015: Planning For Success In Business With Peter Mehit

Hello everybody, Neil Ball here, thank you so much for joining me today on the entrepreneur way? The entrepreneur way is about the entrepreneurs journey, the vision, the mindset, the committment, the sacrifices, failures and successes. I am so excited to bring you our special Peter Mehit, Custom BPS (Business Planning and Solutions): today, Peter Mehit. But before I introduce you to him, I have got a little bit of trivia for you. Georges St Pierre said, ‘the more knowledge you get, the more questions you ask. The smarter you get, the more you realise that everything can be possible.’ The entrepreneur way asks the questions so we all get the insight, inspiration, and ideas to apply in our businesses. Peter, welcome to the show, are you ready to share your version of the entrepreneur way with us?

Peter Mehit, Custom BPS (Business Planning and Solutions): I will do my best.

Neil: Marvellous. Peter Mehit is a veteran of both the fortune 500 and Tech Start-ups. He worked worldwide as a business process trouble-shooter and outsourcing deal leader for computer sciences corporation. He has also participated in internet and consumer product start-ups and has started four of his own companies. Since 2004, he has been the owner of customer business planning and solutions, and is the author of killer business plan – why you need it and how to write it.  Peter, can you please provide us with some more insight into your business and personal life, to allow us to get to know more about what you do and who you are?

Peter Mehit, Custom BPS (Business Planning and Solutions): No problem, and thank you so much for having me on the show. One of the things about this show, its not focused on me talking about my business, but its talking about how I got here and what the whole dream was about, I love that concept. What we do, is three main things. We help people organise their businesses, so they run better, so if they have got problems, we can straighten them out. I have got more than 20 years experience doing that, write business plans and pinstrets for people looking for investments from dates, venture capital companies, private equity companies, private investors agent investors. And then the fourth plans may actually help people source from me, so I say have they got an idea and they have got down their act together, we can actually help connect them with different funding sources.

Peter Mehit, Custom BPS (Business Planning and Solutions): So that is kind of really what the business is about. And then what I am about is I am useless as an employee now, having been in this business for 12 years. And I am all about helping people find their feet as entrepreneurs because I think it is one of the most noble and courageous things anybody can do.

Neil: So can you tell us a bit more about obviously you have written this book which sounds very useful. Can you tell us a bit more about your book?

Peter Mehit, Custom BPS (Business Planning and Solutions): Yes it is available on Amazon and killerbusinessplan.com. The book is a, its not a motivational ra ra you should go out and leave your business. Its a step-by-step practical guide. First you have got to select a business, second have a big run at that business and make money because there is no reason to start it if you can’t make money at it. And then the third is going through each section of the business plan. How you write it, what is the information you need to bring to it, to create it and its a hybrid book where there is the physical copy in the book and there is an online collection of templates, examples, videos, example tech on business plans, financial modelling, all that stuff is available online. So if you get the book, you get access to those online goodies as well. So, the whole goal of it is, if you, its written focusing on people coming out of perfect jobs looking to start businesses. So I help them figure how to select it, how to figure out how it will work, if its usable. And then how to actually write the business plan, so that you can either go .. or .. friends and family want to invest.

Neil: Mmm sounds fantastic actually, when I think back to when I had a business, and I used to have to produce business plans, it was one of those things that, I never it was before the internet was really around and I was always struggling as to how to put it together, so you sort of have these ideas of what you need to put in it. So it would be great to have a book to guide you  through it. So that sounds like a wonderful thing to have. So what do you enjoy most about what you do Peter?

Peter Mehit, Custom BPS (Business Planning and Solutions): Its really the uniqueness of it and its the challenge of it. Its like every client that comes through is different. For example, we have done over 500 business plans and we have raised $138 million dollars for clients. And we have done a couple of dozen …and 25/30 restaurants and every one of these clients, these restaurant clients. Even though they are all restaurants, they are all different. They have different ways they are set out, different ownership. Different capital available at the start. Different challenges about when they want to open, then every one of them brings problems to solve and so we love to dive into that and the challenge of it and everything. Is, I know when somebody comes through the door, every new client that comes through, there is going to be a new opportunity and I am going to grow from it and learn from it, and I thrive on that, I love it.

