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Tom DuFore 0:00

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Measuring Impact As An Owner

Tom DuFore 1:14

Welcome to the Multiply Your Success podcast, where each week we help growth-minded entrepreneurs and franchise leaders take the next step in their expansion journey. I'm your host, Tom Dufour, CEO of Big Sky franchise team. And as we open, I'm wondering, how are you measuring your overall impact as an owner or leader of your company? Is it through profit or lives impacted, maybe time off? Well, our guest today is Andy Clark, and he shares with us his whole pie system on operating a small business. Now, Andy is the best-selling author and business strategist behind the Whole Pie System, a framework that helps small business owners build companies that are more profitable, impactful, and enjoyable to own and operate. The system is often referred to as money ball thinking for your small business. You're going to love this interview, so let's go ahead and jump right into it.

SPEAKER_00 2:09

Yeah, Andy Clark. I am the founder and CEO of the whole pie system.

Why Andy Built The System

Tom DuFore 2:16

So I'd love to talk about and jump into the pie system, you know, kind of a little bit of the who, what, where, when, why kind of a thing, but let's start with the why. What led you to prompt to create this system?

SPEAKER_00 2:29

I started out my career as a corporate lawyer. Uh, I practiced corporate law for a dozen years. So I was working with small business owners in a legal capacity for a long time. I'm from Atlantic, Canada. So for the listeners that may not know where that is, that's like it's like north of Maine and east of Quebec. So a province called New Brunswick, if anyone's ever heard of that, but an hour from the Maine border. And so our little part of the world, you know, most of the businesses are small businesses. And so that's what I got to know when I was practicing law and advising them. And what I under what I learned over about a dozen years was that I was really more interested in the business side than the legal side. So I kind of hopped over the fence and I got into business and for the next 10, 12 years, been uh owning, running, managing small businesses in a couple of different industries. And so why do I share that? I share that to tell you that after about 20 years of law and business, what I discovered is that small business is tough. Running small businesses is tough, right? I'm not telling anybody that's listening anything and they don't know. And but I really got curious about what like, you know, why is it so tough? Why is it so tough? And and there's a few reasons for it, but but one that I landed on in particular was that, you know, the same skill set that makes for a great business owner, which is to say, you know, you have big ideas, you're a hard worker, you're good at building relationships. That's not often coupled in the same person with the ability to execute and to turn those big ideas into reality, right? Those two skill sets are often not found in the same person. What I realized was that I'm really good at disciplined execution. I'm really good. What comes really natural to me is understanding if this is the end goal, I really get, and it's probably my legal analytical mind. I understand how to break down that big goal into the fundamental milestones, things that need to get done in order to get there. My wife, on the other hand, who's all who's a business owner, is just the opposite. She's a big picture thinker, lots of great ideas, great with people, but you know, she gets bored with her big ideas because the execution of them is hard. So all that is to say, Tom, is that how did I get into this? Is I realized that my four natural skill set was missing in a lot of small businesses. And so I said, well, why don't I just be that person for small business owners? And that's what I did. I started consulting, tearing up with business owners that needed the skill set that I could provide. And then after doing that for a few years, I created the whole pie system. I wanted to systematize what I was doing with small businesses because, you know, I can only be so many places at once. Wouldn't it be great if I could actually give a system to a business owner that they could that I could help them implement, but then they could carry on after I'm gone, you know, sort of be basically put myself out of business kind of thing. And so that's what I did with the whole pie system. And I can talk about why it's called the Pi system in a bit, but that's kind of the genesis for me, getting to the point where I really wanted to help small business owners, you know, run their businesses more effectively with the skill set that I could add into the mix.

Tom DuFore 5:43

I

Profit Impact Enjoyment Explained

Tom DuFore 5:44

like the structure. I think it's simple to understand. And so I'd love for you to share what the whole pie system is, talk a little bit about that and what is it?

