From Tribal Knowledge to Transferability (#286)

On this week’s episode of the Maximize Business Value Podcast, "From Tribal Knowledge to Transferability" host Kim Bentson is joined by Mastery Partners certified partners, Terry Chevalier and Dave Casey, to discuss “How do I get processes out of people’s heads without creating a bunch of corporate red tape?”.

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
01:12 — Process Maturity & Business Value
03:27 — Documenting Without Red Tape
06:33 — Predictability & Scalability
08:34 — The Training & Hiring Gap
12:33 — A Buyer's Perspective on Missing Process
17:53 — What Real Process Design Looks Like
23:32 — Matching System Scale to Company Size
27:52 — Action Steps: Starting with Pain Points
31:55 — Removing the Founder Bottleneck
37:38 — Final Takeaways & Getting Started
41:56 — Outro

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

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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 Terry Chevalier
Terry Chevalier, owner and Managing Director of Sunstone Associates, offers over 25 years of telecommunications expertise, guiding companies through vast opportunities and challenges, including federal programs and high-value exits.

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 
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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
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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):
By listening to this podcast, you are already taking steps on the path of improving your business readiness. Nice work. Got a question? Well, we'd love to hear from you. Submit your questions at Mastery Partners dot com and look for the Red business owner hotline button. And as you think about today's episode, remember the decisions you make every day as a business owner are either building value in your company or quietly eroding it. So here's a question to take with you.

What decision will you make tomorrow that builds value in your business? Now go get it done. At Mastery Partners, we're the people that make companies more valuable and more transferable. Our guides help business owners build companies that's ready for whatever comes next. And if you want to see where your business stands, visit Mastery Partners dot com to learn more about the transition readiness assessment. So until next time, keep maximizing business value.

Kim Bentson (1m 12s):
Welcome to the Maximize Business Value Podcast. I'm Kim Bentson, business owner and operator. And honestly, figuring out a lot of this right alongside you. Today's topic is one I've definitely wrestled with in my own business. It's been put on the back burner more times than I'd like to admit. But how do I get processes out of people's heads or my own head without it turning into a, you know, bureaucratic mess? Because if you're anything like me, you want structure you don't even want, but you don't wanna slow everyone down.

'cause time is money. But you want that consistency without killing flexibility. Somewhere along the way, most growing businesses hit this wall. I know Dave and Terry have seen this as well. Everything still depends on certain people, certain employees, certain managers, usually the owner that works for a while until this friction is created from growth. Growth or a key employee walks out the door or a buyer starts asking hard questions. This podcast is all about helping business owners build companies that are more valuable and more transferable.

And process maturity plays a bigger, a much bigger role in that the most owners realize. So today I've got two people who've spent serious time in the trenches on this. Joining me are Dave Casey and Terry Chevalier, both certified partners at Mastery Partners. Dave is one of those rare people who can see your whole business from 30,000 feet and immediately tell you what's going to limit your growth before it happens. He's worked with business owners across industries on exactly this kind of strategic challenge.

And then Terry is the guy you want when it's time to actually build the thing. He has deep background in strategy and process design and a gift for creating a path forward. He's been doing this work as an independent consultant for some time now and really helping smaller to mid market companies build that backbone that they need to grow. So Dave Terry, great to have y'all here.

Dave Casey (3m 23s):
Thank you. Thank you much. Yeah, thanks Kim. Appreciate it. Looking forward to it.

Kim Bentson (3m 27s):
Yeah. So this year on this podcast, we're bringing real questions from real business owners, honestly, the same kinds of questions I've asked myself and putting them in front of our CER certified partners to get some clear answers. And if you have a question, I just wanna remind you, you can submit that at on our website at Mastery Partners dot com. And it may be featured in a future episode. Today's question did was just that it came through our website and it is, How do I get processes out of people s heads without creating a bunch of corporate red tape?

And I think that tension is real for a lot of us. We know systems matter, but we built our businesses by moving fast and staying flexible and figuring things out as we go. So I know when I hear documentation and I'm a organizational nerd, self-professed, I immediately picture giant binders and checklist. But enough about me.

