Story First: AI, Visibility, and the Art of Content Marketing with Danielle Mohr

Jeff McLarty (00:07)
Ever wonder what it really takes to build a business from the ground up? Welcome to Owner’s Roundtable, where successful business owners pull up a chair and swap stories and lessons from their own adventures in business. From surviving their first half-baked business plan, the time they almost went broke, the time they got lucky, and the strategies and tactics they used along the way.

This isn’t about a polished success story on the company About Us page; it’s about the real story behind the business. The pain, the people, the setbacks, and the big break that changed everything. Each episode, you’ll sit down with the owners who’ve been in the trenches, build something meaningful, and live to tell the tale. Whether you’re starting out, scaling up, or just curious what it takes to go the distance, there’s a seat at the owner’s roundtable for you. Subscribe now on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I’m Jeff McLarty, seasoned entrepreneur, executive coach, and business trainer, and I want you to have your own seat with us here at the Owner’s Roundtable. Real owners, real stories, real insights.

Jeff McLarty (01:15)
Hello and welcome to Owner’s Roundtable. Today at the table is Danielle Mohr, Founder and Owner of Writing and Editing Services. Today we’ll be talking about content generation, AI, making ideas sticky, and much, much more. So pull up a chair and join Danielle and I as we discuss her journey to earning a seat here at the Owners Roundtable.

Jeff McLarty (01:35)
Welcome, Danielle. Great to see you again.

Danielle Mohr (01:36)
Hey, thanks Jeff, it’s great to see you too.

Jeff McLarty (01:40)
For the listeners that don’t know you, do you want to tell us a little bit about yourself and who are and what Fine Point is and any of your other adventures you’d like to include.

Danielle Mohr (01:49)
Absolutely. So Fine Point Writing and Editing. We’re coming up on 10 years actually in business in September. So it’s been a crazy journey, as all entrepreneurial journeys are. But I started out just to find a job in writing, actually, and I ended up at a networking meeting and I had a few business owners in the room ask me, hey, can you write a blog post?

And at the time it was funny because I’m like I don’t even really know what a blog post is, but sure….

Jeff McLarty (02:22)
Sure, I can write it. Haha.

Danielle Mohr (02:24)
You know It’s the entrepreneurial spirit right? I will figure that out. And I did, and kind of fell in love with… the writing is great but really it’s like interviewing and talking to people about their stories and then translating that into the writing that, for me, is the powerful piece. And it’s really interesting.

I was just talking to a client yesterday and we were talking about how, I think the pathway in the brain for writing is almost completely separate from speaking, even though, you know, we’re speaking the same language as we’re writing.

But how people translate what they know into words on paper is very different than how they speak. So, a lot of my clients can just talk to me about pretty much anything and I can translate that into writing, but if you asked them to write it, they would really struggle with it.

So it’s really interesting to be on the other side of it where for me, it’s much easier to write things than to speak them, actually.

Jeff McLarty (03:32)
That’s one of the things I really appreciate about you is your ability to transform a conversation into, you know, a cohesive written brand image, and put that out in a way that connects with other people. Did you naturally have that talent or is that something you had to develop over time?

Danielle Mohr (03:32)
Yeah, I mean, I wanted to be a writer since I was like, I don’t know, six years old. My mom–she was sick of me. I was probably saying, I’m bored, I’m bored. She put a piece of stapled-together paper in front of me, so it was a little book and said, write a book, Danielle. I was like, what? This is amazing. Because I loved books. I love reading.

And I get quite obsessive about reading, actually. And my niece is very much the same now. You know, she’s in grade one, and she’s reading these giant chapter books.

And it’s just funny to watch her because it’s the exact same journey that I went through, where I just couldn’t get enough of books. I just read and read and read and was always good at spelling, was always good at writing.

So I think there was a talent component to it for sure. But then it’s a muscle that you have to, you know, flex every day, um, as we all have those skills that we need to work on every day, even if they are kind of a little bit naturally inborn. And I mean, I’ve had a lot of practice over the years, so.

Jeff McLarty (04:53)
How many words do you think you’ve written in the last 10 years with Fine Point?

Danielle Mohr (04:58)
Oh so, so many. For a while, we used to use Grammarly. And I think in a two-year period, we were at like two million or something. Easily. Yeah.