SPEAKER_00 5:52

Why is it called the whole pie system? Maybe I'll start there. Pi stands for profit, impact, and enjoyment, E-I-E. I landed on that kind of by accident because I was thinking about well, what is it that business owners really want? Like, I was a business owner, advising business owners, being a business owner, like when you really distill it down into its essential components, in my opinion, business owners want three things. They might use different words for it, they might describe it differently. But at the end of the day, if I asked you, Tom, you know, what are the big goals in your business or what are the big challenges that you have in your business? Invariably, whatever you were to tell back to me would fall into one of three buckets. It would relate to profit or the money aspect of your business. It would relate to impact, I call it, which is the difference that you want to make with your business, with your products or services, because every business owner, whether they know it or not, they're trying to make other people's lives better with their business. There are goals and their challenges that fall into the impact bucket. And then the third one is one that really gets forgotten a lot. And that's that's enjoyment. That's like taking care of the business owner. Are you enjoying this process? Is this business making your life better? And so really, those are the three things that business owners want. And most business owners want more of those three things. So, you know, if you're profitable, wouldn't it be great to have more profit? If you are making a bit of a difference in your customers' lives or in your community, well, wouldn't it be great to make more of a difference? Because usually when you make more of a difference and create more of an impact, what happens? You make more profit and you enjoy your business a whole lot more. So the I is really, really important in between the P and the E. So that's what it's called the Pi system. And so if that's true, and I haven't met a business owner yet who has convinced me otherwise, but I'm always up for the challenge if anybody wants to challenge that. If that's true, why not be super intentional about that? Why not be super intentional about the money side, the impact side, and the enjoyment side at the outset? So when you're making your three-year plans and your one-year plans and your quarterly plans, like build them around those three areas of the business. And so the system behind it, the whole pie system, is designed so that if you implement the system, if you do all of the things that are in the system consistently, the inevitable result for your business is more profit, more impact, and enjoyment.

Choosing An Operating System

Tom DuFore 8:31

Fantastic. That's a great overview. And there are a bunch of business systems out there, right? That folks that end up listening to this have probably heard of, and a few come to mind, like EOS and scaling up, many others I'm familiar with, right? I think emyth has their own version of things and lots of others out there that exist. For someone that tunes in and says, Okay, Andy, I'm already doing fill in the blank. Do I gotta change my whole business? Or I've heard of, or I tried this other thing and it didn't work.

SPEAKER_00 9:03

So I I tell everybody quite frankly, having an operating system like EOS, like whole pie, great game of business, there are others. Having one is more important than the one you choose. Right? So unless if you are already using a system, Mr. or Mrs. Business Owner, if you're listening. If it's working for you, great. If it's working for you, great. Keep at it. If it's not working for you and you're looking for something different, then you know, let's talk. But that's number one. Number two, what makes the whole pie different from some of these other ones? Number one, it's newer, which in some ways you might say, well, uh, you know, I want to, I want that tried and proven system like EOS. It's been around for a long time. And there's some error to that. But the the downside to that is that it was, you know, it was created before, you know, the world kind of changed, right, over the last few years. As we know, it's, you know, it's we're in the digital age and now AI age, there's never been more data. There's never been less certainty on on what to act on, you know, how to use, how to filter and run through all this data. And so the whole Pi system really takes that into account. And that's really why impact is the is the center of this thing. Because when, you know, when you impact your customers' lives in a way that, you know, really makes their life better, they're going to stick around with you. And so the whole Pi system is really geared towards, uh heavily towards that. And how do you communicate with those customers in this digital age? That's that's a little different than it was, you know, 10, 20 years ago when some of these other things were created. The system has been around for six years. There's lots of success stories that I can tell you about. So it's not brand spanking new. The book is is pretty new, but the system's been around for a while. Another way that it's different is that it is designed for the small business, right? Not for the corporation. It's designed generally for the 500K to 5 million annual revenue business, so which has different challenges than when you're getting up to 5 million and above and 10 million stuff. I do work with companies that are bigger, but most of those ones I started working with when they were they fell within that gap. In terms of, you know, the investment required, you know, it's purposefully the investment required is less of an obstacle with the whole pie system than you'll find in some of these other systems that have, you know, bigger overhead and and franchise fees and all that good stuff. So those are a few of the reasons why, you know, you might consider the whole pie system if you're if you're a small business owner that's in that kind of revenue range and you're looking to say, hey, how can I, how can I get my arms around this business? How can I feel a little bit more confident and in control here? While at the same time, how can I, how can I remove myself from a lot of the decisions? How can I cease to be the bottleneck in my business? How can I empower my team to take on more responsibility and authority so that, you know, I can step back and watch this business grow without needing me 24-7. So those are those are kind of some things to think about if you're if you're listening and you're want to check out the whole pie system. That's how it's a little bit different than some of the other ones out there.