Let's start with the big picture. Why does this actually matter from a business value standpoint? Dave?

Dave Casey (4m 41s):
Wow. Well, first of all, I'm pretty honored that I've been invited because you are the process queen and there's a procedure written for everything and, and woe to the person that violates the procedure. So I mean, it's so, I'm, I'm really surprised I'm here. So, but so yeah. And this is, this has been a huge challenge for me. Certainly when I had my own business for years, I wasn't exactly a fly by the seat, the pants, you know, we had, we definitely had systems and processes and improved them over time, but my whole take on it was, you know, you, you hire people that are really good and let them run with it and, and you'll get great results.

And we certainly did get great results with our company, but one of the areas that we were a little soft on was documenting these processes. Because when you maybe lose a key player, as you alluded to, a lot of informational institutional knowledge goes out the door with that person. So it's so important, I think, to, to have it all put together, have it accessible to people, and certainly have it to where if you are contemplating a transition, someone from the outside can very quickly look at your company and say, wow, there's a documented process for like, how to open the front door, how to activate the ac.

I mean, I mean, you can go very deep If you want, but, but it really, it lends itself, I think to scalability. So if you really want to increase your top line and your bottom line revenue without an exact increase in number of people in headcount, you've gotta have super processes.

Terry Chevalier (6m 33s):
Yeah. And, and if I can just kind of build on, you know, to, to Dave's point and just reiterate, you know, we said, I mean, when it comes to the valuation, you know, the value of your Business, what the buyer wants is confidence that they can predictably run this business without you there. That if there's critical people that we've got things in place, we know what they do, we have a a, a process in place. And, and a lot of times we, we use this term process, so immediately our heads go to binders, like you were saying.

I mean, I mean, it doesn't have to be that, you know, that that, that detail. I mean, be a PowerPoint presentation, be scratch, pads out, it can be some screenshots. I mean, there's a lot of different ways to do it. But when you can produce that for a buyer, that's going to lead to a better valuation for your business. And, you know, into what, what Dave said, I mean, it's, it's really kind of builds about predictability. So I can now predict what's gonna happen to the business and I can also understand, can it scale?

'cause I can see what the process is, what's it, what's it gonna take to scale this process? Do I have to invest more? What's it gonna take? Do I need to change the process? If I bring in new employees, what am I training them to? Funny point, I was, I was, I was, you know, I'll bring up this example again later. I was helping someone with the new sales process and I had a board member and he was like, well, you know, that that current sales person needs to, you know, we just need to, to, to do something different there. And, and I said, well, that sounds great. What am I training them to? Because we have literally no process.

So I can go hire additional people as much you want, but there's nobody and there's nothing for 'em to train to. So, you know, how do I onboard them? How do I make sure that everybody's getting the same experience so that you know every customer, the I'm delivering on the promise every single time. 'cause I got the checklists to prove it. And so it, it's really about all of those, those things is the predictability, driving value, all of those things scale that, that Dave said.

Kim Bentson (8m 34s):

Yeah. And just to add a personal note too, for me, I was growing, my business was growing and so I hired people and we would spend all this time getting them trained like about three weeks. And then they would quit 'cause they were the wrong person for the job. And I was like, oh,

Dave Casey (8m 56s): 

There's a process to hiring. We don't have a hiring

Kim Bentson (8m 58s): 

Process. We don't have a hiring process, and I'm the only one that's looking at these people. So we developed a hiring process and really del spent some time on who needs to hire, how do they need to fit in, what are the questions we need to ask to make sure that they understand what they're getting into as well? And, and that, that totally changed our trajectory in hiring. And then just retaining people. Because I did a, i, you know, that three week time as an owner, you're taking on that time to spend training.

I mean, I'm a small, small operation, so it's me that's training and you spend three weeks. So it's long days, more than long days and extra work to get them going with the light at the end of tunnel, tunnel thinking, oh, once they're trained, they can take some of this off. And then for them to quit you just, anyway. So that, that hiring process really, really helped in that way. But so process, and I think I, that my example speaks to that.