Jeff McLarty (05:10)
That’s a lot of ad copy.

Danielle Mohr (05:13)
It’s a lot of copy. And I think that was probably like–that wasn’t even everything we had written, right? So.

Jeff McLarty (05:20)
What do you think makes it hard for business owners to write about what they do?

Danielle Mohr (05:27)
One of the things for sure is you get in your own head a little bit when you’re writing about your own business. And I know this because I’m the same. You know, I’m the hypocrite, telling people you need to write your blog posts and you need to make sure that you’re putting out social media and, you know, fix up your website.

And I struggle with it for me, right, because it’s kind of like holding up a mirror to yourself, and it can be a little bit uncomfortable, and you can be much more uncertain about it. And it’s a little bit different when you’re talking to someone about your business in a way that is connecting with them directly and solving their problems. Then, it tends to be very easy to talk about. But as soon as it comes back to you and it’s about promoting yourself, it’s so easy to get in your own head about it.

Jeff McLarty (06:20)
Oh, for sure. Haha.

Danielle Mohr (06:21)
Yeah, yeah. You know exactly what I’m talking–every business owner does, right? Like it’s just a difficult thing.

And then there’s the technical pieces of like, you know, how do I do this? What kind of thing is going to work? What is going to sound like me versus sounding salesy?

And then there are so many different formats that we write in, and it’s hard to know what the tone is for each of them, right?

So your brand voice should be pretty consistent across everything that you write, but the tone might differ depending on if it’s more like a formal report versus a social media post. So lots of those little things can also catch people up.

Jeff McLarty (06:48)
You’re bang on with a lot of those things. I obviously work with a lot of business owners and I give advice about, hey, how to handle problems. And whenever I hear the advice coming out of my mouth to somebody else, I’m like, actually, that’s pretty good advice. I should probably take that piece and go do it myself.

Danielle Mohr (07:20)
I mean, you and I have had that conversation many times, right? Like I’ve said to you, Jeff, that’s amazing. Have you written that down? You’re like, no, I don’t know. I just said it. Yeah, absolutely. Those little nuggets of wisdom, right?

Which is why I love talking to my clients directly as well, because a lot of clarity can come out of just those conversations and–clarity for me so that I can write for them. But also, I think a lot of clarity for them. So it’s kind of like translating all of these different things that are going on in your brain.

One of the things as a writer that you do naturally is like structure ideas. Things need to flow, and things need to make sense, and things need to be related to each other. And a lot of times just by talking it through, we can kind of structure what they’re talking about so that they can see it from this perspective of how it’s all connected. And then I feel like people just walk away with just amazing sense of clarity.

Jeff McLarty (08:22)
People struggle with–there’s so many different ideas in their head and then they have trouble sorting it out into a cohesive picture. And we’ve worked together and one of the things I really enjoyed was your framework of how to take all these disparate ideas and turn them into a narrative.

And I think that’s something a lot of people need and helps them clarify how they communicate what they do. Because when you’re an expert at something, it’s so hard to explain what you do to somebody who’s not an expert. And those are the people who need you most is the ones that aren’t experts, right?

Danielle Mohr (08:57)
Exactly, exactly. Translating that.

And you know, I always say that’s because sometimes people are nervous about having someone else, you know, who’s not in their industry, write for them.

But I always say, it can be really beneficial because I’m on the level of your audience. So I know what they will and won’t understand. I have the opportunity to ask you the questions, you know, this is a technical term, Jeff, what does this mean? Like if you break this down, what’s an example that you would give?

So that anyone can approach that idea and it’s not an expert talking to experts when really it should be an expert talking to the layman who needs your expertise. So that’s a big piece.

And I mean, talking about the framework I’ve developed over the last couple of years–what I call the lead flow framework. So that’s kind of like what all of our services are built on now. It’s just this system that basically helps translate, you know, what business owners are doing and what businesses are doing for people into something that is going to actively promote them, give them that, like, thought leadership, the expertise, generate trust.

And it’s just taking all of these different modes of communication and working them into a customized plan.

It’s very customized, still. There’s like a strategy behind it, but the framework just makes sure that all of those pieces are gonna be represented properly and working together for your brand, instead of just all kind of separate.