Neil: So the niche you specialise, you specialise on restaurants did you say there?

Peter Mehit, Custom BPS (Business Planning and Solutions): Yeh I actually work pretty much business .. if you were to go to our website and look at our client list on your .. or website, we have written business plans for a company that lazer strips paint off of aeroplanes. We have written for ammunition manufacturers. We have written for a guy who is going to create a UFO themed hotel, in Baker, California. And so that on top of gas stations, car washes, dry cleaners, liquor stores, markets, .. distribution companies so any business because my background was really helping business when I worked for C S C’s in this business. Was to trouble shoot all kinds of different businesses in all kinds of different directions.

Neil: Ok, just a, I’m just thinking as you talk about this because you have obviously got a fairly unique set of skills there. How much difference do you think it makes having a professional person writing a business plan for you, rather than somebody putting it together themselves?

Peter Mehit, Custom BPS (Business Planning and Solutions): I think that you need to do both. I think that the person that is getting the business plan needs to be actively involved, and I think that a professional especially somebody like us that has the amount of experience we have over so many different situations. Can help you not fall in the holes. Because there are a lot of business plan services out there. I won’t name them, but they basically hire .. MBA assume, understand the buzz words. We have been in this, my partners and I up to, we have got about a 120 years of experience. And if you look at this very funding situation, we haven’t seen some variant of, thats hugely viable. Thats like gold because I can, most of the errors that people commit when launching businesses, come from lack of experience. So like you will say look in a major, that bridges that gap. Lo be with birds of a feather group, to get experience with what they are doing, that bridges that gap. And then hiring us is another way to bridge that experience gap, and I think that is the main thing you have got to do when you start.

Neil: Mmm I think alot of small business owners don’t write business plans do they? And I think it is a mistake because ultimately it makes you sit down and think about your business and where you are going and it just gives you a sense of direction. And obviously that is from a personal point of view, but I suppose when you are writing a business, especially when you are trying to raise funding. Then having a well-written business plan, could maybe tip it in your favour sometimes, I guess couldn’t it?

Peter Mehit, Custom BPS (Business Planning and Solutions): In the United States its a requirement in the banks above a certain level, and certainly if you are a group of investors. The reason to do a business plan is really you are doing the due dilligence on what you are going to do, you are trying to figure out all the possible things that can work. All the possible things that could go wrong. And most people do business plans because they are trying to get funding. Thats the main only reason why they write them and unfortunately, and unfortunately if I were going to say ‘I’m at the end of my lifespan with my business’ and I am trying to sell my business, or hand it down to my children. I need a plan for that.

Neil: Yeh

Peter Mehit, Custom BPS (Business Planning and Solutions): I mean its just going through the rigor of understanding what it is that you are doing, so that you are really doing a dress rehearsal for your success by writing their plan, so why wouldn’t you do that?

Neil: Absolutely. I know with personal development stuff, which I know is slightly different. They say you have something like a 1000% more chance of hitting your goals if you write down your goals. Do you know if there is a similar thing for business plans that is there actually a similar sort of number that people band around or is there not such a thing?

Peter Mehit, Custom BPS (Business Planning and Solutions): Well I mean there are metrics that they say you are twice as likely to succeed if you connect to a player. But I will talk to you, because you talked about self-development and I think that is really important because becoming an entrepreneur is probably the biggest self-development project you are ever going to take on. And you don’t think thats that, but it is that. And the number one most important thing you can do to be successful, in anything, not just being in business, is to be able to visualise, and state where you want to be, at different points in time. And so even if, and my thinking has evolved quite a bit on this in terms of, I don’t care if you write a wrong business plan, I don’t care if its a spiral binder, a dream written note book, where you throw things in, as long as you talk and think about what are my finances? Who’s my customer? Whats my marketing going to be? All those different things that I need to think about. As long as you do that rigor, you can reach your business plan and not produce a business plan, just produce a spiral binder, where you use clipped up pictures and things that are important and check track of things. That visualisation process is everything.

Neil: Yeh

Peter Mehit, Custom BPS (Business Planning and Solutions): The plan is the output of that.