It's not just paperwork or checklists, it's about reducing dependency and creating that consistency is what I'm hearing. Is that, is that, what do you think, Dave?

Dave Casey (10m 23s):

Yeah, this, it's definitely that. And I think it ties into all the other aspects of the business too. I kind of came originally from the sales side of the world, so, and I could, I could figure out pretty quickly which companies had a, a defined sales process and a defined like succession path, you know, and, and here's your career path here. Here's the expectations, you know, of, of you and, and everything. So it's almost ties into HR from the standpoint you, your job description is kind of comes out as a result of a process, a documented process.

And a mistake that I made was seeking out and hiring people that I knew just were sharp, were good, had proven track record, I knew they could do the job, you know, and very loose definition of the process they, that they were to follow, right? Just like your smart figured out, right? And, and that's wrong. That's a disservice to your, to your employee cer or a team member as certainly a disservice to the others that surround them because it causes disruption.

And so there's that, that documentation of that is so important and so that everybody kind of knows this is what's expected. And certainly as you mentioned, sometimes processes have to change. Obviously we're in a, I was in a technology space and Terry's in that space, he knows very well. Things change at a a very rapid rate. So you have to modify your processes, you have to change what you're doing to, to, to reflect that. But it's, and, and it's so important, I think that you've gotta have it, you gotta have it down, you've gotta have it a change management kind of procedure as well.

And all of those things just, they will just bring you back multiple times in, in valuation when it comes time to do a transition.

 Kim Bentson (12m 26s):

Yeah. So Terry, what does this look like from a buyer's perspective when documentation isn't there?

Terry Chevalier (12m 33s): 

There's no buyer. No, i, i, it, it's, you know, let, let's kind of step back for a second. Think about what a, what it looks like to transition and then go through a transaction, right? So you're, you're excited, I'm gonna sell this business, my baby. Hey, somebody has expressed interest in it. So somebody wants this thing and they've given me this big offer. So I signed what's called letter of intent. Now I'm, now I'm in the diligence period. Well, this is where the buyer's coming in. So the buyer's now starting to peel apart every part of your business and understand exactly how it works and what are all the pieces that are, are in place.

And they're looking for risk, you know, because if there is risk that translates to a lower value. And many times the buyer, you know, from a seller's perspective, the, the purpose of diligence is to lower the price from the buyer's perspective. It's to uncover risk. And they literally result in the same thing, a lower price. You know, some of the risks are, okay, I've got a really good salesperson. What happens if they leave? I've got a really good customer service leader.

What happens if they leave? Who steps in? And then how does that process work? How do I know I'm still delivering on it? If the owner is running specific things in the business, and if they're no longer there, what happens? So, you know, if, if you go into that conversation, if you can't answer those questions, it creates doubt, it's creates mistrust. And then they dig in more because all it takes is them to find one thing. And they're like, well, what else is going on around here that I need to know about?

And they start digging again and again and again. So all that's gonna result in is it's going to result in, in, in your price going down. And there's even a risk that if you don't have this, there's no deal to be had. You may create so much risk from this that depending on what's going on in your situation, that you may actually lose lose the, the deal. So some of the things they're looking for, how do you onboard? Do you have onboarding documentation? Do you have key workflows mapped out?

Do you have any operational playbooks? Do you have a customer relationship management system? Do you know how to use it? Is it sort of documented? How are people reporting into who, what's the accountability system that's in place? And if they don't find those things, the assumption becomes is it's dependent on people. I'm not buying something that's easily predictable and repeatable, so I'm gonna lower the price. You know? Yeah. But Dave, I don't know, what would you add to, to that?

Dave Casey (15m 15s): Yeah, that definitely all of those things, you know, they create risk, you know, and that risk is the, the key thing that the, the, the buyer's objective is a, to get a good deal. There's, there's no doubt about that. But also, they wanna acquire a good company. They wanna acquire a company that can be immediately predict, you know, not only predictable, but profitable, add to their bottom line. And, you know, they're not there to typically, they're not there to slash and burn and, and do all that.