A lot of people end up with marketing that is over here and over here and over here and it’s not doing much for them as a whole. So that’s what the system is designed to do.

Jeff McLarty (10:36)
Everybody knows they’re supposed to generate content, but I was actually talking to somebody earlier today and I was like, well, what do you want to generate content for? Well, because, for marketing. Well, but what does the rest of the funnel look like? Like, how you generate this content, and then what happens, and then what happens?

And how does this result in somebody being your customer? And they looked at me like, huh, never really thought about it. I just knew I had to market.

Danielle Mohr (10:59)
Yeah, marketing is just this wild west thing that, you know, you’re supposed to do. Yeah, I’m supposed to be creating content.

You know, creating content is better than not creating content at the end of the day. But if you’re going to be spending the time, money, energy into creating it, you want to get the most out of it, right? And so the only way you’re going to do that is if you have a strategy flowing behind it at some point.

Jeff McLarty (11:31)
I’ve reluctantly learned a lot about how to create good content, but the part I’ve always enjoyed was the structure of, once you engage somebody’s attention, then how do we move them through to deciding whether or not you’re a good fit for them? That’s one of my favorite parts of business is how does that funnel work? Certainly the getting somebody’s attention right off the start was something I’ve studied a lot more of the science on recently.

What do you think is the most important thing in that first layer of the marketing funnel? Like how do you get somebody’s attention in a market that’s constantly full of distractions?

Danielle Mohr (12:07)
Good question. I actually think that’s where a lot of people focus their time, is the visibility. And visibility, I think, is just about relating to your client or customer, and knowing what they’re going to relate to directly.

We focus so much on, okay, I solve this specific problem for people. And that’s great. People need to know what the problem is that you’re solving for.

But I think there’s also that personality behind it and the approach behind it. And that’s what people really want to know and connect with. Because, you know, you can have a company. I think about my accountant. I’ve had terrible luck with accountants over my decade in business, until two years ago, I met my current accountant.

So she does my accounting and my bookkeeping, basically all of it. Just, I’m a words girl. Don’t bother me with numbers, you know? I think about, like, her approach to it and how different it is from the other people that I’ve worked with. And, you know, I’ve even had some actually good accountants. They work for other people. I know they do. They’ve come recommended, but they don’t work for me because they’re not speaking my language. They’re not doing it on a level that I can engage with.

And my current accountant, Jessica, a little shout out to Jessica of Elevation Accounting. a client of mine as well. She really breaks things down, she welcomes questions. Other accountants, sometimes you’re like, you can tell that they’re like, I’ll answer your question. But my God, Danielle, really?

So in her content, you know, I think we’ve been really careful about trying to make sure that shows through. Where it’s like we speak your language. We’re not here to confuse you. We’re not here to use these terms that you don’t know or engage with.And that’s what gets her clients and then that’s what keeps her clients.

So, that’s the visibility layer, I think, is just how do you actually connect with people?

Jeff McLarty (14:03)
Makes lot of sense. One of the things I always find interesting, everybody’s asked their accountant at least once how a cashflow statement works. And for anybody that didn’t go to business school, cashflow statements are these mystical things that seem to be a little confusing. And every accountant has explained it at least once and then everybody smiled and nodded.

The number of times I’ve met with business owners and I’m like, okay, look, let’s go through your reporting and like, can you pull information out of this cashflow statement or is it kind of Greek? And they’re like, well, my accountant did explain it, but I don’t really know. And it’s because that, that expert talking to somebody who doesn’t know, and that assumption that they have a base to understand the information. As you’re in business longer, you get that expertise, but it doesn’t happen instantly. Just, everybody feels like they should know those things but they don’t always.

Danielle Mohr (14:52)
It’s so true. think there are a lot of things like that as an entrepreneur. And I think marketing is one of them. You have like imposter syndrome around it a little bit. Like, I should know this, everyone else knows this. And I think the reality is that most people actually don’t know this, right? Because you didn’t go to school for that, you’ve never done this, and it’s a difficult thing to do.

And some people also have a more natural ability. I mean, talking about numbers versus words, right? Some people are…they just understand numbers. Like, that’s just not my–you can explain things to me 500 times and I still probably won’t grasp it. Words are different for me. But my clients come to me and that’s how they feel about words. Yeah.

