Document Processes Without Slowing Down (#287)

On this week’s episode of the Maximize Business Value Podcast, "Document Processes Without Slowing Down" host Kim Bentson is joined by Mastery Partners certified partners, Terry Chevalier and Gil Bean, to discuss “How do I know when investing in systems like EOS, CRMs, and project management software is actually worth it?"

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
01:13 — Is Investing in New Systems Worth It?
04:33 — The Hidden Cost of Missing Systems
07:25 — Why Throwing Money at Software Fails
10:03 — How to Identify the Real Operational Root Cause
12:51 — What Buyers Look for in Systems & Processes
16:33 — System Adoption vs. System Assimilation
18:47 — How Leadership Teams Use Operational Tools
21:17 — Overcoming Team Friction During Implementation
23:39 — Knowing When to Abandon a Failed Tool
32:33 — What the Transition Readiness Assessment Evaluates
35:59 — Quick Wins & Giving Yourself Grace
39:58 — 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 Gil Bean
As a Certified Exit Planning Advisor (CEPA), Gil Bean applies his curiosity, empathy, and his desire to listen to maximize business value and preserve wealth. His strategic advisory leverages past success as an EOS Implementer and his long history in enterprise software sales, helping owners achieve clarity for their successful exit.

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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@masterypartners.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.com to learn more about the transition readiness assessment. So until next time, keep maximizing business value.
Kim Bentson (1m 13s): Welcome To the Maximize Business Value Podcast. I'm Kim Bentson, business owner operator, and someone who has sat and is seated, seated exactly where you're sitting right now, starting at a proposal for a new system wondering, is this actually going to be worth it? That's today's question. How do I know if investing in systems, whether it's EOS, CRMs, project management tools, dashboards, automation, ai, is it actually worth it?

And I wanna be real with you. The answer is not always very obvious because math isn't just financial. You're evaluating time to implement adoption with your team team behavior change. And whether you're solving an actual problem or just adding a layer of complexity that feels productive. Or for me, I like the, oh, we have the shiny new toy, aren't we innovative problem?

Those are hard questions, and most business owners are making those calls without a clear framework. So what I've come to understand and what today's conversation is really about is that systems don't create value on their own, but the absence of some of the right systems can erode your value in, in your business value in ways most owners don't see until it's too late. So at Mastery Partners, we help business owners build companies that are more valuable and more transferrable.

And operational systems are a much bigger part of that equation than most owners realize. So let's get into this. Joining me today are two mastery certified partners who spend a lot of time helping business owners see the operational picture. Clearly, Gil Bean is with us and brings a sharp analytical lens. He's the kind of advisor who won't sugarcoat what the data is telling him, no matter how much I ask him to.

And that directness is exactly what business owners need when they're making high stakes decisions about where to invest. And Terry Chevalier understands the strategic side of building the systems that actually hold up over time, not just in the short term. So Gil Terry, welcome. Glad to have you

Gil Bean (3m 37s):

Here. Thank you, Kim. It's nice to be here. It's nice to be with both you and Terry.

Terry Chevalier (3m 41s):

Thanks. Thanks, Kim. Looking forward to it. And my good friend Gil here.

Kim Bentson (3m 46s):

Yeah, so this, this season we're taking real questions from real business owners, the same ones that we've all wrestled with, and bringing them to our expert certified partners for some honest answers. And if you have a question you want featured, submit it@masterypartners.com. On our website, you should see a big button says, ask us a que business owner hotline and ask us a question. But today's question, how do I know if investing in systems is actually worth it?

So Gil, I wanna start with you because I think there's a version of this question that's actually the wrong question and business owners are asking it anyway. Is this Yeah. And business owners are asking anyway. So Gil,

Gil Bean (4m 33s):

That, that's an interesting terminology, Kim. I, I don't think it's the wrong question. I think it's a legitimate question. There we go. But, but I think it's very myopic from the standpoint that it, it, it focuses just on the dollars. What are the dollars, what are the license fees? What are the, the dollars associated with implementation? What are the dollars associated with the effect on the organization? And bringing people on board with it and training and so forth.

All of that is very legitimate. But another way to look at it is from the standpoint of what happens in the absence of any kind of a system, regardless of what the particular discipline is, what happens in the absence of a system and how that affects operations. So if you're looking at it from the standpoint of you you have operational deficiencies or operational weaknesses that a system can resolve, then you have to take that into consideration.