Neil: I know from my experience, when I have done it, when I have created a business plan, I have always exceeded what I put in the business plan over the long-term, so I don’t know if that is just a coincidence, but it certainly worked for me, so

Peter Mehit, Custom BPS (Business Planning and Solutions): No its not a coincidence. No, it completely has to do with the fact that you took the time to say, ‘what do I want the future to look like?’ and now you are aiming at something, as opposed to ‘well, something goods going to happen, I am just going to put myself out.’ Its like the secret, right? The secret was like, I don’t know what it was like in the UK but over here there were like odds in the book if you wanted the secret. Biggest .. law that ever dropped on humanity, because it really told people if you wish for it and you hope for it, it will come. Now there is a whole bunch of hard work that is going to happen, and there are a whole bunch of set backs, because set backs are equally as necessary as the successes because they temper you where they built skills that you won’t have if you just keep on through. And how you know that is true is look at sports figures, guys who never had anything but success and they make millions and millions of dollars, and then when their careers are over, they are broke. Because they did not learn how to deal with any setbacks and then trust me, in the entrepreneur world, you will get plenty of them, with a very strong ..

Neil: Absolutely, so Peter what is it that drives you?

Peter Mehit, Custom BPS (Business Planning and Solutions): I think what drives me is I don’t like the same, being in the same I could tell you what caused me to start the business. I hate performance movies, I just hate them. I got a really bad performance from you one year and it was really literally in the camlets, because in reality, I was doing all the hard work and I was kind of doing all the responsible work, and not giving any details but really I should have been higher up and because politically I didn’t quite fit in this group. I was the law man and I looked down on my work. ‘This is just a bunch of b.s.’ and that was a huge motivator for me, so to have control of my situation, to know that I am doing the best that I can do and its enough for me to recognise that I am doing the best that I can do. And not being in a situation where I am being evaluated by other people who may not be paying attention? Was really important to me. So that motivates me to have that freedom, to have a freedom of ‘hey I don’t want to work today.’ I don’t, although that does not happen very often. And have the freedom to give myself the permission to build the extra bond, do the right thing for the client. Instead of being worried about someone’s budget constraints or somebody worrying about ‘oh where is this going to lead to?’ Just being able to do the right thing.

Peter Mehit, Custom BPS (Business Planning and Solutions): Consistently, drives me and so I have the freedom that I always wanted, and its great and I love it.

Neil:   Mmm its great. How do you relax when you are not working in your business?

Peter Mehit, Custom BPS (Business Planning and Solutions): well the few spare moments that I am not, I like to hang out with my wife and my partner, she is in the business with me and we sit across from each other departments all day and still get along, 12 years later. So while spending time with her, I write music. I am a musician, and so, I play a little bit of a drummer and so thats a like a huge big release for me and then you know I try to get exercise now and again, and just read and relax.

Neil: Yeh its good that. And do you have any entrepreneurial role models?

Peter Mehit, Custom BPS (Business Planning and Solutions): You know, I really don’t because mainly when you look at the big names in the world, you know the Gates and the Sir Richard Bransons and the Elon Musks, its you know they are just people and I thought they get idolised. The people that I look to, that I think are role models are my clients. Are people who came out of jobs, had alot of fear, overcame that fear. Found success, we have one girl who was 26 years old started a dog day care new business. She’s doing a million dollars a year now and was terrified when she started. And to watch her go through what she went through to become who she is now was to me as inspiring as anything you could read about as Steve Jobs, so my clients are hugely inspirational to me.

Neil: I agree with you there actually, I actually believe that entrepreneurs are really the unrecognised and uncelebrated heroes of our society really. Because they create wealth, they create employment, they are just creators of everything and yet unfortunately we seem to idolise movie stars, pop stars, and things like that and really whilst they do some good with their entertainment and things, I think the entrepreneurs just get forgotton about and its good to hear you say that.

Peter Mehit, Custom BPS (Business Planning and Solutions): They are my people, they are my people so yeh.

Neil: Peter can we just go back to the time before you were an entrepreneur? Because I would be a little bit interested to learn more about that. And can you talk about some of the difficulties that you had to overcome when you started your business?

