us both well, so it's just exciting to see some of that sort of stuff along the way.

Speaker 2: 1:41

For the last 15 years, my wife and I have been footwear store owners, so we own a couple of shoe stores in Canada and I spend the majority of my time coaching business owners. These days I just got back from a month sabbatical and the idea of moving from operator to owner. So you know I'm living it, which would be hard to coach to it if I wasn't actually doing it in my own businesses. So from that perspective, you know, we've got everything set up in the businesses now through what I call the six Ps of moving from operator to owner, and that when you have all that stuff ready for your business, it allows you to have a little bit more freedom and a lot more profit.

Speaker 2: 2:23

And I think that the idea of from operator to owner and I, you know there's probably a lot of people listening here that are in the startup phase, and in the startup phase it's a hard thing to do.

Speaker 2: 2:37

You just got to get your head down and just plow through. And I mean, I don't negate the fact that there's startup phases and that we have to do what we have to do to get to a certain point. But once you get to a certain point and you're sort of maxed out and tapped out and all that kind of stuff, you can't do it anymore. Then we need to activate some systems, some processes, some people, some and some profit in order to move the ball ahead for the next stage of business. And I think that's this idea of going from operator to owner. So if you're in a retail store, like me, the idea is you don't want to have to open the store every day, you don't have to close the store every day, you don't want to have to sell to every client, you don't want to have to hire every single employee and do your book work and do your marketing and like I mean, there comes a time where inventory.

Speaker 1: 3:24

Yeah all of it, right.

Speaker 2: 3:26

And, and so we need to start setting up the business so that other people take charge of these things.

Speaker 2: 3:34

And it's not that easy to do for somebody, especially if, coming out of startup, where you're your head's all in alignment that I need to make every decision, and I have been making every decision for a year or two years or three years in order to get it to where it is today, because we get habitualized into that right.

Speaker 2: 3:49

And so now we need to kind of come out of that and look at it and say, hey, I'd like to have a little bit of life back and I'd like to maybe see my kids hockey game or baseball game or swimming competition or whatever the case is, and do some of these things. Or maybe I just want to take some time off, and it starts with taking maybe a weekend off, because a lot of small business owners work seven days a week. And then it's like can I take a week off, can I take two weeks off? Can I take two weeks off without actually having anybody at the store call me? Or like I just came off of a month's sabbatical where I didn't have any contact for a full month. I mean, whatever it is for you, whatever your freedom is, is this idea of moving from operator to owner?

Speaker 1: 4:29

I love that, and it works for online businesses, too right, because we still have all of these processes that have to happen, we still have like content that needs to go out, we have, you know, like services that need to be paid every month, and so can you. Can you tell us a little bit, since you mentioned startup and we're talking about like some next level stuff, how can we, as, let's say, we are a startup company, what can we do right now to set ourselves up for success, to become that owner that doesn't have to be there all the time?

Speaker 2: 5:01

Yeah, you know I spend a lot of my time. I'm a certified exit planner, so I help people get their businesses ready for sale. And getting your business ready for sale or setting it up to be let's call it not to be involved in every decision and moving from operator to owner really is the same process. So the idea is that today, you should start thinking with the end in mind, and somebody will say, well, I don't want to sell my business for 15 years or whatever the case is, but I can tell you there's one guarantee in life and that one day you will exit your business. It's going to happen no matter what. There's death, there's divorce, there's partnership disagreements, there's disability, there's distress like COVID or taxes or any of the stuff that's going on in the world today a lot of, lot of sort of uncertainty there, and so all of these different things cause people to have to exit their business. And when you want to get to that stage, you want to exit your business with the most amount of money, and in order to do that, you've got to go through the same process. So how do you do it? From a digital business type thing, well, we want to be making sure that our processes are really honed in. So I'll give you the six P's that I wrote a little book on it and it's called the Business Owner Breakthrough and that's what my podcast is called. So we kind of revolve around those six Ps.

Speaker 2: 6:25

But the idea here is that you need to understand your promise, and the promise is not your vision and mission. That's internal. The promise is what you promise to your clients, because clients only buy one thing, and that's a better life. So whether you're selling frozen steaks online or whether you're selling services or whatever the case is, it doesn't matter. Frozen steaks online or whether you're selling services or whatever the case is, it doesn't matter. The idea is that when we make that promise to our customer, we're trying to tackle one of the pains that they have, which, if we say frozen steaks, for example, I don't want to go to the grocery store anymore, I just want to deliver it to my home. So we're going to tackle that pain through our unique process so that they can enjoy a better life, and we need to show them that through our promotion, which is another P.

