The Pacesetter Pod

Being a "fire-fighter" works — until it doesn't.

If you're just tackling reds right in front of you, you're thinking in the short-term, and you're not improving as you go.

But there's a better way.

And it's called working on capability. It makes your business easier, quicker, faster, and generates bigger, proven, and repeatable results for your business.

And in today's episode, I reveal how capability can help scale your business.

Listen now!

Show Highlights Include:

• Why the "Get The Job Done" mentality materializes in 2 harmful trade-offs for your business (2:54)
• How focusing on your capacity—and not your capability—creates unpredictable and unrepeatable results (5:44)
• The simple way to manage a product recall with "capability building" (6:35)
• Why "KMR" could sabotage your company culture, training, and knowledge (there's even insurance products for "KMR") (10:17)
• How to never rely on on a single, herculean department pulling long hours to get the job done again (11:58)
• Why measuring productivity by how many hours your employees worked doesn't guarantee your M&A integration is going to work (13:44)

For more about Joe Mosher, go here:

https://moshercg.com/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/joemosher/

M&A is not a box-ticking exercise.

Merely "completing" the tasks in your integration is not the same as closing your integration.

And if you don't close your integration 100%?

The feelings of dread, anxiety, and eternal despair never leave. Your half-complete integration will always be there, just lingering in the background. Nobody wants to talk about it, but everybody is fed up with it.

Morale is destroyed. Employees are sick of dealing with multiple CRM's and processes. And there's no feeling of, "we did it. It's over."

But there's a solution to this problem.

In today's episode, I reveal a five point checklist to know exactly when to close your integration. By doing this, you can get a clean feeling of relief, knowing your integration is done and dusted.

Listen now!

Show Highlights Include:

• How to unlock the incredible momentum potential of your M&A with the "Sustain & Optimize" stage of an integration (2:34)
• Use this five point checklist to know exactly when it's the right time to close your integration (3:40)
• How to maximize the value your M&A brings by ensuring all of your "residual work" is completed before you close your M&A (8:11)
• How to legitimize your integration by forcing your employees to eat some cake (even if it's 9 or 12 months after close) (16:15)

For more about Joe Mosher, go here:

https://moshercg.com/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/joemosher/

Integrations that take longer than a year bankrupt your company.

Why?

Well, there's a few reasons, but nothing is as detrimental as this:

Instead of focusing on strategy, senior leaders have now spent an entire year on integration. They've lost focus of what's important.

That's why completing your integration in a timely manner is essential to your success.

And in today's episode, I reveal how to undertake an integration in less than a year.

Listen now!

Show Highlights Include:

• Ask yourself these 22 questions to shave off months, if not years, of time in your M&A integration (1:20)
• The "Doctor" method to make your next integration run as smoothly (and quickly) as possible (3:13)
• How a 6 month long integration can take 24 months if it's not "sequenced" correctly (4:37)
• The weird reason why M&A potentially upsets your customers if it's going "too well" (4:58)
• 5 essential components for completing your integration in the next 6 months (12:53)
• How to keep your team motivated to finalize your integration with "The Whimper Effect" (16:32)

For more about Joe Mosher, go here:

https://moshercg.com/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/joemosher/

Storing processes in the minds of your senior leaders is a huge risk for your business. What would happen to your firm if those leaders leave the company?

You don't have to imagine, I'll tell you: Essential knowledge is lost, leaving the rest of the organization without clear direction or guidance. This results in confusion, mistakes, and decreased efficiency.

Not only that, it leaves your company vulnerable to foreign attack.

If your senior leaders are poached by the competition, they can easily "steal" your current processes — and you've lost the ability to function as a company.

In today's episode, I reveal how to build processes for your own business, reducing the complexity of your integration. You'll also discover a stupid simple way to undertake due diligence on a potential acquisition.

Listen now!