Jeff McLarty (15:34)
I think that’s the thing that’s really important in entrepreneurship is knowing what you’re bad at and being okay with it.

Danielle Mohr (15:41)
Yeah, yeah. And then finding the way to fill the gaps in, right? You fill the gaps with people who do know that and who care about it, right? I mean, Jessica gets right nerdy about my business numbers and I love that. I love that because I’m not gonna do it. I’m not gonna ever have that energy or enthusiasm for it.

Jeff McLarty (16:04)
And I think if you can put together a good team of people who balance out your weaknesses and bring your own strengths, you can build a really strong business. And I think people that are able to scale to large sizes, that’s what they’ve done. They’re not perfect people. They don’t have every skill set. They just know which ones they’re good at and when they need to bring people in.

Danielle Mohr (16:21)
I’m reading a great book right now called Buy Back Your Time. And that’s the whole concept is like hiring not even just to grow your business, but hiring to buy back your time and so that your time is spent on what you actually like and what you’re good at, right? Because obviously, that’s where you’re the most valuable.

And it’s one of those concepts that you’re like, yeah, that’s so logical. That’s practical. It makes sense. Why do I need someone to explain this to me in a seven hour long book? for some reason you do.

Jeff McLarty (16:49)
Hahaha, It’s a great book.

Danielle Mohr (16:54)
Yeah, like there are things that cost you time, but then there are things that cost you energy. Like entrepreneurs, I think that’s something that we really undervalue. We value our money, we value our time, but we don’t necessarily value our energy. But that’s what keeps us going, right? Like we are, we are little balls of energy and without that things can really fall apart fast.

Jeff McLarty (17:16)
I’m glad you’re reading that book. Who recommended that book to you by any chance? I can’t remember.

Danielle Mohr (17:20)
I think it must have been you.

Jeff McLarty (17:25)
Yeah, it was me.

Danielle Mohr (17:22)
That’s hilarious. You know what, that’s so funny, Jeff. I hadn’t realized that because I have a running list of books that people recommend and I just jot it down as quick as possible, right? And that one came up and yeah, I think that was from a conversation we had a few weeks ago.

Jeff McLarty (17:37)
It’s a great book. I recommend it to anybody that hasn’t read it.

Danielle Mohr (17:40)
Yeah, so good.

Jeff McLarty (17:41)
I actually recommend it as the sequel to the E-Myth. Like, read the E-Myth, and then when you’re really ready to get into, like, the technical aspects of how you put this into practice, I think it’s like a spiritual sequel to the E-Myth. I don’t know if you agree with that.

Danielle Mohr (17:54)
Okay, I like that. That’s so good. I haven’t read the E-Myth actually, either, I know that’s surprising, but I will, I will.

Jeff McLarty (18:01)
I’d love to talk about it, but I don’t want to digress into a book review podcast. Haha.

Danielle Mohr (18:05)
We could easily go there. Haha.

Jeff McLarty (18:19)
Haha, awesome. One of the things I did want to ask you about. You mentioned Grammarly and that it was counting your words. It was probably one of the first good, like, assisted writing tools.

Since you started 10 years ago, how’s writing changed, and, with the advent of AI, what does that mean for what you do and for content in general?

Danielle Mohr (18:31)
Yeah, so, so much has changed over the last decade. And then in the last two years, it’s been really, really fast changing. I went from basically being, you know, I could write a blog post pretty fast. I’m not going to lie to you. But now, I mean…

One thing that I realized when AI first came out, I was really, you know, protective, like, it can’t do it as well as I can. Some business coach in my networking group came and said, you should be the AI expert, like, you’re so well aligned for this. And I like almost spat my coffee out at him because I was like, No, thanks.

Then, you know, within probably six months, I slowly started coming around to it. My copywriter, Natalie, you know, she’s expressed some curiosity in it because she’s very techie. And I thought, okay, I’ll play around with it a little bit.

And I had a really cool opportunity to play around with it on a much larger scale with another marketing company that I worked with. And that gave me the opportunity to–very low risk, see what it can do and just experiment.

