A Business Owner’s First TRA Experience (#280)

On this week’s episode of the Maximize Business Value Podcast, host Kim Bentson is joined by special guest Dave Casey to discuss a critical milestone in the exit journey: "A Business Owner’s First TRA Experience." The Transition Readiness Assessment (TRA) is the ultimate truth-teller for your business, but for many owners, the first score can be a wake-up call. This episode tackles the burning question: “What should I expect if my TRA score is low? Don't fly blind into your transition. Learn how to use your TRA score to turn weaknesses into strengths and prepare for your best possible exit!

Listen to our podcast weekly to hear more from Mastery Partners and to receive relevant key content on your journey to maximizing your business value!

Podcast Chapters:
00:00 — Introduction
02:07 — Managing with KPIs
05:06 — Avoiding Non-Productive Networking
06:45 — Transition Readiness Assessment (TRA)
09:38 — Are You a CEO or Just a Technician?
13:26 — Facing Your Business’s Weaknesses
19:27 — How to Score & Heat-Map Your Business
22:30 — Building a Value Acceleration Roadmap
25:51 — Real-World Lessons from Selling a Business
32:43 — How to Stop Micromanaging Your Team
34:51 — Closing & Outro

#MasteryPartners #MaximizeBusinessValuePodcast #BusinessOwnerHotline #TRA #TransitionReadiness #ValueCreation

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Learn More about Kim Bentson
Kim Bentson is an accomplished Strategic Manager with a proven track record of delivering results. Kim is a natural problem-solver who is passionate about helping businesses achieve their full potential and is committed to delivering her clients the highest level of service.

Learn More about Dave Casey
Engaged business leader with an eye for cyber security, non-profits, and business transformation. Dave previously founded and led an IT managed services company, brought it through a successful exit, and today helps companies craft cybersecurity strategies.

Mastery Partners

Elevating Businesses to Achieve The Business Owner’s Dream Exit 
The unfortunate reality is that for every business that comes on the market (for whatever reason), only 17% of them achieve a successful exit. You read that right. 83% of attempted business transitions never reach the closing table. Mastery Partners is on a mission to change that. We ELEVATE businesses to achieve maximum value and reach that dream exit.

Our objectives are simple - understand where the business is today, identify opportunities for dramatic improvement, and offer solutions to enhance the business, making it more marketable and valuable. And that all starts with understanding the business owner’s definition of his or her dream exit.  
Mastery has developed a 4-Step Process to help business owners achieve their dreams.

STEP 1: Transition Readiness Assessment
STEP 2: Roadmap for Value Acceleration
STEP 3: Relentless Execution
STEP 4: Decision: Now that desired results are achieved, the business is ready for the next step in the journey!

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Transcript

Tom Bronson (0s): Welcome to the Maximize Business Value Podcast, brought to you by Mastery Partners, where our mission is to equip business owners like you to maximize your business value and achieve the exit of your dreams, whatever that means to you. With insights gained from over a hundred business transactions, we share real world strategies, lessons, and expert advice to help you build long term sustainable value in your business.


Each episode is hosted by one of our Mastery certified partners, their seasoned experts who've helped countless business owners navigate the complexities of growth, scaling, and building value. They bring firsthand experience, actionable insights, and a passion for helping you build a business that thrives. So, let's dive in.


Kim Bentson (60s): Welcome to the Maximize Business Value Podcast. I'm Kim Bentson. I'm A Business Owner myself, and honestly, figuring out a lot of this right alongside you. Today's topic is what I've definitely wrestled with in my own business. How do I actually know what's creating value and what's just taking up my time? Because if you're anything like me, you're busy, things are moving, you're making decisions, many decisions every day, and it's not always clear what's really moving that needle.


So let's bring in some help here. I have some Mastery Partners, certified partners. I have Dave Casey with us today, howdy


Dave Casey (1m 41s): And


Kim Bentson (1m 41s): Howdy. And this year we're bringing real questions from real business owners and putting them in front of our certified partners here at Mastery Partners to help all of us get clearer answers. So if you've got a question on your mind, you can submit it@masterypartners.com and it might be featured in a future episode. So go, go check that out. Alright, let's get into today's question. This one actually came in through the website and again, feels very familiar.