They're there to like, wow, we've got a great team here. Let's preserve this team. Let's, let's enable them, let's, let's make them go forward. And if all those processes are in place and carefully documented, then that lowers the risk considerably. And, and then they will even look at it. And, and they may say, well, you know, they, we've done a lot of acquisitions. Typically when we require, there's a few people that leave when the owner leaves, right? That, that they, they were loyal to that guy. And you know, they're, we can pretty much tell who's gonna go and who's gonna stay.

But If you don't have a process, then they're looking at rebuilding, right? We're, we're gonna have to create a process. We're gonna have to maybe take our processes and adapt it to this company, which may not work well. So they're, they're looking for ones that are self-sustaining, that, that are, that are running on all cylinders. I mean, and that's, that is, that's so important. And, and that even if you don't even contemplate an exit, it's so important to make your company run better, you know? And just so you, as the owner can take a few weeks off or a couple months off, you know, so.

That's right.

Terry Chevalier (16m 50s): 

That's right.

Kim Bentson (16m 51s): 

Yeah. It's a real cost. I don't think most owners connect to their day-to-day decisions. And, you know, the less transferrable our, our partners at North Star mergers and acquisitions, I, I've heard this say, say this many times, the less transferable your operations, the more the buyer protects themselves at your expense, not at their expense, at your expense. So that either comes out in earnouts, which you never, that's never a good idea, or holdbacks or the deal takes a ridiculous amount of time.

Yeah. So

Dave Casey (17m 31s): 

That famous phrase, time kills deals, you know, time kills. It really will. And or reduce the value for sure.

Terry Chevalier (17m 40s): 

So, right. Yeah,

Kim Bentson (17m 41s):

 Yeah. Yeah. So Terry, can you walk us through what this actually looks like when a business is doing this? Right, right.

Terry Chevalier (17m 53s): 

Sure. I mean, I, I think the, the, the, the, you know, you, you, you introduced me earlier as like the strategy guy. So you gotta realize, I always start high level. And so the first thing it always comes down to is kind of what is your business purpose? Like, what are you here to do? What is your unique differentiated position in the marketplace? And then everything that you do should reinforce that. So there's, there's sort of a, a few different pieces. There is your structure, your account, you know, how are you driving accountability and organization?

There is sort of roles and responsibilities with that structure, which is your accountabilities. And then the third is just your process. Like how do you, how do you go from point A to point B within that? And what I have found is that when we talk about this idea of, you know, document your processes, immediately, people go to, oh, this is an ISO 9,000, you know, I can use those terms, people remember, you know, and I gotta get the big blue binder and, you know, find the, the, the point there, what it actually looks like in pro practice.

And I'll use the example I, I mentioned earlier, it started off, I was working with a company and they basically did not have a sales process. They had one, but it wasn't written down, it was in the salesperson's head. And because they didn't have it written down and they didn't have metrics and all this other stuff, we couldn't diagnose to figure out what was going on. So the first thing we did is we just sat down with the salesperson, and let's call, call them Roy. Roy, when you, where do you get your quotes from?

How does that work? Where do you put 'em? What's the next step? So, so then you get that, what do you do with that quote? What's the next step? And what systems are you using? And we're just writing this stuff down. And then literally we just had a piece of paper say, here's the process. Then the next thing we did is say, great, now we have a process. Now we need to track the process. So here's a little quick, you know, Google sheet and Excel. We track the processes every time it comes in, I want you to record these numbers and these that does that. Great. Now we can take a look at it and say, oh, turns out we're losing things in this part of the process.

Turns out this source of this information coming in is not giving us feedback. We didn't know that until we had it. So this is just an example of, you start with something very simple. And then what has happened is over time Roy has added more complexity. It's like, oh, well there's this other issue. Oh, well let's capture and write that down. Let's figure that out. That's causing a problem. How are we gonna go solve it? And so that's a way to kind of go through, again, going back to if you're, what is your purpose? How are you organized and structured that should be written down, where are the roles and responsibilities?

And then what's the critical process to get from point A to point B? And they just start off with a piece of paper and writing it down. It's that simple. It does not happen.