#0:15:28-0# Peter Mehit, Custom BPS (Business Planning and Solutions): Yeh the number one difficulty I had was fear. Fear of failing, fear of what I didn’t know, fear that I would step out there and not be able to figure it out fast enough. Fear and I think that everybody who is listening to this is thinking about becoming an entrepreneur, you know you are terrified. And there are really three ways people deal with that. They just go all out and they say, ‘ok I am going to jump out of a plane and the parachutes going to work and I am going to be fine.’ And they risk it, and most people ironically tend to succeed because they don’t give themselves an option to fail.

Neil: mm hmmm

Peter Mehit, Custom BPS (Business Planning and Solutions): Then there is the place where you analyse it to death. I learn as much as I can learn and I do as much as I can do and I go to a bunch of seminars and I get stuff to accumulate information, and the danger of that is analysis paralysis which it never really works. Which is kind of the third state, which is you know, you are just going to dream about it and think about it but you never really get out in the game. And so for me it was just overcoming that fear and the way that I overcame the fear was kind of a funny story. In that I was travelling probably 15 days a month worldwide when I was working for CSC, and I got a call on a Sunday afternoon saying there are plane tickets at the airport, you have got to be there in three hours. And my wife who I was having breakfast with, looked across the table from me and said, ‘I want you to quit your job right now.’ And I did. Which is the worst way you can start a business, its absolutely we started, thats why we are so good at it, because we know everything you could do wrong, because we did it. Everything you can do right.

Neil: Yeh, its very decisive though ha ha ha

Peter Mehit, Custom BPS (Business Planning and Solutions): Ah you know what, I love my wife and the thing about it, we have been married about 8 years at the time and I could feel the distance increasing between the two of us because I was gone so much. And I went, ‘you know what, this is ridiculous that I could give up the rest of my Sunday to pack. Run to the airport and get on a plane.’ No, not going to do it this time. And it was terrifying, it took us 8 months to get our first customer. It took us 6 months to figure out what we were doing. But you know what? That it happened is enough. It doesn’t have to be graceful or elegant, it happened and I am grateful for it.

Neil: Mmm well its obviously worked out for you. So did you have any doubts that delayed you starting your business? I mean that was obviously quite a decisive moment there.

Peter Mehit, Custom BPS (Business Planning and Solutions): Yeh pretty much what I said but I had a million doubts, what am I going to do? who am I going to sell to? What am I selling? I have these really great skills that people pay, my book rate when I worked for CSC ran between 275 and 450 an hour. I got thrown out to do marriage counselling, between the president and the VP of marketing for one of the largest pet food concerns in the world. Ok, so these were the kind of things that I was doing. I had all this amazing experience, and you hand out your .. and you find out this but not only do people not know about you but they don’t care about you. And so stepping out at that massive marketing machine which was computer sciences, led to ‘hey what can you do with your own two hands and feet?’ was hugely hugely hugely fear … so I think that was probably the , because when you talked about starting a business for several years before you get it. And I think that was probably the main thing was just ‘how are you going to get it started?’

Neil: yeh.

Peter Mehit, Custom BPS (Business Planning and Solutions): How are you going to make it roll?

Neil: Yeh there is always that difficult step I suppose. So you talked about it taking a while to get started and things, what mistakes did you make that slowed your journey down?

Peter Mehit, Custom BPS (Business Planning and Solutions): Well I would say, once we figured out what we were going to sell was not understanding was that as the entrepreneur, you are the main marketer. And if I had to say the number one thing that holds most businesses back, the thing that has held our business back, and returns our growth even now is marketing. Is understanding how to get in front of people, and get in front of the right people because everybody is not your customer. If you sold it to everybody or anybody, you sell it to nobody. You have to learn about all these things and I think that every new entrepreneur is great at what they do, they understand what they want to sell. And they are terrible at understanding how to market and how to make those segment cuts and go faster. And so I would say that we have, all of our setbacks have come from either not marketing properly, or failing to pivot or change up in the market change. Not dealing with changes in the market. And so with service or clients, we have never had a service delivery problem, that we could not overcome. But the marketing thing is key and its agnostic. Its every business and every possible industry. The marketing is key and when you are first starting, you can’t go on – hire it. You have got to learn it, so you know what it is so you can teach the people you hire what they need to do.