Speaker 2: 7:09

And then we need to align our product. The product itself has to, or service has to be in alignment with the promise that we're making. If it isn't, there's a disconnect there, it's causing ambiguities and weirdness and your customers don't know what to do. It's got to be very straightforward, with the right process and the right people. And the right people are broken down into three different things. One is your ideal client, so really understanding your ideal client. I'm sure you've talked about that a fair bit. Two is your ideal teammates, so anyone else on your team that helps you deliver the promise to your customer, the way that you have designed it and planned. And then the third one is your ideal outsource supplier.

Speaker 2: 7:51

So whether you're using an outsource bookkeeping company, an outsource HR company, whether you're using an outsource supplier, like we do, for example, with brands in our stores, all the different products that we bring in, we want to make sure that they're fully aligning to the promise so that we can get to the sixth P, which is the profit. And when you have the profit, you have the right amount of money coming in the business. So now you can actually decide what you would like to do with that profit and until you get there, you really don't have decisions to make. You just have to get to that point right, and you've got to buckle down and get there. You really don't have decisions to make. You just have to get to that point, right, and you've got to buckle down and get there.

Speaker 2: 8:28

And that's that startup phase. But once we start seeing profit, now we're starting to look back and we're saying, okay, what can I take off my plate? How can I hire, or, let's even say, how can I use AIs or apps or anything else that maybe I couldn't afford before? But now that I can afford them, I'm going to implement them in the business so that they can do things without my involvement. And that's what we're trying to do. We want to try to get the process proper, hand it off to the right person or, in the case of an app or an AI type thing, if that's what we're doing, we're paying that particular thing to run the process for us, so that things happen without us being involved.

Speaker 1: 9:09

That is phenomenal. And so what I'm hearing is SOPs. Establish, run, use always, always for everything you do, sops, sops, sops. What is SOP? Standard Operating Procedures Just making sure Actually, I wrote about this in my book. Just write down what you do. Don't sit down and be like what's? Like this magical thing that I wish was happening, no, no, no, what happens, what is the process? And then sometimes, even in writing those things down, you're like, hey, I can eliminate this step just by downloading this program. Like I downloaded my cloud thing onto my computer and now I don't have to spend any time downloading stuff and uploading it again. Hours of time that I've opened up, entire days that I've opened up because I don't have to worry about that anymore. And it was writing it down like why am I doing this? Like how can I do this a little bit better? So do you have any other little productivity tips like that for things we can implement?

Speaker 2: 10:12

Yeah, Well, I think one of the things when we talk about all these little apps and AIs and different things is that a lot of times we're moving on to new ones because they're bright and shiny and maybe do something our last one didn't do.

Speaker 2: 10:28

One of the little tips is you still need to cancel those other ones.

Speaker 2: 10:33

Think about profitability.

Speaker 2: 10:36

A lot of times, business owners have all sorts of different things that they're no longer using but they're paying subscriptions on, and so one little tip here that I'll give to everybody, as we're talking about this sort of stuff right now, is that go back through your visa statement, your MasterCard statement, whatever the case is.

Speaker 2: 10:55

Go back through all of the apps and make sure that, if you're not using that app, you have turned off the automatic renewal, because it will cost you the 300 bucks, the 2000 bucks, the $49, whatever it is, again upon subscription renewal, and that costs you, and now you don't have that money to go and put it into something else, whether it's another app or whether it's another person that's going to help you take care of the promises that you're promising to your customer. It all starts with the bedrock of honing that promise and all of these different things on top of it, the product, the process, the people, the promotion and the profit come there. But if we're not at profitability, we've got to make sure that we are always keeping an eye on these kind of things.

Speaker 1: 11:42

That is such a great tip. I love that's one of the first things I love to do with my clients. Take inventory, like what do we have, what are we using? Because I'm like let's use this. And they're like, well, I paid for this. I'm like, why didn't you tell me that? Because we totally could be using that and we don't have to pay for anything else. And it's such a good tip because there is abundance around us already and that is one way that we can take that back right Is taking a look.

Speaker 1: 12:11

Tax time is a great time to do that, because you're looking over everything anyway, right, and you're seeing, well, what is this and what is that, and you create more with what you already have, right, and so it's already there. It's just going off to things that you're not using. So that is such a good tip. Thank you so much for that. Now, tell me a little bit about the journey of overcoming, because there's there's there's a lot, like you said, that goes into getting from the startup phase to the I want to be just an owner now phase. So can you tell me a little bit about that journey of overcoming and maybe how, how it happened for you?