Dave Casey (20m 52s): 

Just think what can happen when you apply AI to that. So,

Terry Chevalier (20m 56s): 

Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, does, that is changing, I think for a lot of people. And there's great AI tools right now as an example, like sometimes when I'm working with, with clients, I might even interview them, record it over ai, and then let AI drop that into, you know, my favorite AI tool and let it create the process as a result. Yeah. And the tools and wrap everything around it. And it's a quick and easy way to do it. This is a great point, Dave. Yeah. So, so I, I mean, and to that point, you know, Dave, you've probably seen some things too.

You've probably got some good examples about what this looks like, you know, with the folks you've been working with.

Dave Casey (21m 34s): 

Yeah. And you know, Kim started this with a, with a comment, you know, I think there's a fear of documenting and, and coming up with, you know, real strong processes and procedures that you end up with that big blue binder that you mentioned. I mean, and that, you know, is this gonna slow us down as a company because now we've got a procedure for all this stuff. And, you know, we got people, people, they wanna be, they wanna know what the expectation is. They don't necessarily want to file or follow things, you know, step by step by step.

I, I feel like, well, yeah, that's, where's my creativity in that and so on. There's places where creativity is very important in a company. Internal processes is probably not one of them, right? So, and but, but I think what happens is, if you do this, people find over time that it's easier to do their job. They can accomplish things faster because this is a proven process. These are just not made up. These are things that, you know, the company's been doing for a long time and they've tried a lot of wrong ways to do it.

They've come up with the right way that works, and now it's documented, and now that's what we're gonna do. And, and it really, rather than feel like you're bogged down with bureaucracy, you really, you're free to do your job and actually be much more effective in it. And I think we all know that, you know, if somebody's very happy and effective in their job and they feel like they're, they're contributing and they're being rewarded for it, that, that, that's an employee that's pretty engaged and they'll stick with you. And, and they'll, and particularly when it comes to this kind of stuff, those are the people you go to and say, you know, we've been doing this this way now for a couple years.

Is this, is this still the best way to do it? Have you seen anything that says that we need to maybe tweak this process or change it at all? And those people that are right, you know, right attached right. Doing the work are the best ones to, I think, to, to get that feedback from.

Terry Chevalier (23m 32s): 

Yeah. And, and you, you raised a point that just re I wanna build on Dave, and that was this people element because going back to the original question from, from our, our listener, our, our from the website in terms of, I don't want the red tape. I'll give you an example of what that looks like on the extreme site. I was working with a business owner who had been trying to sell their business multiple times, multiple failures in it, construction based firm. And when we, when I went and I said, let show me your process, he produced the most detailed process I've ever seen before.

And it was like, I, I mean there's, there's the little triangles and the diamonds, you know, and all this stuff going on.

Dave Casey (24m 19s): 

Kim would be ECS static to see something like that. Yeah.

Terry Chevalier (24m 21s): 

But then I started asking some basic questions. E exactly. But then I started asking basic questions. I'm like, well, okay, well how long does it take to go from here to here? Well, it depends on all these things. Okay, well, on average, well, I don't know. Well, how long does it take from go to here to here? What's the piece that's holding you back here? And what, what, what it learned was that Heath had gotten a big enterprise client and he thought he needed to add some massive process to meet their needs. He went off and hired one of their old employees who came in with a company that was like 30 people.

He puts in this massive process and it completely ground everything to a halt. So, so instead what what i, I work with them on is like, let's ratchet it back. Your process has to be to the level of your organization. Yes. So if your organization is not huge, you don't need a big process. If you are, If you, you're a bigger, well, you may need that, you may have more handoffs, more people involved in that stuff, but it can sustain that. So if you're running into, I've got too much red tape, I tell you, look at your pro.

If you do have a process, it may be too complex. In this case, we simplified it. He sold within three months, once we simplified it so that he could actually get it through the line, because they started to actually execute again. They were completely gummed up from this.