Neil: Yeh absolutely. In fact one thing you said there which is quite interesting is that not every person is your customer but what I would say is, everything in your business is marketing because ultimately how you present your business, how people get treated within your business, all of that really is marketing so marketing is more than people often think about in a business, isn’t it? because quite often, people often think, well its just the advertising and thats it. When the reality, you know if you have not got something in stock, you lose a customer, thats marketing in a way because that customer is going to go and buy somewhere else, so everything I think is marketing in your business. So yeh.

Peter Mehit, Custom BPS (Business Planning and Solutions): Yeh we teach classes, we teach all kinds of different classes and one of them we teach is just on basic entrepreneurship right? One of the first questions I always ask a group of people is ‘what is your job?’ what is the job in your job and its like ‘oh I’m a CEO’ I’m a project designer, I’m this .. and they go ‘no, you are cheese marker, thats your job.’ Because it is, it is more than just advertising. It is, its fine service, its how you handle client problems. Its how you deal with community. Its everything, because it boils down to one thing. Image. How do people see if these people buy from people who know what they are doing, who they trust. Now if you can’t build that image, then you are going nowhere fast.

Neil: Mmmm absolutely. So what are some of the things that you did before you started your business that would be helpful tips for some of the listeners who haven’t yet taken that first step of the entrepreneur way?

Peter Mehit, Custom BPS (Business Planning and Solutions): I think that you need to look at the business you want to get into, and understand the nuts and bolts of it. Now just for example, let me pick something just stop me, I’m a freelance writer, ok, and I know how to write well and I want to start a business in my back room to do writing and want to bring people on and hire them out of my company to do freelance writing. Ok, so I know how to write, thats half the battle, but the bigger part of the battle is the demand. Marketing side, so how do people buy the service you are trying to sell or the product you are trying to sell? Learn about the demographics of this, this people that buy, where are they located? and what are the psychographics, what are the things they like? where are the places you can get it for them? So they understand what it is that you are trying to sell and you can be visible to them. And so I think that the biggest failure that people have again goes back to marketing and the second piece of it is, how does the business that you want to start make money? How are the people paying? How do you get contracts? What do the contracts even look like? because for example, I had one guy in the construction industry and he just had this idea that when you got the contract, that if there was a half a million dollar contract that they would write you a cheque for half a million dollars, and then you use that money to do the contract. No, it does not work that way. You front the money and they pay you on progress points. So, now you have to be bankable, now you have to be able to get a loan or credit, and so on.

Neil: mmmm

Peter Mehit, Custom BPS (Business Planning and Solutions): and so not understanding how your industry works. What are the practises in it. And how you market to the people who buy your product. Those are the two most important things and the things that most people turn out to don’t focus on, they focus on ‘what is it that I am selling?’ they focus on supply side. If you focus on the demand side, you will never lose. If you focus on the supply side, you are likely to lose.

Neil: mmm hmmm absolutely, so can we just talk about your entrepreneurial journey a little bit Peter? the how much do you think culture is important from the beginning in a business?

Peter Mehit, Custom BPS (Business Planning and Solutions): I think culture is everything. And I think we have been really fortunate and the people that we brought on board have been really careful about the people that we have brought on board. Because I think that hiring somebody for skill or because they can get a certain thing done, is not enough because if they are disruptive, if they are what we like to call ‘drama queens’ or high maintenance people, you spend as much time dealing with this nonsense as you do actually getting work done. So its really important that everybody, you don’t have to agree, you don’t want everybody to agree, we have a lot of strong opinions in our office and sometimes it gets kind of hairy in discussions, but everybody is aiming at the same thing and trying to achieve the same goals. I don’t believe that necessarily you have to have everybody signing up, but you have to have everybody agreeing at the goals and willing to go the same direction. And so I think that culture is really important in that regard in that I think you have to come to an agreement about where the boundaries are, how people treat each other, how disputes are handled. And how things are tracked and projects are managed. And I think once you get everybody in the same cage, then everybody’s focus on work gets interesting.

Neil: Mmmm. Absolutely, and knowing what you know now, is there anything that if you had known it when you started out would have helped you to shortcut the learning curve?