How do I assess, how do I assess what's actually creating value in my business and what's just wasting my time? Because I think a lot of us are busy, but busy doesn't always equal valuable. So if I'm looking at my business day to day, Dave, how do I even begin to separate what's creating value from what's just activity?


Dave Casey (2m 37s): Wow, this is an age old question. I think every, every business would be much more profitable if they solve this one. So, right. And it's so easy to do the non-essential things 'cause they're more fun sometimes. The thing that I think the, when I, when I hear that type of question, the thing I think of most off is, is key performance indicators or KPIs?


And does this what I'm doing? Am I achieving increasing, reducing whatever against a particular KPI? The challenge is, as A Business Owner, you kind of feel like you own all the KPIs, sorry. Even though you may have other people in your business that are responsible for different things. And I know that in terms of time management, it's always been a struggle for me.


And you get to the end of the day, what did, what did I accomplish? You know, where could I have gone done better? Things like that. So that's, to me, that's a constant struggle. That's, that's never gonna go away, but, but if you're managing yourself to KPIs, just like you ask your team to, I think that's a starting point.


Kim Bentson (4m 7s): Yeah. It's funny when you were answering, I thought, I remember that presentation Dave gave on KPIs and how essential that is. 'cause data doesn't, data doesn't lie.


Dave Casey (4m 22s): It's No, unfortunately it doesn't.


Kim Bentson (4m 24s): Unfortunately it doesn't. And I was just thinking about another client where they were attending networking event after networking event after networking event to drive business. And I think you recommended they start tracking that and what comes from that, like how many, you know, contacts, how isn't really driving business. And it really forced them to cut down the number of events they were going to.


'cause you could, here in Dallas, you could fill your whole 40 hour, 60 hour work week with events.


Dave Casey (5m 6s): Yeah, I really thought about that last year. It was weird. There's an event in Dallas that's, it's, it's in the m and a community, the mergers and acquisitions community. It's a big event, happens every year. And I usually get invited to it. And, and I attended it last year and I didn't even compare notes with Tom Bronson, who, who is the owner of Mastery Partners. And, and we both showed up at the same event. So we're both there and we're, and we're, you know, we talked to each other briefly, but we're not there to see each other.


We're we're there to, to to, to network. You know, it's a networking event. And we went to the first presentation. After the first presentation, we kind of met up again and I said, what do you think? And he goes, you know, this is, this is non-productive for us. This is, this is, there's a bunch of people here in our industry and they're all kind of jawboning each other, but there, it's, it is not doing anything to move the needle forward in our business. So we both left at lunch, you know, we decided we've had enough.


So, but it was, it was weird. 'cause it was, and you, I think you have to guard against that. You'd have to, it's as I opened with, I mean, the easy things are, the fun things to do are sometimes not the most productive things. And yeah,


Kim Bentson (6m 27s): So I think part of the challenge is most of us don't actually know where those gaps are. And, you know, the KPIs would help measure where those gaps are. Yeah. Is that, do you think that's where The Transition Readiness Assessment comes in to help acknowledge the gaps?


Dave Casey (6m 45s): Yeah, it's certainly what it brings to light a lot of times is how much the business owner is participating in all these different things. You know, we start talking about operations. So who, who's the head of operations? Well, we have an ops manager, but man, frankly, I've gotta stay on top of'em every day, you know? Okay, so you're really the ops manager and that person's kind of managing your time, right?


So that's, those are things that would that pop out when we do the, do The Transition Readiness Assessment? You know, it could be on the sales side, it could be on the, on the technical side. I came, my business was a technically oriented business, so a lot of people in our industry kinda came up that way. I didn't, I I came from the sales side and then actually joined forces with a guy that came from the finance side. And, and we formed a company and in a technical world, but we weren't technicians.