Dave Casey (25m 41s): 

And I've seen this work two different ways. So we had a relatively, my company was a relatively small company, but we served big companies. So we, we were in a kind of a bidding war to, to win some business one time with a major telecom provider, they telecom equipment provider. And, and they were matching us up against a $600 million company. Now I had a $10 million company, so and so on paper, we shouldn't have been in that battle, but we were, and we won, which was very interesting.

And the reason that they chose us is our project management team. 'cause we had a Gwen, when we did our, our presentation, you know, they always start with, well, you know, what is the product service and everything, and how do you deliver that? What's that look like? So I had our project management team go up and say, this is the process we follow for this particular type of engagement, and here's what we do. And these are the inflection points where we'll need to deal with your internal project management team and we'll need to be on the same level.

And this will be our expectations of you and your expectations of us. And it was so clearly defined. Our $600 million a year competitor failed in that. I mean, they just said, Hey, we're big. We'll take care of it. Trust us. We've done big projects like this. And so that was the deal where our process actually won the day for us in that particular situation. Now, the reason we had that process was we had, we had lost a couple and we actually learned from losing on how to increase and, and better our process and make it more professional, identify key, you know, all the key things that are gonna happen.

And, and, and these, you know, the way we did project management and, and, and the level of sophistication we attached to that, we actually charged for project management. Most of our competitors kind of bundled it in to the offering. We said, no, we, we have a project manager on this. We're gonna charge for the project manager's time, but here's the deliverables, here's what you'll get. And we, we learned that from losing, you know, and then scored some big wins.

Kim Bentson (27m 52s): 

So let's take this down. We, we've been pretty practical this whole conversation, I feel. But I think we can give some very tangible action items to help our business owners out there answer the question, where do I start? So I've, Terry I've heard you say, and I have experienced this myself, start with the pain. Yeah. Where is it hurting you the most?

Terry Chevalier (28m 23s): 

Yeah, I, I, you know, there's, there's what is the, we see this all the time. It's like what motivates action more than anything else. It's negatives, not positives. You know, it's, I always, the analogy I use is, if I'm being chased by a saber tooth tiger and I see a shiny apple, which 1:00 AM I gonna be most concerned about? And so where is the pain? Gets people motivated? And so a lot of times what I'll tell folks to do is just say what? Pick one thing, just one, one thing that is driving you nuts that you have to constantly do every single time and you just hate doing it.

That's the one that you should start with. Start writing down what that, that, that, that looks like if as a team, you, there's that one thing. Get into a room with a whiteboard and start going, okay, so this comes in, what happens next? What happens next? Yep. And just start there. Just keep it simple. Don't get too, too far down the path if you have problems. I think this is where a, there is sometimes value in bringing an outside perspective in.

And there's a variety, you know, obviously we do it. There's a variety of, of independent consultants, project managers who will come in and sort of interview you and give you that process. Set up your ai, tell it to your ai, you are my process design mapper. You're going to ask me a series of questions about this process. And at the end, you're going to give me a document, begin the interview, and you'll be amazed at what the AI is going to do for you. So it just, ro really boils down to look for just quick wins, quick visible wins that builds momentum.

And then you take it to the next problem, the next issue as you go forward.

Kim Bentson (30m 15s): 

Yeah. I found, I found delegating that, hey, document this process, how you do this thing. And then I can go in and be, and we can walk through it together and I can be like, oh, let's tweak it. So I'm not completely losing control as an owner in that regard, but somebody else is doing the tedious task of line by line what needs to happen.

So, okay, so Terry, start where, start with where it hurts. That's what I'm hearing.

Terry Chevalier (30m 51s): 

Exactly. Yeah. So keep it simple and, you know, and a simple one that even I do for, for myself. 'cause I, you know, or I'm operate also a site, you know, my own business as well. And for example, the end of the month reconciliation is a pain in the butt for me. So I have recorded in Loom, If you guys don't know what Loom is, it allows you to screen capture. And I basically narrate what I'm doing so that I've created that process. And then I'm looking for, you know, my virtual assistant to basically help me execute that process.

Now I've given them something they, they can work with. So a lot of great tools out there. A lot of things you can do, but don't, perfection is the enemy of progress here. You know, just get something. Yeah.