Speaker 2: 12:53

sure, um, you know it happened. As far as that goes, it happened early on. So, you know, 20 some years ago now and I've been living it ever since then. And I think the biggest piece. So we've got that operation sort of side of things with the six P's, and then on top of that I've got a leadership one, and the leadership one is really what I call the CMA, and the CMA is something that everybody on that's listening here today needs to hone. We all do as leaders in our business, and CMA is not Certified Managerial Accounting, it's Communication Management Skills and Accountability. And a lot of times people that get into their own business have decent management skills not all the time, but a lot of times they do. But if they don't, they really got to hone those.

Speaker 2: 13:44

The biggest things that I see with a lot of small business owners is they don't have the right communication skills and they don't have the right accountability skills, and by that I mean they don't know how to properly lay out what's involved and what they're asking their people to do, and they don't actually have the abilities, the capability and the know how, how to keep them accountable. And from this perspective, we need to create a culture of accountability within our organization that allows other people to make decisions for us. And I think that's when you were talking about overcoming. One of the biggest things of overcoming is to actually move from detail to dashboard, which means I am not going to micromanage this little piece anymore. I am actually going to allow someone else and I'm going to grant them authority, which is a big thing for a lot of small business owners. I can't grant authority Like even think you know for that. If you've opened the door to your office every day and now you're handing the key to someone else for the first time, like those kind of things are little milestones, but you'll never get free of those accountabilities of having to open the door every day or having to, whatever it is, ship out the next product, you know it doesn't really matter what it is until you set that process up, until you've communicated properly what the expectations are, until you've hired properly to make sure that you have somebody who's capable, confident and has the capacity to do what you're asking, so that you can then transfer the accountability to that person and not be involved in the detail.

Speaker 2: 15:25

Because here's one thing that I really believe Decisions need to be made at the lowest possible level of your organization. Sometimes an automation can make the decision right. We've set it up properly and it knows, hey, if it says yes, send it. You know that's an automation. But we need to be setting all of these different things up so that, at whatever level of the organization, decisions are being made without our involvement. And that's the thing.

Speaker 2: 15:54

If you're feeling overworked, if you're feeling overwhelmed, if you're feeling like there's no time left in the day you're working, it's one thing. To work in your busy time, hey, if you're sending stuff out and Christmas is your busy season, be prepared to work 30 days before Christmas and get it done 24 hours a day. It's like all hands on deck right, that's a busy season. But if all hands on deck is every single day, 365, that's a problem. And that's what I see in a lot of business owners is like they can't even hold on to what they've got and at the same time, you're kind of saying, well, you should be able to do this because, but they haven't been able to release yet. So a lot of the, a lot of the times I'm working with people to get those SOPs out, get those things, so that we can now align and assign accountability. And I've got a great little framework called the four A's of accountability as well, which basically is to help people align and assign accountability to those people so that they can get the freedom that they need so that the other people can make the decisions in their absence.

Speaker 2: 16:57

And one of the best questions I'll often ask for somebody who's working with us and I coach this all the time if you're working with your team members and your team members keep coming to you asking you questions that you already know that they know the question you should say so.

Speaker 2: 17:12

They come to you and they say, hey, should I ship this by mail or should I ship it FedEx? And you know they know the answer. Then you say, hey, should I ship this by mail or should I ship it FedEx? And you know they know the answer. Then you say, well, what would you do if I wasn't here? Well, I'd ship at FedEx. Perfect, let it go Right. Because soon as you give them, grant them that authority by asking that question back and saying, what would you do if I wasn't here? And they give you the right answer Now they know they have the authority to go ahead and do that in your absence and if they say I would have shipped it you know mail and you think they should have shipped it FedEx then that's a coaching moment and you can say why would? Why did you say mail?

Speaker 2: 17:51

Because we usually ship stuff FedEx you know and oh well, because of this, this and this, this and now we're having a conversation and a coaching moment from basically uh, from the perspective of the owner to their team, and that's a great opportunity to clarify what needs to happen. But in most cases, they already know what's going to be done. You just need to give them the information, and that's the most important piece.

Speaker 1: 18:18

That is so powerful. And I love how you talk about how leadership is integral. Obviously, because first you got to lead yourself and then you lead your team. Right, and hiring people is its own process. It's not just something that you go out and do willy nilly. Right, there are a lot of steps that are involved to make sure that you get the right people, and by the right people I mean the teammates that can help you move the needle where you need to move it, so that you can make more money.