Peter Mehit, Custom BPS (Business Planning and Solutions): Absolutely, and I am going to harp on, and its going to sound like, ‘this guy writes business columns, what does he care about marketing so much?’ I would say the number one thing that will shorten your time to success, is learning who your specific customer is. Because every business, its just like things resonate in nature in a certain frequency. Every business has a natural customer, the person that they see it, they will buy it. And so you have got to find out out of all the certain people on the earth, who are the group of people that are going to respond to except for our business? primarily the people that respond to us and hire us are generation x / they are college educated, typically have an income of about $75,000 dollars. Or if they are not individuals, they are companies that are between $5 and 50 million dollars. And the reason for that is if they are $50 million dollars in revenue and above, they are going to go to a bigger company.

Peter Mehit, Custom BPS (Business Planning and Solutions): And they tend to be family or companies as opposed to publicly trained companies. So we spent alot of time learning who are our core audiences, our core customer, and we have a lot of success with this. That doesn’t mean I don’t branch out to other areas, but I learn about those people that were trying to attract millenials and more. Millenials are an entirely different group of people to market to, and its all about them and you have to make the message specific to them and the things they like to do. The things they like to see and the places they like to be. So the biggest strength that is, take the risk, take the plunge. It feels totally counter-intuitive to I have got this whole giant ball of people I can market to, but I am going to market to this tiny little slice. It feels totally counter-intuitive is fear of doing something and leads purposely to success and you know its true, because if you look at, lets look at apple. When apple was marketing the ipal – what was their advertising? A bunch of dancing sillouettes. Looking happy and cool. We had identifiers, their hair, their clothes, sillouettes of themself. So they weren’t identifying with specific people. But they were identifying with specific types of people.

Peter Mehit, Custom BPS (Business Planning and Solutions): and I think that is what you need to do, is you need to narrow it down, so you can pour alot of energy in it, get a lot of momentum with that one slice and then move out from there.

Neil: Mmm yeh and how much do you think that gut feeling influences your decisions in your business?

Peter Mehit, Custom BPS (Business Planning and Solutions): More than I like, but its a necessity. I mean I would love to have information for every decison that I make. But if I wait for that information, I don’t make a decision. And no decision is a decision. So I think what I want to do is I have got enough experience, where I am really comfortable with my gut. But as a new entrepreneur you don’t have that same thing and that is where a mentor comes in handy. Thats where being with a peer group comes in handy. As you can say I’m not feeling really strong about it, and you can get some feed back. Now, there is a caviac to that, and the caviac to that is you have to have another judgement to weigh the information you are getting. Because you may be getting crappy advice too. And that is where I know you have got this …

Neil: Mmm hmm. Life is made of constant change whether we like it or not. So the only constant, or one of the only constants is change. How do you keep up with change?

Peter Mehit, Custom BPS (Business Planning and Solutions): I try to relax and have a sense of humour. No I mean seriously, I’m trying to be flippant, I think that is the two biggest things that you can bring together because you are going to be confronted with change constantly. Because I guarantee you, even if you sit down and write the world’s greatest business plan, it is not going to unfold the way you planned for. But the reason to write a plan, … the drummer for Yazz I don’t know he is a british drummer, one of my favourite people. He said my reason for discipline is the pursuit of accidents. And that is like the greatest quote in the world. You get yourself together, you exercise, you write your plan. You understand what it is that you are trying to do, so that when it does not come down the pipe the way you want. You go, ‘oh yeh I thought I got that or ‘well this is different, but I have these other things I can bring to the table to deal with this change.’ Thats really really the most important thing I think you can do. Is to just constantly make sure that you are evaluating the situation and not to be set back or put off or bombed down that it didn’t roll out the way you do. Because its totally real, I used to train stock splints in the market, and the deals, I would actually make more money when they broke, the way I did not think they were going to break. Consistent yeh.

Neil: Ok and what is your favourite book on entrepreneurialism? Business, personal development, leadership or motivation and can you tell us why you have chosen it?