Kim Bentson (31m 40s): 

Yeah. And I know Dave had mentioned, you mentioned we all have plots, but turning on your plot and just talking to it as you're doing things can, can also be a big help. Have you, have you tried that?

Dave Casey (31m 55s): 

The tools that are available are really spectacular now. And the second part of that too, that, that I think Terry alluded to earlier too, is, you know, that when we're reducing risk, particularly if we're dealing with a smaller company, there's, there's only so many players, right? We may have a, a, a, a very tight small team, and again, a prospective buyer's gonna say, well, what if we lost that person or this person or that person?

What processes break down if we do that? And unfortunately, many times that person where the processes will all break down is the owner the own too many things route through the owner, you know, and they still, even if they've feel like they've delegated something out, they still have final say. You know, or they have, they have to put their 2 cents in on each, on each thing that happens. So I think a big part of this is, is actually when you build the processes and you design 'em, design 'em so that you can plug people into those processes and they'll run independently.

And so that if a key person does leave, yes, I'm gonna go have to go find a person or, or either move another person internally into that role and go backfill, or I'm gonna have to go outside and find a person, but I've got a super well documented process and everything will continue to run. Okay.

Kim Bentson (33m 20s): 

Yeah. Terry, anything to add?

Terry Chevalier (33m 23s): 

Just, I mean, the last point, and we've kind of talked about this, but as you go through this, especially If you get new teams and, and your processor are, are sort of getting detailed, make sure you get the folks who deal with it day to day involved. They're the ones who know where all the problems really are. They're the ones who are gonna surprise you and you're being like, this isn't as easy as I thought. But you know, you can work your way through it and start to identify things. So it, it is just really important to kind of bring in those folks and just making it visible to them, capturing what you're already doing and just making it visible.

'cause then it becomes repeatable. If it becomes repeatable, it becomes predictable. Becomes predictable, it comes to value. So that's the process.

Dave Casey (34m 8s): 

Yeah.

Kim Bentson (34m 10s): 

Well, I'll be honest, when I first started working through this, documenting processes, 'cause I went through the TRA early on in my business and document processes was a big value hit. 'cause everything was me. And then as we started to grow, I was like, I, we don't have time to do this. Like, we have a small margin, we have, we gotta move fast. We don't have time to stop and, you know, get these things done.

But once I did the TRA and saw how it was hurting the transition readiness assessment, which we'll talk about in a minute, saw how it was hurting my value. I'm like, okay, well I guess I'll do it. And so my coach at the time was like, just make a list of everything, the pain points, but just make a list of everything that requires a list of things to do. And so we started there and slowly by, you know, one by one, we knocked that out.

And as we grew, it became, I discovered that we didn't, we had, we did not have time not to do it, if that makes sense. Like having those processes enabled me to have growth in my business that I, you know, I, the capacity, you, you can only do so much with one person. And so as we're bringing things on and you want that repeatable customer experience as well, a checklist really helps with that.

And not only that, the efficiencies that I discovered in making that list as far as like, this is the fastest way to achieve this achieve, I've tried the 10 other ways you could do this, and this is the absolute fastest way. But then as we handed that off, the efficiencies grew more because the person who was doing the actual process found even more efficiencies. So that clarity we created just by documenting and how things actually worked, it really opened up a lot of freedom in our business and saved us time in the end.

So that was a, you know, a big shift in my mind. Like, we, we don't have time to do this. This is a waste of time 'cause it's not working on the, you know, with the client, but I really saw the connection between operational maturity and that business value being true. So, do y'all have any comments on that?

Dave Casey (36m 54s): 

You know, it's funny when you, when you talked about doing that u usually the owner is the, the one that's hardest to hand off things, right? Yeah. Particularly because you know, you can do it faster, you can do it better, you can get it to the customer sooner. You know, all those things come into play, but that's not scalable, you know, so that's, I I know when you came to that realization, it's hard to give up something and just know that it's not gonna get done.

And so it's, it's so important to to, to kind of scale those, you know, to, to scale. You've got to, you've gotta make those decisions. Yeah.