Speaker 1: 18:51

Right, not just like filing stuff in the office, because the office is kind of messy and that needs to be done, you know. But but it's the truth. Right? Because then if the, if the needle is not moving, then how are we going to pay them? Right, and so and so, and it's also making sure that we don't become the bottleneck of that system. Right, because if, if you are like a solopreneur and you're the one making all the decisions and now you have some members, but everyone's coming to you to ask you how should we ship this Now, there's going to be a line out the door.

Speaker 1: 19:26

Nobody's going to get anything done because you have to be involved. Nobody's going to get anything done, because you have to be involved, and then you go to the hospital one day and now the whole plane just crashed. It's like the episode of I Love Lucy, like everything's just coming out and they're like I don't know what to do. Right, and that's a silly example, but this is a serious issue. And so, establishing your SOPs, hiring the right people and being curious, right, because you, you, you leave from a place of curiosity and you didn't say, oh, my goodness, like you did this wrong. It was like, hey, why did you decide to do that? Cause maybe they thought of something you didn't. Um, and so I think that's a wonderful leadership characteristic.

Speaker 2: 20:04

Yeah, you know, one of the things that I did several years ago is I became a certified Colby coach and and Colby is spelt K-O-L-B-E and so you know, I've got one of my websites is called the Colby coach.

Speaker 2: 20:17

But the reason I did that is because I'm a big believer in hiring the right people and Colby has an assessment that helps us go through better understand ourselves but better understand people that we may be hiring and having a right fit sort of dynamic. I overlay Colby onto executive teams and all sorts of different teams in business as well as work with business owners. Every single coaching client that I work with I put them through the Colby as well, because I need to know how they operate so that I can better help them as their coach and I like from a Shootopia perspective or from any of the other businesses that we work on. The leader needs to know how their team is making decisions so that they can better get out of their way or give them the information that they need or all of these different things like you had just mentioned, and Colby is such a wonderful tool that can really help that progress in a much quicker faction than just learning it on your own and trying to figure it all out along the way.

Speaker 1: 21:22

That is awesome and, speaking of which you had mentioned that you had a gift for the audience. That related back to what we were talking about.

Speaker 2: 21:32

Yeah, for sure, I have lots. You can go over to my main site, which is pete-moremohrcom, but this particular one is on the Simplifying Entrepreneurship site, which is in there as well, and it's called the. It's a pdf book, a small book basically, called moving from operator, the 10 laws of moving from operator to owner, which are all these different things we've been talking about and a few more. We hit a few of them today. Didn't have time for them all, but it's the 10 laws of moving from operator to owner and if this is something that you're feeling, you're maxed out all of these kind of things. It's like this get your head around strategically what you might be wanting to think about as you break through that glass ceiling to the next level of your business that is awesome.

Speaker 1: 22:20

And how can we stay in touch with you, pete?

Speaker 2: 22:23

best way, like I said, is just to go over to pete-morecom and you can click speak to pete there, and I'm happy to hop on a call with anybody here today and and see if we might be a right fit for some coaching. And if there's anything that tweaked your interest, I'd be happy to chat.

Speaker 1: 22:40

Awesome and I just met on social media. Is there any place we can follow you on social media?

Speaker 2: 22:45

Sure On social, LinkedIn and Instagram. I'm there too. Just type in Pete Moore, M-O-H-R.

Speaker 1: 22:52

You will find me Awesome. That is amazing. And now, before we sign off, this has been absolutely spectacular today. But what is like that? One final tip, like what is the tip that you give your clients that just blows their mind the biggest aha moment.

Speaker 2: 23:07

I already kind of hit it a little bit and I think you know I want to bring it back home again. You will exit your business one day and no matter how young you are, no matter how old you are, there will be a day down the road. So you want to make sure, from this day forth, you've got everything in alignment for that to happen. Is it the right type of corporation? Do I have the right process of corporation? Do I have the right process in place? Do I have all of those things, all of those risk factors? You've said it yourself If I'm out of business for a month because I got in a car accident or something, what happens?

Speaker 2: 23:44

All of these kind of things, this kind of stuff happens to 50% of business owners during their career. You can't let your business go down because you're one of the two people that it happened to. So start thinking about that stuff today. It's really important. Spend a little bit of time every week on it, and over the next year you're going to have it in such better shape than you do today if you haven't started thinking about it. So that's my big tip.

Speaker 1: 24:11

Love that and talk about leaving a legacy, right, because even if that's how you just you know, you end up getting. You know, sometimes life forces you out of the business, right, but that way you can leave a legacy that someone can pick up and they can carry that torch, so I think that's so important. Thank you so much, pete. This has been amazing, so I think that's so important. Thank you so much, pete. This has been amazing. Thanks, and we will catch you guys next time on the next episode of overcome yourself, the podcast. Bye.