And I quickly saw that it was very intuitive piece of the system that I’d already created. And one of the things that I tell people is, people don’t come to me necessarily, like my value is not in typing words on a keyboard. Maybe some of it was at one point because it was a time saver, but people could do that on their own if they wanted to.

For me, what they were coming to me for was more like the strategy. Should I be writing and how can I connect, and then, you know, the great execution on the other side of it where it’s like, this is, you know, a really high level piece of writing that is going to do something for me. There’s an action associated with it.

So I let go of the fear, but I just embraced it. And now at this point, I mean, we have like fully integrated it into the system that I created and it just flows so beautifully. And I know a lot of people object to AI writing because it’s bland, it’s soulless, repetitive, it all sounds the same. But really, like, the system that I’ve created has made it so that it blends the, this is super quick and intuitive aspect of AI, with this is your very unique brand voice. And that’s actually showing through, and there’s storytelling behind it, there’s emotion behind it, it’s not just that soulless kind of drivel. You can get soulless drivel out of AI but that’s only if you’re not using it as part of a system and a process.

Jeff McLarty (21:22)
I agree. I was actually just wrote a blog post about this a little bit earlier today about when I first got AI. It was kind of like, it’s like when you first get an iPad and you’re like, this is super cool, it’s going to be great, I want to use it for stuff. But you don’t really know what exactly you’re trying to do with it until you have a problem, you’re like, actually, I could use this to have my recipes on in the kitchen, or I can use this instead of taking a laptop to a meeting, I can take notes on it.

What the new AI reality requires from people is to really understand what the problem is and then use this tool to solve it. Versus, ah, just solve this, without defining what the actual problem is. Then you get AI slop out of the back end if you have a half defined issue.

Danielle Mohr (22:05)
100 % yeah. yeah. So I talk about a couple different aspects of working within AI. You know, this applies to writing, but I think it applies more generally as well. But it starts with context. Context comes from basically giving it what it needs to understand your business at a very base level.

So we start, always, with foundational messaging. And foundational messaging is basically this giant document, as you’ve seen, with, you know, all of these details about your business and just really strategic outline of what it is you do, what it is you don’t do, and how you do it and how you deliver it.

So it’s those connection pieces. It’s that relatability. And then it goes really deep into a lot of different aspects of your business so that the AI can pull from that instead of just using this generalized knowledge, right?

Saying I have a copywriting business doesn’t really say very much about me. It’s like an employee. It’s like onboarding an employee. You know, I always use the example of a shoe store because I used to work in a shoe store. Okay, we sell shoes. Have fun. You know, like that’s, it’s just not going to cut it. The shoe store I worked at had these little–they were terrible, terrible videos you had to watch as part of training. But they did the job, right? They told you what you were there to do and why you were doing it. And that was an important piece.

So the first piece is context. Then there are other pieces. There’s coordination. So, what do you want? You know, this is kind of what you said: defining the problem. What do you want it to do? But like a very detailed what do you want it to do. So prompting, I mean, you know, there are jobs in prompting now. So prompting has become its whole own little art, and there is an art to it.

One of the things we were talking about in my Lean Marketing Lab program yesterday was limits on Claude. So we use Claude for most of our writing, just, it takes style and tone direction very well. And we were talking about not hitting our limits on Claude.

And having a system, a defined system really helps with that because it ends up being a lot less back and forth. It’s much less conversational, actually, once you have your prompts dialed in, because if you have given it all the instructions up front, it really just takes it and runs with it.

So you have the context and you have the coordination, you’re going to get a really clean draft out of it right away instead of that back and forth and trying to, like, kind of fix it as you go. And so a lot of my Lean Marketing Lab clients find that it just becomes a lot quicker. Even talking to the AI becomes a lot quicker.

Jeff McLarty (25:08)
I was reading the other day about how to use different models for different tasks because they’re cheaper and like how to structure your setup to do all that. That’s a whole other adventure that I’m sure is going to become a fairly common talking point.

Danielle Mohr (25:21)
Absolutely. There are definitely, and I mean, we use a couple different ones, depending on what we’re doing as well. And it’s just, it’s just a bit of experimentation. One of the things I like most that is a side effect of Lean Marketing Lab, where I’m teaching people how to use AI and use the system, is just that they get a lot of confidence generally to use AI.