We, we, I was fairly technically astute, but I wasn't a programmer. I couldn't, you know, I couldn't build anything technically, but we managed technical people and, and it was so many times in a business if the business owners founded the business because they had a passion for it. If they're an HVAC tech and, and they love that world, they just don't like working for the company, they're working for, they strike out on their own and form their own company. It happens every day.


It happens in every industry it seems like. So sometimes you're so passionate about the industry or the, or the process or the product or the company that you're not looking at, is that really what I need to be doing day to day just because I'm a really good programmer? Should I be in their programming or should I have a staff of people programming for me? You know, that type of thing. So that's probably the one of the toughest things for business owners, entrepreneurs to get pa to get past.


Kim Bentson (8m 55s): Yeah, yeah. You know, I, I think it's interesting. Most business o owners aren't doing things wrong. They just don't have clear visibility or clarity for what actually drives value. And I know that assessment really creates that heat map. You know, I, I've had it in my own business. I, it's really clear what I need to focus on and where I'm, where I'm not, you know, hitting the mark there.


I know you've given Transition Readiness Assessment, several business owners. Tell me about like, what's their reaction when they get these results?


Dave Casey (9m 38s): You know, most of the time it's, yeah, yeah, you're right. I admit that, you know, sometimes they're very insistent that they are not doing that. You know, I'm not in the nuts and bolts of my business, and then you can just ask a couple of questions and, you know, they will, you know, like naming a product or deciding on colors for your brand or things that are just important, but not important to the, to the business owner, you know, that they shouldn't be doing, I guess is the deal.


So, but oftentimes when we, and we, we usually tell people at the beginning of a Transition Readiness Assessment that much of the information, if we ask 400 plus questions, much of the information that you get back is stuff you already knew. And you kind of, it came some of a kinda delight when we were doing the q and a, but sometimes they just, yeah, I know that I'm, we're not, we don't have a effective sales team or we don't have an effective sales leader, and maybe I'm the default sales leader, but I'm not the best.


And certainly I got other things to do as well, so we're not getting that job done the way it should be. So there's that type of thing. And then there's also the, the reality is, you know, when you start a company, you're wearing all those hats and prioritizing, you know, your prior priority is to win the first customer and then collect the first invoice and then build upon that to where, okay, we're collecting invoices pretty much every week now, so now we can hire some more people and we can, you know, everybody starts from from ground zero usually.


And it's making those transitions along the way where I used to do this job, but now I need somebody else to do this job. You know, even if I love it, you know, even if it's my favorite thing, maybe running, being a CEO of the company is not my favorite thing, but it's what I need to be doing right now. And so, as you know, I've been involved for more than a decade now with a group called Biz Owners ed, which is, I describe it as a bootcamp for, for business owners. And it's a 10 week program where we take your business owners through every aspect of their company.


It almost parallels the TRA it's everything from your formation papers to any kind of exit strategy you've done and everything in between. And it's so interesting, when, when I had a friend of mine, it was in the IT business. I knew him from the IT business. I recommended him for the class. He signed up, he got accepted, great little business, almost 10 million in revenue. He had a team of 20 some odd people delivered, did software development, did, did business analysis, did lots of cool stuff, neat company.


And he goes through the whole program, and I was, I was meeting with him afterward. What'd you think? You know, I'm, that's usually when people complete that program, they're like, so charged up. I got all these things I wanna do to make my business better. And, and he goes, you know what? I figured out, I'm not an entrepreneur. I do not like doing this. I don't like all the, all the presentations about entrepreneurs like running toward the fire and they wanna do this and they wanna do that. That's not me. I don't wanna do any of that stuff. He said, I really enjoy the technical side of my business.


I don't enjoy everything else about it. So, yeah. And he literally, he found somebody to buy his business. He took over as the, like the chief scientist of the combined businesses, and he's happy as a clam, you know, and, and it took that class to really find out that, you know, he was spending a lot of time doing stuff that not only did he not do well that he didn't really wanna be doing, you know? So,


Kim Bentson (13m 26s): Yeah. Yes, I, I can identify I am a reluctant entrepreneur. I am definitely not the typical, yeah. The Revisited really resonates with me. But I have to say, when I got my TRA results, I was a little depressed. Yeah. I have been busted my butt thinking, oh, I'm doing okay. And there was, there was definitely places where I was like, oh, I didn't even realize, yeah.