Peter Mehit, Custom BPS (Business Planning and Solutions): Its interesting, whenever I try to read a book about entrepreneurs, and because this is what I do, the arguers expose how much they don’t know, that I can’t read him. So the book I will suggest to you there are two. One is by Viktor Frank its going to sound very melodramatic at the … ‘mans search for me’ I would say, its a short read, you can read it in two hours. Its like a 100 pages big type in a small book. And the thing about that what he says is, basically the world is what you decide it is. And if you have anything in life, that this is going to be what I decide it is, regardless of what the setback is, I can get back in control how I react what happens to me. Is the most empowering message ever. And it is delivered in a very short, potent way. And so I would say ‘yeh I would recommend that book to anybody’ and everybody I recommend to see it. It changed my life that book. The second one, is something called ‘the master key’ it was written in 1902. And it is actually the foundation of the secret, unfortunately for the people who bought into the secret, the master key is kind of the real deal because you would have to visualise, and you would have to get ready to do it. And you have to be wishful and mindful and thoughtful. But then you have got to actually do the work. And the thing that is most viable about the master key is all the stuff that it talks about in terms of visualisation. And there is another book too, I just thought about it, its another older book, and it is about visualisation. Which is super viable and its called psycho cybernetics. By Maxwell Malts and that one book, if you read the chapters the feel of the mind. Its insanely viable, because I use that process every time initiation, every time I am meeting a new client, I sit down and try to visualise how I want the meeting to come out. And you know what, it comes out about 8 out of 10 times. The way I want it to. Because I take the time to think about what I am going to do.

Neil: Yeh some great books there, thanks for that. Everyone when you have a busy life, listening to audio books is a great way to expand your knowledge in the time that you may be doing other things. Such as driving or when you are going to the gym. We have a special offer for you with a free audio book of your choosing. To choose your free audio book go to www.freeaudiobookoffer.com. As long as you have not already signed up then you will qualify. Peter, what I would like to do now is fast forward to the future a little bit. So what is the one thing that you would do with your business if you knew you could not fail?

Peter Mehit, Custom BPS (Business Planning and Solutions): You know, I have never been asked that question before and that comes from kind of a dear place and so I don’t answer that question about if I could not fail. I don’t fear challenges, I don’t fear the situation. I have lacks ok? I have resource lacks. Or I will have different lacks. I think the challenge for us right now, because we are trying to build online product, where you can go and, because the only products out there on the business plans are terrible. They are all terrible. .. it all. So we have got an idea of how to build that and so the thing I would like to do is launch that product this year and so the challenges we face around that product are resource based or we are thinking about doing a craft funding to raise some money to do that. But I don’t really come from a place where I worry about whether I am going to fail or not, because having failed so many times in the last 12 years, I mean you are talking to somebody who 2008 crash – you basically lost everything if you had a crash. Because banks stop lending you money,

Neil: yeh

Peter Mehit, Custom BPS (Business Planning and Solutions): People stop starting businesses. So, I can’t imagine people rounding me up at gunpoint. That it can get worse than that. So I am kind of beyond the fail piece, I am now looking at you know, if I had the resources, this is what I would do because I think the future is .. I think the future is online. I think the whole idea of the business plan or what it used to be is dead and I think it needs to evolve into a new space and we struggle with what that is. And I think that is kind of what we are looking for. How we evolve, because people still need to do this exercise. I will change into something that they perceive as valuable, something that they want to do and something that will actually deliver value to them. And so that is kind of where we are going with that.

Neil: Ok sounds exciting, it would be good to hear from you when you have sorted that out actually.

Peter Mehit, Custom BPS (Business Planning and Solutions): Oh yeh

Neil: So what skill if you were excellent at it, would help you the most to double your business?

Peter Mehit, Custom BPS (Business Planning and Solutions): What do you think the answer is to that?

Neil: I think you might say marketing somewhere.

Peter Mehit, Custom BPS (Business Planning and Solutions): Yes. My mission is final, my work here is done. Yes because every time we have got there marketing, we have done it.

Neil: Ok good answer. If in five years from now, if a well known business publication was publishing an article on your business, after talking to your customers and suppliers, what would you like it to say?

Peter Mehit, Custom BPS (Business Planning and Solutions): I would like it to say something like ‘they helped us find prosperity, while growing with order and calm.’ And that we helped them take the chaos out of their business, because that is what we do and we actually have customers that would say that now, so if you can get on the line of forbes and call me, I will set them up.