So, great, I’m teaching them how to do this aspect of it, but they start using it in other aspects of their business just because now they’re confident. Now they’re like, I can play around with this and I know the basics, how to ask for what I need. I can go play around with these other tools. And so they’re introducing AI in their business in a lot of other ways as well.

Jeff McLarty (26:07)
One of the things that really helped me was that I started using a program called Sintra when I first started using AI and it was interesting because they, instead of just giving you a one box prompt, like, okay, type things in here, it had AI employees. You get like 15 little AI employees and they were basically just pre-prompted interfaces. So there would be like a business development one and there’s research one a copywriting one. And all they were was basically an overlay of a prompt, but if you’ve never used AI before and don’t know how to write those pre-prompts before you use the main interface that was very helpful. And that taught me how to think about AI. And then I moved on to other things like Claude and some of the but.

Danielle Mohr (26:48)
It was like a good little training tool for you.

Jeff McLarty (26:49)
And I think that’s where a lot of people are stuck with AI, is I don’t even know how to think about this. You’re like, oh, okay. I got to learn to use AI. You pull up chat GPT and there’s just a like a empty box like Google. You’re like, okay. What do I type in here?

Danielle Mohr (27:07)
That’s the thing, right? It’s, the other thing is, you don’t know what it’s capable of, right? You don’t even know the capability.

So I had someone join lean working lab last week and she’s like, I did all the things that you said, and I typed in the prompt and in the information and she’s like, I’m reading through this blog post and I’m like, how? And it’s talking about my business specifically, and it’s like woven these stories. Like, she just didn’t know it could possibly do that.

And this is where having some help with your experimentation helps too. Because I mean, it took me two years to get to that process where it’s like, here’s your prompt, fill in this information, use your foundational messaging. You can have a blog post in 10 minutes or less. It took me two years to get to that stage with experimenting. And so that’s why I really love the teaching aspect of showing people how to do it with like very plug and play templates, because it’s incredible when you can go from zero to a hundred.

Jeff McLarty (28:07)
Everybody’s seen AI slop. Like when you read it and you’re like, that’s just garbage. I’m not even going to read it. You couldn’t be bothered to write it, so I’m not going to read it. I mean, properly prompted and using it to flesh out ideas so they’re clear and they convey the point that you were trying to get across and it was hard to get out of your head. I think that is a good use of AI, right?

Danielle Mohr (28:24)
Exactly. And the storytelling, right? Like, people don’t connect with information anyway. They connect with stories. And so the prompts that I give people are story based. It’s not asking what is your expertise, because like the reality is anyone can go find the information at a base level.

But just like what you said, like what is that visibility layer? It’s relating to people and how we relate to people is through stories. I took a whole course on it in my master’s degree on storytelling and there’s just such a… it’s so funny because I think it’s always come a little bit natural to me. But when you break it down there’s really such an art to it, and our brains are literally wired to react to stories.

Jeff McLarty (29:11)
There’s a great book called Made to Stick, and it’s based off a study that they did about what makes certain stories like stick around forever. Like those wives tales for lack of a better description, that have been around forever. Like what is it about those stories that makes them be repeated over and over and over again? And it was about what they distilled down to what had to be in a story to make it repeatable and make it sticky.

Danielle Mohr (29:40)
Ok, I have to read that. I’m getting that right after this.

Jeff McLarty (29:44)
One of my favorite examples out of that book is they talked about the state of Texas was having a big problem with littering. And one of the things, you know, as you envision in Texas, very independent mindset, don’t tell me what to do. And so they knew that if they ran ads that said don’t litter, the first thing somebody was going to do was throw an extra cheeseburger wrapper out the window.

So they’re like, okay, how are we going to deal with this? And they said, we need to find a way to like make this a part of their identity, right? Because they’ll do things to protect their own identity. They went, okay, well, what’s the identity of Texas? NASCAR, football, cowboy hats, like, okay, these are the things that represent Texas identity.

So then they ran ads that basically had some guy throws a wrapper out the window and some football player picks it up, runs over to the truck and shoves it back in his face and says, don’t mess with Texas.

And it was one of the most successful anti-littering campaigns that was ever run.