Show Highlights Include:

• The "Fight Ready" method to reduce the complexity of your integration (1:07)
• How executing M&A integration highlights more profitable opportunities than any SWOT analysis ever could (3:25)
• The simple way to thoroughly investigate a potential acquisition by building your own "process house" (3:48)
• Why creating standard operating procedures during an integration cannibalizes precious time, money, and energy (7:40)
• Enhance your product line, introduce new customers, and cut costs by establishing "SOP's" (13:08)

For more about Joe Mosher, go here: https://moshercg.com/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/joemosher/

When it comes to integrations, your mindset produces results.

This is a simple, observable fact. Yet leaders of the 70-90% of acquisitions that fail kneel at the altar of "budget management", have a scarcity mindset, and fall prey to worthless data.

Worst part?

Senior leaders start to spin their wheels. They agonize over tiny, incremental decisions that have no impact on the broader picture. The energy and motivation on Day 1 of the acquisition simmers down. Employees from all parts of the business start feeling the effects of a poorly integrated M&A. And overall morale of the team gets reduced to nothing.

The way to overcome this is with an "integration mindset."

In today's episode, I reveal the 3 key attributes to an effective "integration mindset." I also reveal why budgets aren't the be-all and end-all that you're used to.

Listen now!

Show Highlights Include:

• The flat-out strange way Tony Robbins has more of an impact on a thriving integration than personally hiring Roland Frasier (1:06)
• How to de-risk your integration by burning your quarterly budgets in a trash can (and replacing them with this…) (4:28)
• Why kneeling at the altar of "budget management" sacrifices tremendous growth opportunities (5:46)
• How to scale food & agribusiness firms to the moon with these 3 key integration mindset attributes (10:15)

For more about Joe Mosher, go here: https://moshercg.com/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/joemosher/

AOL & Time Warner (2001) — $65 billion loss. Daimler-Benz & Chrysler (1998) — $36 billion loss. Google & Motorola (2012) — $12.5 billion loss.

These behemoths all failed when trying to integrate.

Why?

There are many reasons, but the biggest one is because they tried to run their integration like they ran their business. With 70-90% of integrations flat out failing, you can't follow what you've always done.

An integration is not like running a business — integrations are temporary, timebound, and extremely flexible.

Running your M&A integration like a business causes your customers to flock to your competitors in search of better service. Senior leaders and top talent have no choice but to leave. And you destroy any chance of receiving a positive return on your investment. In fact, you could leave the company worse off then if you did nothing — like with the previous examples.

So, how do we avoid wasting millions of dollars — and destroying the company?

In today's episode, I reveal the "Three Legged Stool" approach to enhance the odds of your M&A integration succeeding by a factor of 10:1. I also share why having Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos on your team isn't the answer to a profitable M&A.

Listen now!

Show Highlights Include:

• Why hiring your senior leaders (or project managers) to run your integration are both fundamentally wrong (1:39)
• How 12 week due diligence periods ethically blind you to glaring—and obvious—red flags about a business you want to acquire (7:34)
• Why integrations that don't focus on rigidity can actually sabotage your business (8:56)
• How to enhance the odds of your M&A integration succeeding by a factor of 10:1 with the "3 Legged Stool" approach (11:22)

For more about Joe Mosher, go here: https://moshercg.com/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/joemosher/

An M&A with multiple objectives is a great way to fail.

Diluted focus poisons the effectiveness when acquiring a business. To cover the costs of trying to integrate everything, profits are depleted instead of being used to grow the business.

IT, finance, accounting, operations, logistics, and sales and marketing are all strained when a business bites more than it can chew.

So, how do we avoid taking on more than we can handle?

In today's episode, I reveal the "Minimum Viable Integration." It's a tool you can use to gauge the minimum acceptable requirements for an integration.

Listen now!