Kim Bentson (37m 38s): 

Yeah. So wrapping up, you know, business owners are making decisions every single day that impact the value of their businesses. And most of the time we don't even realize it. So if someone's listening to this and thinking, I need to look at my business differently, what's the one thing you tell them to do first? And I wanna hear from both of you, but Dave, we'll start with you.

Dave Casey (38m 0s): 

You know, I think the one thing is to be very frank with yourself and just stop kind of normalizing things that aren't quite working, right? Right. They might be work good enough and you'll say, you know, we're way too busy to fix this. This is not that important. And they may not be important for you to run your business day to day as it is today. But for you to build a business that is valuable and transferable, you probably need to fix these things.

You need to document the processes, get 'em in place, get them where somebody from the outside can quickly glance at your HR department and say, wow, they've got it buttoned down. All the things are right here. I can see right here what their process is, how it's being followed, what the results are, what the documentation is. Same thing in sales, same thing in finance, you know, and if you can get all those things running on the same, same cadence and the same level, it's dramatically gonna increase what you can transfer your company for.

Kim Bentson (39m 8s): 

Yeah. So,

Terry Chevalier (39m 9s): 

And I, I mean, I think that was is great. I, the only thing I'll just add in sort of like, you know, what is, what's the one thing to do beyond, you know, the idea of just don't wait. Right? You, you don't wanna wait on these things. The one thing I would say is pick two hours next week and put a block on your calendar. Nothing happens if it's not blocked in your calendar. You, we all know this, so block two hours to work on your first process, pick something simple and work through it, and you're gonna be like, this doesn't work for me.

I gotta find a different approach, but you're gonna get started and getting started is the hardest part.

Dave Casey (39m 46s): 

Yeah.

Kim Bentson (39m 47s): 

Yeah. And I think that's the real shift. It's not about being fine or okay with the crazy way we do things. It's about becoming more valuable, more transferable. And by doing a simple thing as documenting processes, it really can accomplish both of those things. More, more value and more transferability. So if you're realizing, you might not have the full picture of where your operational gaps actually are, that's exactly what Mastery Partners does when they meet with you.

They start with their proprietary transition readiness assessment, which I mentioned earlier in the podcast. And that tool is designed to uncover those gaps to see where your business is leaking value. And at Mastery Partners, we help business owners identify where they're building value and where gaps may be quietly limiting your transferability, scalability, and future options, because we all want more options.

So you can learn more about that process or reach out to Dave and Terry on our website, Mastery Partners dot com, because the sooner you see it, the more time you'll have and the more options you'll have later on. So Dave Terry, this was great. Genuinely love this conversation. Thank you both. Of

Dave Casey (41m 14s): 

Course. It's process oriented. Kim's gonna love it. That's right. That's

Terry Chevalier (41m 17s): 

Right. She's gonna love it. She's gonna love it.

Kim Bentson (41m 20s): 

Oh my gosh, yeah. But anyways, I, I appreciate the examples and the real life to dos those, those make it very practical. And to the business owner who's submitted the question today. Thank you. That question will definitely help someone who didn't know they needed to hear it. And to everyone listening, if you're asking these questions, you're doing great. Keep asking your head of most owners. So keep going, subscribe so you don't miss what's coming next to this podcast.

So until then, keep maximizing business value. Thanks guys.

Tom Bronson (41m 56s): 

Thanks. Thank you. By listening to this podcast, you are already taking steps on the path of improving your business readiness. Nice work. Got a question, but we'd love to hear from you. Submit your questions at Mastery Partners dot com and look for the red business owner hotline button. And as you think about today's episode, remember the decisions you make every day as a business owner are either building value in your company or quietly eroding it.

So here's a question to take with you. What decision will you make tomorrow that builds value in your business? Now go get it done. At Mastery Partners, we're the people that make companies more valuable and more transferable. Our guides help business owners build companies that's ready for whatever comes next. And if you want to see where your business stands, visit MasteryPartners dot com to learn more about the transition readiness assessment.

So until next time, keep maximizing business value.