Making Enjoyment Measurable

Tom DuFore 12:16

Very good. Well, I'm curious on the things like the profit, it makes sense, right? For the P. And even sometimes I think the impact for owners, a lot of times there's an impact felt even with their own staff, with their customers in their local communities that they serve. The enjoyment word, I think that's great. Owners and founders that have been running their business for a little while oftentimes lose the joy that they once had in their business. Talk through the enjoyment piece a little bit about kind of revitalizing that or maybe measuring it, or what do you do in that piece of the pie?

SPEAKER_00 12:52

We make it measurable. Enjoyment is something that you might say, well, how do you how do you measure that? I either I'm happy or I'm not. How do you how do you measure it? Well, actually, you can. If you if you think about it the right way, you you really can measure it. Some simple things that we do is, well, you know, first of all, it's a bit of a mindset shift for a business owner to say that enjoyment is just as important as as the money side of the business or the impact side of the business, right? The the default mindset that I have seen over and over again is, you know, happiness, enjoyment, satisfaction, whatever you want to call it in terms of the experience of running your business, that that comes, that that takes a backseat to everything else, right? It takes a backseat to everything else. I've got to make sure, you know, my employees are paid, I got to make sure my suppliers are paid, I got to make sure everybody else is happy, got to make sure my family's happy. And you're the last person. You get you get joy only if there's some joy left over after everyone else gets their joy. And that's that's what I see in a lot of business owners. You may have seen it also. So the first thing is a mindset shift that let's put this right up in the front seat with profit and impact. So once you make that mindset shift, then you're ready to tackle it in a structured way. And one of the ways we do it is we say, okay, what's frustrating you and your business right now? Any business owner that's listening, there are some things that frustrate them and their business, like ongoing frustrations. And whether that's someone on their team or whether that's meetings that are ineffective, or whether that's just the, you know, maybe it's the money side of their business, maybe their AR is is is way too high and it takes way too long to go. Whatever that is, identify it. And if it's within your control, you know, you could be frustrated, frustrated about the world economy, or about politics, or about whatever. It's not within your control. So we're not going to worry about that. But the things that are within your control, we just make a plan to break them down, small steps. How can we reduce this frustration in your business? Does it mean having a difficult conversation? Doesn't mean letting somebody go for your business that needs that needs to go. Does it mean creating a process uh that only lives in your head and that's really inefficient as a result? Does it mean removing yourself from some of the decision making? Whatever that is, that's frustrating you. There are usually simple ways to reduce that frustration. And the great thing about that is as soon as you reduce the level of frustration you have in your business, then automatically your level of enjoyment goes up. So it's kind of, we do that. We just chip away at it piece by piece by piece. And what happens is holy smokes. You know, you get out of the habit of doing things the way you've always done them. And we make some changes, happiness goes up.

Book Website And Free Health Check

Tom DuFore 15:34

Andy, for someone that's listening in and says, you know, I'm intrigued. This is interesting. How can they learn more? Get a copy of your book, where can they go?

SPEAKER_00 15:42

Getting the whole pie, you can find it on Amazon, duh. You can check out more things about the whole pie system, obviously at the website, which is theholepie system.com. There's a cool little assessment you can take. We call it the whole pie health check. It's on the website, it's free. You download it, and it actually allows you to kind of self-assess your business in 25 different areas. That knowledge alone can be can be really useful to kind of shine a light on some of the areas that you might not have thought about in your business that you might need to shore up in order to increase that profit impact and enjoyment. And then I hang out on LinkedIn. You can find me there at Andy Clark LinkedIn. I post a lot about stuff, business, you know, not business, family stuff, all kinds of good stuff. So that's about place where you can you can get to know me a little better.