Danielle Mohr (30:49)
That is amazing. And you know what? That is like–you just nailed it on the head. That’s the perfect example of that relatability that doesn’t have to do necessarily with what you’re talking about, right? It’s not about littering if you make it not about littering.

So for me, it’s not about copywriting necessarily. It’s about, you know, all of these other things, storytelling and clarity. I work with a graphic designer and branding specialist, and she does this amazingly. She introduced this concept to me.

Really what she does is she–when she’s doing brand research, she is doing research in that industry or that area, sure. But she’s trying to relate a brand to actually an industry outside of what they’re working in because that brings that creative element to it. It almost defines what you’re doing a little bit more.

So like we worked with a realtor who had this really kind of like curated process with really like deliberate service providers. And so she was like, you know what, we’re going to frame this like the Chelsea market in New York. And that just brings a really cool element because you have more understanding of the client that’s going to come to you as a result of that. This client is someone who would shop at a market like that.

And that brings so much understanding back to you. And then in turn, you can connect with that person on a much deeper level about things that they care about beyond just what you’re talking about. It’’s cool.

Jeff McLarty (32:23)
That’s very cool.

Danielle Mohr (32:25)
Yeah, I love working with creative people. It’s just fun.

Jeff McLarty (32:30)
Getting them all to show up on time and hand in their homework might be a challenge sometimes, but I’m sure it’s a lot of fun.

Danielle Mohr (32:35)
It can be, that is true. That’s the creative mindset, you know?

Jeff McLarty (32:42)
I always find that interesting from a management perspective of, well, we want some really creative people, except we want them to function like little robots and show up on time. And it’s–you have to adapt your management style to the type of person that you want doing a specific role. And I think that’s something a lot of people struggle with on the operations side.

Danielle Mohr (33:04)
I’ve had nothing but good luck with my copywriter. Like we just, I don’t know, we have a natural–we work together really well. If anything, she has to manage me a little bit because I, and this is very common among creatives, I have ADHD and I can be very all over the place and like new idea, shiny new object. I’m really good at getting things to 80 % and then not finishing them. So, for me, she’s an implementer.

There’s a book about this too, and I’ve never actually read it, but I’ve heard about it a lot between the visionary and the implementer. And so if you’re a really visionary person, you need that implementer person. And that’s just the working relationship that I have with Natalie.

It’s important to have the right people around you to make sure that you get there.

Jeff McLarty (33:54)
Well, it goes back to our earlier point about knowing what your strengths and weaknesses are and those off, right?

Danielle Mohr (33:59)
Absolutely, you don’t have to try and be good at everything.

Jeff McLarty (34:03)
The most common entrepreneurial profile, using the disc framework, is somebody that’s a high D. So, you know, let’s get this done. Let’s move, let’s make it happen. As well as a little bit of I: friendly, want to talk to people, want to see new things and that’s awesome. They build businesses quickly, but they tend to blow up because there’s nobody building the infrastructure and putting in the concrete and building the beams underneath.

And, when that personality is paired with somebody who wants to put the things in boxes right behind them, it’s a very powerful combination. You can build some pretty amazing things because somebody is building the infrastructure.

And the hardest part of that relationship is making sure that the communication continues and there’s a respect for the duality of both roles. And trying to find that balance I think is the hardest part of that.

Danielle Mohr (34:50)
I imagine, because I know you do a lot of team training, I imagine you’re coming in, you know, the owner hires you or, you know, someone high up in the organization hires you like a manager level. And you’re coming in to, you know, quote unquote, train the employees on something. But I imagine there’s a little bit of reversal of that, right? How do you work with that visionary of your company to make sure?

Jeff McLarty (35:14)
Every single time, hahaha.

Danielle Mohr (35:17)
I bet that does happen, right? I’ve never actually thought about that. But yeah, as an employee, you have to manage your manager in some ways, right? Because there’s got to be a little bit of pushback. There’s got to be like, hey, why are we doing this? Or we could be doing it this way. that’s interesting.

Jeff McLarty (35:38)
And that’s actually pretty common. I often get brought in by an owner. I’ll work with the owner and then they’re like, hey, and I’m having some trouble with this person or whatever. And often it’s because they’re speaking two different languages.