That I needed to make a different decision there. So once the shock of the number, and, you know, it's kind of like when you go to the doctor and you get all those results, you're like, oh, I need to do some work here. So then once the depression subsided, I was like, I did have clarity about yeah, what I needed to change and what I needed to focus on to really kinda shift those numbers. And now, you know, I have A-A-K-P-I to kinda go back to our KPI reference, I have a KPI document that, that helps me track if I'm making progress on those just by those answering those questions.


So, so do you, do you see that happen when business owners get that clarity? What's, what's usually the first thing they change?


Dave Casey (14m 54s): You know, usually it's, I ask them to, to examine, like just kinda keep a diary. I mean, of go through a whole week and just say from, from, you know, if you start at eight in the morning, from eight o'clock Monday morning to five o'clock Friday afternoon, what did you do? Who did you talk to? Did you, did you make out a goals list? And did you check off items on the list? Or did you just kind of wing it?


Or, or did you, did you have a plan that just got sidetracked, you know, one, one thing after another and you know, what, what did your week look like? And so one of the presenters at our biz owners ed group is a guy who's presented, I think from every year from the beginning, is a guy named Tony Jerry. And he's a, he's an executive consultant. He consults typically with the CEOs and presidents of some of the biggest corporations in America, charges an incredible amount of money to do that.


Very, a very admir in awe of the business he's built, let's put it that way. And his three words, and he says it over and over, and, or clarity, focus and execution. And just in the statement you made, you used two of them. You know, that you've got to be clear about what it is you're, you're, you're gonna be doing. Then you've gotta focus on that. And then you've gotta execute. Now, sometimes it's you executing, sometimes it's making sure it's executed, you know, and finding others to do that.


So that to me, I mean, there's a lot of other ways to say that. I mean, Benjamin Hardy and Dan Sullivan, it's, you know, who not, how, you know, there's all these different things. Like, I don't, you know, I know what needs to be done. The next question is, am I the right one to do it? You know, and then kind of move that needle or where it needs to go. So there's, there's all that. But I think doing that one week assessment of where, you know, what a, what actually did I spend my time on? You know, did I, did I get sidetracked?


And I think about that when people, you know, I network all the time. I try to try to meet with people and discuss what we're doing and find out what they're doing and figure out if there's a way we can help and so on. And many times that's like, let's have coffee or let's have lunch, or something like that. But it's interesting, Tony Jerry tells this story. I mean, he, he's got every minute of his time accounted for from like four in the morning to like 10 at night. And way more than I could handle that would be drain my, all my energy to just eat, track it.


But he, somebody will call and say, Tony would love to have lunch with you. And he said, great, we haven't had lunch in a while. What's, what do you wanna talk about? Well, I, I know, you know, you know, so and so Tom Bronson, I'd love to meet Tom, haven't met him. And I wonder if, you know, I'd love to talk about that. Antonio would go, you know what? I can introduce you to Tom, bro, I'll do a warm email introduction, do that. And, and then, because frankly, I'm, I'm pretty much tied up. I work out at lunch, you know, that's where I, that's what I do, my workouts.


'cause I can, I can be listening to my audio book and I can be doing two other things and working out and getting a sandwich. You know, he's like, got everything down to a science right. And so it's just like slicing your time up and using it the best way you can.


Kim Bentson (18m 22s): Yeah. I, you know, I, I've heard you mention too before, like you're working with a client and the what, what was gonna take it was like what whatever was gonna take the longest get started on that. And then a couple of quick wins to help you feel, you know, some momentum. So I think they were doing cash accounting, and so that, that's a big, that that needs a runway.