Misses Wins And Multipliers

Tom DuFore 16:29

Wonderful. Wonderful. Well, Andy, this is a great time in the show. And we make a little transition and we ask every guest the same four questions before they go. And the first question we ask is, have you had a miss or two on your journey and something you learned from it?

SPEAKER_00 16:43

Oh, have I had a miss or two? Do you ever get anybody on your show that says no? I hope not. Man, miss or two. Well, I guess the one that comes to mind is you're not gonna believe this, but when I was practicing law, I really got interested, and I still am today, it's a big part of my life. You know, how do you live, how do you live life to the fullest, which includes how do you how do you stay fit or how do you stay well, you know, emotionally, physically, and all that good stuff. So let's call it wellness. Really interested in that. So I actually started my first foray into entrepreneurship was a business called Wellness Lawyer. I tried to sell wellness to lawyers. I partnered up with some people and you know, did the gut in front of a whole pile of lawyers and explained that if you, you know, if you hire me, I will help you do X, Y, and Z. And that was a great idea. And everybody told me that lawyers would line up around the block and and buy my stuff. And after a couple of years, nobody was buying my stuff. And so that was really, was it a miss? Yes. But was it an opportunity to learn and grow 100%?

Tom DuFore 17:45

I relate to that one. I've been there. I totally relate to that for sure. Well, let's talk about a make or a highlight or two.

SPEAKER_00 17:53

Well, you know, I have to say just that I love the pivot into consulting and coaching and working with business owners was the best decision of my life. It was actually right around COVID. And, you know, I left managing a company in the financial services world. It was literally like a month before the world shut down with COVID. My wife's a doctor of chiropractic, so she ran, she, she ran a uh her own business, uh chiropractic business and a with some ancillary services. And so within a month, we went from two incomes to zero because her business can shut down, right? And so talk about uh, oh God, what are we gonna do now? But when I look back six years later, so glad I made the jump then. Was it I leave was it ideal timing? Not really, but in some ways it was because it really allowed me to focus on, and it's actually when I came up with the pie system, because you know, we just had all had a lot of time, right, to do a lot of thinking and things like that. So I would call that, you know, a highlight or a win for me personally was just, you know, turning what could have been a really terrible thing, going from two incomes to zero, to, you know, really within within that first year, we were able to, you know, get back up to uh to that two income level. So that was nice. That was a good win for me.

Tom DuFore 19:10

Thank you for sharing that. And let's talk about a multiplier. Have you used a multiplier to grow yourself personally, professionally, or organizations you've run?

SPEAKER_00 19:20

I think that I've gone to, you know, so many professional and personal development conferences and retreats and seminars over the years. And I think each time you do that, you actually multiply. You multiply in terms of relationships, in terms of new ideas. You know, there's one in particular that I went in the mountains of Colorado like 20 years ago, and that it literally, it literally changed the course of my life that led me to another type of conference retreat, et cetera, that told me it was time to get out of law and into something else. And so I just think multipliers like that, get out of your day-to-day, get out of, get out of your comfort zone and go be exposed to people, new places, new ideas. That's probably the best multiplier I can think of. The second best one, I think, in terms of like specific strategy for my business, is the reason why I wrote the book, is also kind of a multiplier effect, right? Because now people have access to the system and can implement the system with an investment of 20 bucks. And so I really wanted to make that available to business owners, you know, to get this idea in more business owners' hands. And this was a great part of my distribution model to do that, right? Obviously, if business owners resonate with the book and the ideas in it and need some help staying accountable and implementing the system we offer that service as well. We do it in, we call them training camps. So you you you come in and with a group of other small group of other business owners, you kind of all go through the implementation of the whole Pi system together, which is really kind of fun, really kind of neat. And it also going back to how we're different than other models, right? It also is a way to keep that investment a little bit, actually quite a bit lower than if you're gonna engage somebody with one of the other, one of the other systems. We do the one-on-one as well for a higher, a higher fee for sure, but the training camp really offers a way for business owners to get a big bang for their buck, so to speak.

Tom DuFore 21:19

Well, and the final question we ask every guest is what does success mean to you?