So a lot of it comes down to when I have those conversations, which actually I just recently had one, is what do you need from each other to know you’re both doing your jobs? Like, what do you need from your ops manager to know that they’re doing what you want them to be doing in the business and what details do they need from you in order to do their job and be comfortable moving things forward. Getting them both to sit down and have that conversation is kind of the first step to that piece, right?

Danielle Mohr (36:23)
Yeah. I had a lot of, exactly what you just described, had a lot of difficulty with that early on with having employees. Because don’t like management. Like for me that sounds like babysitting. I’ve always avoided management roles.

And I am not a manager type. But then you’re not giving the right amount of support. So I introduced level 10 meetings from the US system. And that’s a huge game changer. I always tell people, because whenever they’re having issues with employees, I’m like, do you have a meeting structure? Do you have a weekly meeting structure?

That system has 10,000 different meetings that you’re supposed to be having. I don’t know how you could do anything but meetings if you’re doing that system, in full anyway. But that one once a week level 10 meeting with, like, a very prescribed structure has saved us in so many ways. Because you just get those quick answers. Not getting like too deep into the weeds, but enough that everyone can move forward that week instead of just getting stuck on things over and over.

Jeff McLarty (37:29)
That regular meeting cadence, you think would be common, but a lot of people struggle with that. Where they just are constantly fighting fires and then they don’t make a time to actually keep the train on the tracks. And then they end up having to deal with train wrecks constantly.

Danielle Mohr (37:43)
Yeah, and I mean, in our types of businesses, meetings are fairly common, but I think like lot like trades, construction companies, that’s not like, you’re not having meetings necessarily on regular basis, you’re doing the work, right? So I’ve worked with a lot of trades companies where that was something that they had to implement was, you know, just a regular staff meeting. Let’s talk about things.

Jeff McLarty (38:07)
I mean, it makes a big difference. And if that’s all you do as a start, is to start to build a communication like that. It’s like, let’s have a weekly meeting that has an agenda, not show up and complain, but like, let’s actually cover some stuff. And if it’s not on the agenda, you’re not allowed to talk about it.

Danielle Mohr (38:23)
I think it’s just showing people that you care, as well, as an owner. I’m not, you know, I’m not over here trying to like, do your work and do it better. It’s like, I genuinely do care. And I genuinely want to hear what you say. And it just gives you a really good connection point. Beyond the work too, right? Like if I didn’t meet with Natalie on a regular basis, I wouldn’t hear anything about her life. I wouldn’t know who she is as a person, what she’s interested in, because it’s just an exchange of emails at that point, right? So it takes out the personal element.

Jeff McLarty (38:55)
Especially as we all work more digitally, those regular touch points, whether they even over zoom, but when you’re having conversations with people and instead of, like you said, trading emails back and forth that becomes more and more important I think.

Danielle Mohr (39:07)
Exactly. I agree. And I mean, bringing it back around to marketing too, I think it’s the same concept. Touch points. Regular touch points, where you’re engaging with people on a business standpoint, but like also from a personal standpoint as well.

That’s what keeps people really interested and engaged with you is hearing from you regularly. Just like staying top of mind. And it doesn’t have to be like promotional it doesn’t have to be like come buy my stuff right? Like that’s not, you know, you see people at networking groups and you just say hi and like that’s enough sometimes to be like, yeah i gotta i gotta connect this person with Jiff. I just, you know, I just remembered that. I can’t believe i forgot about that.

Jeff McLarty (39:54)
I think that’s a good summation of some of our conversations today, and it’s always a pleasure talking with you and sharing ideas and exploring marketing. I appreciate you making the time.

Danielle Mohr (40:05)
Thanks, Jeff. I love talking through your brilliant ideas. You have just such a cool philosophy behind business and what you do. And I think it’s super exciting that you are sharing that through the podcast and all your marketing that you do. So keep it up.

Jeff McLarty (40:23)
Thank you very much. We’ll call that good for today and thanks for joining us here on the Owner’s Roundtable.

Danielle Mohr (40:29)
Thanks, Jeff.

Jeff McLarty (40:35)
That’s all for us here at the Owner’s Roundtable. If you’re looking for more support for your business or your own ownership journey, you can contact us at www.focalpointedmonton.com.

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