Neil: ha ha ha ok I will work on that.

Peter Mehit, Custom BPS (Business Planning and Solutions): Work on it please.

Neil: We are now at the part of the show where you share three golden nuggets with us so, the first one is, can you share your favourite quote with us and tell us how you have applied it?

I  Peter Mehit, Custom BPS (Business Planning and Solutions): In the midwest of the United States, people are very very straightforward and honest kind of people. And I grew up in Ohio, and one of the things that the old folks used to say is start out as you mean to go on.  Start relationships out, don’t start from a place of exageration, or over-representation. Be direct, be honest and then hold your partners and then hold your clients and customers to that same standard, so that there are not any misunderstandings. In business, the most important thing we manage are expectations. And so if you set those expectations correctly in the beginning, you can’t have an unhappy person, its impossible. If you set the expectations properly, if you communicate properly, that means you have got to start out, from a place of integrity, and stay in that place of integrity and make sure that you deal with people with integrity and keep them in integrity, so I say to me, if you do that I don’t care what kind of business you have, I work with car dealers you know people of the United States at least, and the automobile dealers to be slammered practically. Dishonest and stuff. I work with some really honest people in that industry. And so, their clients and customers, was up. And so I think if you start out at that place, you can’t go back, you can fall out, the customer could quit you, you could tell the customer to go away. Whatever, but you are not going to be in a place of ‘well youknow I wish I had done better work, you know I wasn’t quite right with that person.’ You don’t want to be there, so thats why you need to start out how you mean to go on.

Neil: Ok and do you have favourite online resources that you could share with us that would be useful?

Peter Mehit, Custom BPS (Business Planning and Solutions): I work with so many of them, I can’t really think of one of them off the top of my head. Because they are all so kind of specific to doing different parts of what I do, so I can’t think of any of them I’m sorry.

Neil: Ok. and what is your best advice to other entrepreneurs?

Peter Mehit, Custom BPS (Business Planning and Solutions): Be truthful to yourself and forgive yourself. Have tolerence for your mistakes. Don’t beat yourself up when things go wrong because they are going to go back. Because the people that succeed in this life, not just at entrepreneurship, but in life, are the people who don’t quit. It doesn’t have, I have met a million people with huge potential that didn’t go anywhere, and I have met people with five and six – like for example I have got five restaurants. I have got five restaurants. This guy, I now work with him, I go, ‘how did you do this?’ He struggles with everything but he never gives up. And so the most important thing, the interest in my opinion, in life is potential. Because people think, ‘I don’t have to try as hard.’ Well people who win are the people who never give up. And so don’t beat yourself up, love yourself, find your weaknesses, face them honestly and just don’t ever let go, just keep hanging on.

Neil: Everyone, if you didn’t manage to get a note of Peter’s favourite resources or his favourite books, you can find the links on Peter’s shownotes page, just go to theentrepreneurway.com and search for Peter or Peter Mehit in the search box. Peter is there anything else you would like to add about your business?

Peter Mehit, Custom BPS (Business Planning and Solutions): Well I live in the world of rock stars and we do a really good job for our customers and we have an amazing experience who we work with. And by the way, we have done work internationally. I want to make an offer to your listeners because this has been one of the most enjoyable interviews I have ever had.

Neil: Thank you.

Peter Mehit, Custom BPS (Business Planning and Solutions): Mainly because it focuses, its not about me in the sense that I am trying to hide what I do. And so because I sense that you are working with people who are just getting started, I want to do something very special. I want to offer an e-copy of killerbusinessplan which will give you access to the web stuff as well. I want to offer that to you.

Neil: Thats fantastic that Peter, thank you. Ok what we will do is, we will put a link on the page for that, for everybody to be able to get that. You just have to enter your email address, and you will get access to the copy. Ok, Peter, its been an absolute pleasure having you on here, I have really enjoyed the chat and you have really provided us with some great insights into the being an entrepreneur and you have certainly given us alot to think about. So thank you very much.

Peter Mehit, Custom BPS (Business Planning and Solutions): Thank you for having me on, it was really enjoyable. It was kind of a nice journey down memory lane of stuff I have not thought about for a while, so thank you, I appreciate it too.

Neil: You are welcome. Thank you.