Yeah. Yeah. And then some clear things to our people and processes, like just having processes documented. That's, that's a not a ton of rain power there. That's just something you gotta focus on and get done. But


Dave Casey (19m 11s): Even AI can help there, you


Kim Bentson (19m 12s): Know, even AI can help there. Yeah. But what, what changes? 'cause I know you work with several business owners. What changes for the business owner after going through a TRA


Dave Casey (19m 27s): You know, it's interest. It's, it's fun. First of all, you know, we do the TRA there's two components. One is the kind of the scorecard that we build. So we got 400 data points now on the business. It's, it's like going to the doctor for a head to toe checkup. You know, we, we, we got everything from your, your hair or lack thereof to your toes, right? So, and so we have that. And, and when we score that we, we actually do it, we use a heat map, we use a color coding so that if everything's running well in an area, it'll be green.


If everything is off the rails, it'll be red. And then there's variations in between. So normally the, they, they say, yeah, I, I knew, I knew we weren't doing well in marketing. I knew we were gonna get bad scores there. I had no clue that we weren't doing well in financials. That, you know, maybe I thought our financials were just buttoned down. And it turns out they're, you, they're not as the basis of this, that we're not meeting, you know, we're, it's not that we're not running gap accounting, which is very hard to do, but we're not even doing best practices in accounting, you know, things like that.


So there's usually a thing, a two or three surprises that pop out. And sometimes it's the business owner actually saying, you know, I've been the one doing that for the business, and maybe I'm not the best one to do that. 'cause you scored me pretty low on that. Or it's like, you know, I turned that over to Sally, you know, two years ago, and I just assumed we were doing better at that area, and now you're saying I'm not right, or we're not.


So that's gonna maybe cause some problems. So, and, and, and it's, so we, we definitely look at it. There's always surprises. You know, we, we, and we tell people, you know, you, you know where your warts are in the business typically, and, and you work around them and you kind of put that on a, yeah, that's a, I'll get to that one of these days. But sometimes there's things in the business that they have no clue that, that that's, that they're not doing it right, or that they don't meet industry norms, you know, things like that.


So that's where I think the, the TRA is very valuable in bringing those things out. And of course, the second component of that is the evaluation that we do for them. You know, we gather their data. We, we look at all their organization from all different angles and, and compare it with their industry, but also just with a well run company, you know, just, you know, against the standard. And invariably the valuation typically comes out a little lower than they anticipated.


You know, they, they heard about friends selling companies, or they knew of transactions that took place. And a guy said, oh yeah, so and so bought my company for, you know, 10 times earnings or whatever. So they, they, it's a sobering conversation sometimes of what, what the company's really worth,


Kim Bentson (22m 30s): Right? Because at at Mastery Group, which is Mastery Partners and two other companies, we, we all have the belief and know it for to be true. In fact, everyone will transition their business. You are not, you're not getting out of it without doing that. So that, that is something I, you know, the, the TRA I, I've seen this across the business owners that we have helped.


They, they do make decisions differently. The decisions they make are about does this increase the value? So, right. Like we talked about the network or the KPIs, we just make different decisions or the financials even than if you're just trying to do it or not even look at it like, oh, we're okay. You, you really do that. And then another component I've seen is I've interacted with our clients is the confidence that they gain.


I mean, they already have a ton of confidence they're running their business, but just in the, in their business acumen and the clarity that comes from, okay, this is, I know what the right decision is, I know what the path is. And if we're veering off the path, they can Yeah. They have that confidence to pull back and to know what they need to focus on. Yeah.


Dave Casey (23m 56s): That, and, and that's the other thing, when we present the results of the TRA too, we, we will present looking at those, basically there's nine different areas of the business, like I said, from formation to, you know, sales, marketing, legal, finance, hr. I mean, there's everything, everything to do with the business. And when we score that, we'll actually say that if, if you're doing this well, it, it, it, it, it doesn't affect your business po positively or negatively.


If you're excelling in this particular area, then that's an, that's an add. We'll, we'll actually, that will increase the multiple that you will get for this business if, should you decide to transition out of it. But if you're failing in an area, or if you're just below par, that's a negative. That will hurt your valuation. And we actually, we show, you know, empirical numbers there that say this, this hurts your valuation. This is neutral and this is a plus. And our goal is to try to, by working through their, their, their, once we have established, you know, the kind of the roadmap of what they need to do to increase the value of the business, as we work through that, we can actually, we periodically update that valuation to see what effective we had on that.