SPEAKER_00 21:24

Well, Tom, you can probably guess, right? With the the name of my system, like I do really, really believe it's part of my DNA that that in order to be a successful small business owner, you need to have success in all three of these areas. If you if you aren't successful in all three of these areas, then your small business is not successful, in my opinion, right? You need to you need to make money and hopefully as much money as you can. I'm all about it because I think that the more profit you make is uh is a is a direct reflection of the impact and the value that you're creating. So great. So make as much Money as you can, make other people's lives as much better as you can, and enjoy this little dance we have called Life as Much As You Can. You started a small business to make your life better. And if it isn't making your life better, then something needs to change. And, you know, I love the opportunity to, if anybody's in that situation, I love the opportunity to help them out.

Tom DuFore 22:25

Wonderful. And Andy, as we bring this to a close, is there anything you were hoping to share or get across that you haven't had a chance to yet?

Moneyball Thinking For Small Business

SPEAKER_00 22:33

Yeah, I think, Tom, that, you know, if I'm listening to this, it's it's kind of hard to really understand. Like, how does the system work? Like, how does this Andy Clark guy and his system, how is it actually going to like work, right? He says it's going to increase profit, impact, enjoyment. And by the way, can do those things in as little as three months. And lots of success stories. You can go to the website to see those. But one of the ways that I've discovered to really try to communicate this so that people can get it rather quickly is I'm a big into sports. So I love sports analogies. And really what the system is, is money ball thinking for small business. So if you've seen the movie Moneyball, you don't understand what it is, Tom. Right. So what happened in Moneyball? Moneyball was the Oakland A's, small market team. Their owner didn't want to spend a lot of money. They're trying to compete with the big market New York Yankees, who have an unlimited, you know, payroll. How do they do that? Well, they weren't going to do it by doing the same old things. What they did, they had to find something different, something new. And what they seized on, of course, was that on base percentage was more important than any of the other stat lines. And then they they built their team around people who could get on base. A lesser known example is Golden State Warriors, right? They won four championships. How did they win four championships? They figured out something simple in hindsight, but they were the first one to do it. They figured out that three points, a three-point basket is worth 50% more than a two-point basket, right? Duh. But they were the first to really seize on it and say, even if we miss more of those three pointers, the more we take, we're going to win more games. And if we get some really good shooters like Steph Curry and Clay Thompson that can bury those three pointers, the defense has to come out and guard us. And then it becomes easier to lob it in under the basket. And Draymond Green puts in the he puts in the layout. So that's how they won four championships until other teams could catch up and figured out how to do that also. Lots of other sports examples, but the reason why I'm sharing all this is that winning organizations, they figure out what those drivers of success are. And then they build all other people and their systems and they align that around those drivers of success. And that's what the whole pie system does. It helps you identify what are those drivers of success. And then it helps you build your people and your systems and your data around those drivers. And that's really in a nutshell how we get to that increased profit, impact, and enjoyment.

Key Takeaways And Closing

Tom DuFore 25:16

And let's go ahead and jump into today's three key takeaways. So takeaway number one is the definition of his pie system, the whole pie system, which is the three elements. It's profit, impact, and enjoyment. Profit, impact, and enjoyment. Takeaway number two is when he found that most business owners, when you ask them, what do you want to get out of your business? It's usually one of these three. And I thought that was a great summary. So that's a great reflection question for you. Takeaway number three is another question that he found a lot of business owners run across, which is how can I cease to be the bottleneck in my own business? And now it's time for today's win-win. So I thought the win-win for today is when Andy said that having an operating system is more important than the one you choose. Having an operating system is more important than the one you choose. And I repeated that twice because I think that's just a great little takeaway. While I'm sure Andy would love for you to run his Pi system or whole Pi system, certainly at the end of the day, having a framework and a system to follow and lead and run your business on is better than just trying to run it blindly. So that's the episode today, folks. Please make sure you subscribe to the podcast and give us a review. And remember, if you or anyone you know might be ready to franchise their business or take their franchise company to the next level, please connect with us at BigSkyFranchise Team.com where you can schedule your free no obligation consultation. Thanks for tuning in, and we look forward to having you back next week.