Show Highlights Include:

• Why the early stages of M&A murders a profitable ROI if you don't focus on the "UVD" (2:09)
• The proven way to acquire your competitor—and dominate any market—with the "Minimum Viable Integration" (2:52)
• How to scale to 9-figures, and de-risk your M&A by whipping out a blue ballpoint pen and scribbling some notes on a piece of paper (3:59)
• Why 95% of M&A deals "steal" millions of dollars out of your backpocket with little to nothing to show for it (and how to prevent this) (7:28)
• How to unlock a flood of excited customers by deleting their records on your file (14:11)
• Want to integrate your business, but retain your brand's reputation among customers? Here's how, with "Integration Light Strategies" (17:18)

For more about Joe Mosher, go here: https://moshercg.com/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/joemosher/

Most M&A integrations destroy more value than they create. They do this by asking these irrelevant questions:

• How do we sustain our culture?
• How do we put our new portfolio, products, and services into the market?
• How do we understand our margins and profitability?

These questions are a complete waste of time, energy, and money compared to the life-or-death element of an M&A: your customers.

Because when you treat your customers like an Egyptian Deity, the chances of your M&A integration succeeding skyrockets.

In today's episode, I reveal the Egyptian Deity method for guaranteeing the success of your M&A. You'll also discover why putting your customers at the forefront of your integration plan guarantees the success of your M&A.

Listen now!

Show Highlights Include:

• 3 questions to ask before your next M&A to have a smooth integration (1:18)
• Why worshiping your customers like an Egyptian deity guarantees the success of your M&A (2:56)
• The champagne popper's secret for merging two companies together (without chaos) (4:28)
• De-risk your M&A by positioning your customers at the heart of your integration plan (8:23)
• Reason why between 70% and 90% of M&A fail? They don't implement the "The Three Layered Results Pyramid" (8:38)
• How retaining employees is a complete waste of time when compared to (this) (12:27)

For more about Joe Mosher, go here: https://moshercg.com/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/joemosher/

When you try to do everything, you achieve nothing.

The biggest mistake I see food and agribusiness companies making is having multiple reasons why they're executing an M&A.

Sounds weird, right? Why would you want to limit yourself to only one reason why? By not having a concrete why, you face very low odds of getting the integration right. If the integration fails, the deal fails. And if the deal fails, then the consequences are catastrophic:

• Your employee and customer confidence erodes
• Your credibility as a leader is crushed
• You lose ground to traditional and emerging competitors
• And your poorly executed deal consumes capital with subpar returns

In other words, understanding the why of an M&A is crucial — it's the difference between life and death for food and agribusiness companies. But how do we find our "why?"

In today's episode, I reveal a 9-part framework which creates a clear path to understand your why, stacking the odds of success in your favor.

Listen now!

Show Highlights Include:

• The "WBH" strategy to bulletproof your upcoming M&A integration (1:13)
• The 9 different types of acquisitions which aligns your company to have a 7-figure M&A (6:51)
• How understanding your "why" liberates the deal-killing confusion M&As can have (13:58)
• Excited to execute an M&A with all the bells and whistles? Here's why that's a great way to be one of the 90% of M&As that fail (15:35)
• Why delaying your M&A by 6 months increases your chances of success (16:56)
• 4 simple questions to understand exactly why you're doing this M&A (17:14)

For more about Joe Mosher, go here: https://moshercg.com/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/joemosher/

Mergers & acquisitions (M&As) often destroy more value than they create.

Statistically speaking, it's a safer bet to invest all your time in creating a new business, as opposed to executing an M&A. According to Harvard Business Review, Between 70 and 90% of M&As fail.

Why?

Because they don't have a proven process, especially one that takes into account the integration AFTER the initial M&A has occurred.

But if you follow a proven process, you can unlock accelerated growth for your food and agribusiness company. And that's what I reveal in today's episode.

Listen now!

Show Highlights Include:

• Why rapid growth through an M&A could sabotage your business forever (and leave your customers hurting) (2:06)
• How to unlock accelerated growth for your company by rejecting the idea of a "business case" (9:47)
• The insidious way M&As cloud your judgment with "emotional turbulence" (10:45)
• How to generate steroid-like growth with an M&A AND integration (13:32)
• The failure of so many M&A deals to deliver is because of (this) (16:07)
• 3 common mistakes most food and agribusiness companies make when executing an M&A (19:47)

For more about Joe Mosher, go here: https://moshercg.com/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/joemosher/