Yeah. You know, is, is the business more valuable now than it was when we started the process and why, you know, and, and what areas did we improve in? And to me, that is the incredible value that we add because as you, as we started this conversation, it's like, where do I spend my time and, and how do I know what I'm, where I'm spending my time is effective? And so that roadmap gives us an idea of where to spend your time, and then we can measure the effectiveness of that.


You know, as we go


Kim Bentson (25m 51s): Now, I, I've, I know you've exited your business, you're part of that 17% of business owners who, who, who did it and made it through and, and got out. And, but my question is, did you have a value advisor to help you? And would you Yeah,


Dave Casey (26m 12s): Not really. I, I, I, I say that there were two things, actually, three things that helped me. So one was, and I won't go into a long, long history, but I had a business partner for 20 years, and we, we ran the business together. We were kind of that rare, 50 50 partners that were the, where it actually worked out. Well, I think we were normally on the same page. We had a few times we were head to head on stuff, but normally, and, and we did different aspects of the business.


So I handled sales and technical side of the business, and he handled the financial side of the business and the operations side, accounting and operations. So we had our division of labor essentially. And, and so, and then, you know, we met for big decisions, like we're gonna change vendors for something or something like that. We, we, we would meet on, but, and I lost him suddenly. He had a, had a heart issue. And, and so then he, he passed away very suddenly and we had, you know, processes in place for change of control of the business.


We had insurance and, and keyman agreements and buy sell agreements and all this kind of stuff. It took a while to sort that out. I won't won't lie. That was not a, an easy time. That's a whole nother podcast almost. Yeah. But we got that resolved. And then I'm running the whole business now. So now I've got like everything, including stuff I've never really done before. I mean, I'd looked at financials, but I hadn't really been responsible for them before. Right. And so that really was eye-opening for me. At that same time I joined a Vistage group.


So Vistage is a CEO peer group. Been around since the 1950s. It's very effective, very long, long lived. It was Inval invaluable to me. So I had 15 other business owners in my group, all who were interested in helping me navigate this whole thing, you know, and, and helping me keep my business, grow my business, you know, and, and, and ultimately helped me make the decision to sell the business. So that was good. They, they were not, they weren't in depth, they were more cheerleaders, but they also had, some of those had exited businesses.


They, they'd been through the process, they kind of steered me a little bit. They had much larger businesses than mine in most cases. So they help me there, you know, these are decisions you need to make to get, to be a bigger business, things like that. So that was good. And then I had a great m and a attorney that helped me through the process. So those were, you know, having that, that outside professional help as well as a, a peer group, you know, but I didn't have a single value advisor, if you will, you know, to steer me through.


And certainly when I got to the, to the transaction itself, there were a lot of things that I should have done earlier that would've increased the value of the business. And I, I would've had a better outcome. I had a good outcome selling the business. I was not disappointed at all, but I could have had a much better outcome. Yeah.


Kim Bentson (29m 22s): Yeah. It's one of those things you think, oh, I, you know, I've built the business, I can figure it out. I figured out so many other things, but you can't improve what you can't see, and you don't even know, right? Yep. Very true. And I think, yeah, that, I think that's the shift. It's okay to get help and you can do more with more, right? Yeah.


But it's really about seeing that your business more clearly. And if you're, if you're listening and you're realizing you might not have that full picture of what creates value and what doesn't create value, that in my mind is exactly what The Transition Readiness Assessment is designed to do. Give you that full picture, understand where you are, and to even begin to know where you to go, you need that starting point of what, what is working and what's not working.


Dave Casey (30m 31s): Yeah. There's that, I think, yeah, I think just an outside objective look at your company. 'cause no matter how much analysis you do yourself, you're very subjective. And you'll, you'll either gloss over things or you'll make excuses for people or for processes that are sort of work, but don't quite work or used to work and don't work anymore. You know, there's all that stuff. And then of course, in the total scheme of things, The Transition Readiness Assessment is just that, it's an assessment.


The second part of what we do at Mastery there is the TRA is the route to value acceleration. So that's actually taking all that data and then building a roadmap and figuring out how do I now execute against that? How do I take the, the knowledge I have now and what steps do I need to take in what order do I need to take them to actually make my business more valuable and ultimately more transferable when, even if that, that date may be undetermined or way down the road.


But that assessment, that assessment is the basis, and then the roadmap to me is the, is really the, the sweet spot. That's the, that's the thing. You know, so that, and, and you can, you can definitely track your progress on that. And, and, and we, what we do at Mastery is actually walk alongside when we, when, when somebody does that, we'll help them execute that roadmap, find the resources typically outside their company to help in many cases.


And then, and then constantly take a look at what's the valuation look like, you know, are the things we're doing having an effect? Are they, are they, are they effective? Yeah.


Kim Bentson (32m 22s): Right. Because the sooner you see that, the more options you'll have.


Dave Casey (32m 30s): Yeah.


Kim Bentson (32m 30s): Right? The sooner you see, the quicker you are to make those decisions to, to change or stick with it, it really, it really gives you the confidence to be able to make those decisions.


Dave Casey (32m 43s): The other, the other thing is, I mean, going back to our original premise, it, it really guides you where to spend your time. You know, as the business owner, it might be that rather than solving a technical problem, that your best deal right now is to be in front of two or three bankers and secure some lines of credit to, you know, to, to fund the growth that you know is coming. So there's, and that, and that may not be your most desired activity, is to meet with bankers, right?


But that's where you need to be. And so that's, that's where I think the, the magic is, is that, is where do I spend my time? Who do I depend on to help? What should I be tasking my team with? One thing that I, I definitely, in retrospect looking at my company, I, I know this to be the fact I did not ask my team to work harder. I, there were areas where they were willing and able to take on more responsibility, and I didn't ask them to do it.


And I don't know why. I don't know if it was like fear of, you know, what if we go down this road and it doesn't work out? Or it was like, I feel like they're working really hard already, or maybe I'll have to pay 'em a lot more if they ask, you know, if they're doing a lot more, well, I should have gladly paid 'em a lot more to do a lot more or something. So there's it, it's, you know, that that's, that was eyeopening really when I, when I did that kind of look back, you know, there's things I could have done better, for sure.


Kim Bentson (34m 25s): Yeah. Well, if, if you, in today's conversation, gave you something to think about and you think, I need a, I need a full picture, you can learn more about that process, the TRA RVA that Dave mentioned@masterypartners.com. I know this conversation gave me a lot to think about and to do because there's,


Dave Casey (34m 51s): Because you just don't have enough to do, Kim.


Kim Bentson (34m 53s): Well, yeah, there are some things there that I definitely am putting in the drawer 'cause I don't wanna deal with Yeah. That it, that I know. It's co and that's the other thing. I know it's costing me. It's so we just, you know, but, you know, talking about it and bringing it to the forefront definitely makes you, oh, I need to deal with that. Yeah. And, and move on. And it's, it's sometimes even not as big a project as you think it is. You, you build it up in your head and it's just not, you know, it's not as big as all that.


But Dave, thank you, brilliant. As usual. I appreciate your perspective and, and always learn so much from your experience and to the business owner who submitted that question. Thank you. That was a good one. And to you, the business owner listening, thanks for being a part of this. If you're asking these questions, good for you. You're ahead of the curve there. If you found this helpful, make sure you subscribe so you don't miss what's coming next. And until next time, keep maximizing business


Speaker 1 (36m 1s): Value.


Kim Bentson (36m 2s): See ya. All


Tom Bronson (36m 3s): Right. Take care. Okay. Thanks for joining us for another episode of the Maximize Business Value Podcast. I hope today's conversation sparked new ideas on how you can continue driving value in your business. But remember, it's not just about listening, it's about taking massive action. Visit our website mastery partners.com for more resources. Grab a copy of any of the books in the Maximize Business Value series on Amazon or via the links below.


And don't hesitate to reach out if you want to know how to apply these concepts to your business. So until next time, I'm Tom Bronson reminding you to relentlessly execute while you Maximize Business Value.