And maybe that is, I would put that question a little ahead of the, the financial cost. But I think both are, both are legitimate. If, if you have operational weaknesses, it's really going to affect and compound, if you will, over, over a long period of time. It's not gonna be better in the fall than it is right now. It just doesn't work that way. So they just get, things just get worse and more pressing and then you end up at a different part of the curve.

So that's,

Kim Bentson (6m 11s):

Yeah. So the trigger really isn't the software, it's the symptoms of what lies underneath the operational.

Gil Bean (6m 19s):

Absolutely. The, I don't know if you're familiar with this, it's not even a statistic, but from the standpoint that an incredible amount of cred, incredible percentage of ERP software that has been licensed over years and years in the, in the technical world, is sitting on a shelf and it's not sitting on the shelf because it doesn't work.

It's sitting on a shelf because people, it hasn't been assimilated into the organization and that that really is the biggest hurdle that needs to be overcome.

Kim Bentson (6m 59s):

Yeah. I worked with a business owner who paid for A CRM 'cause I implement, I can implement CRMs, but he paid for a CRM and not a cheap one, a very expensive one for three years and did nothing with it because that wasn't the problem. He thought it would solve all the problems. Terry, Terry, what do you have to say about that?

Terry Chevalier (7m 25s):

Yeah, I, I mean, I think you guys are, are nailing it. I mean, when we talk about systems, the system is a solution to some sort of broader, you know, call it problem, issue or initiative, right? It, it stems out of what are you trying to achieve and what's in your way? Is a system a way to, to deal with that? And then a lot of times people, you know, to, to Gil's point, a lot of times people say, well, I'm gonna, I'm gonna throw money at the problem and I'm going to solve the problem and I'm throwing money at the problem by buying a license.

But you haven't thought about, well, how does this affect people's work? Because if it's negatively affects their work, they're not going to use it. So what's your change management strategy? Then you're, you know, are there upstreams or downstream effects of this? Does it affect my suppliers? Does it affect my customers? I have to think through this and have an all encompassing solution for that. 'cause ultimately, all this stuff that we're talking about, mastery partners, boils back down to business value. And that, that's the lens by which we look at the world and we look at if, if your business has higher value, means it's a better run business.

It's a funder business to be in. You're growing, everybody has clear roles and responsibilities, but the value driver we're talking about here is operational dependency. So if, if I throw a bunch of, of, of money at this and I build a system, but if people leave and things break, because I don't, I, I don't have a system that actually operates independent necessarily of people or including the owner, then I've basically kinda shot myself in the foot.

And, and a lot of times the buyers, I mean, they, they, they sniff this stuff out, folks. They have seen so many deals. They know, they know right off the bat, if you've got something, if you're using it, if you're not using it, there's some basic questions they'll start asking you. So anybody who looks at the business from long term is gonna see it. And, you know, your business may feel strong, may look strong, but if, if we take the owner or some key people out and the wheels start coming off the, the, the car, you got a problem.

Kim Bentson (9m 32s):

So, so if, I guess the question is how do you dig? I guess you just need to dig through the layers to see what the real problem is that you think this software is going to solve. So yeah, if I think I'm having sales issues and we have a pretty good sales process, but they need this CRM because then I can, you know, that's, that's the thing that will fix it. Yeah. Or what, what would you say about like, digging those?

Terry Chevalier (10m 3s):

Yeah, and I think, you know, just one, one caution. So we're using software as an example. Systems expand beyond software. Yeah. It's how you make decisions. It's, you know, how you order products. It is, you know, how you work with customers, it's how you train people. Those are not necessarily software. And it, it boils back to, you know, a couple things. One is, I always go back to what, what are my goals? Like, a lot of times when I'm working with clients, we will have, you know, there's normally some sort of longer term vision we're trying to accomplish.

There's a set of strategic priorities that occur over multiple years. We have to do, they're simple statements of what we need to accomplish. I have goals to accomplish this year, and those goals have a metric. And in order for me to hit that metric, I may need to implement a system that, that metric may be, maybe it's order times, maybe it's customer satisfaction scores, maybe it is, you know, product development, turnaround, whatever it may be. That's where I'm making the decision on the system. And so if I'm putting a system in place and I'm not getting the result that I want, that's when I know that I've gotta make some change.

Either the system's wrong, I'm not using it right, got the wrong system, all those things. But it boils back to what am I trying to accomplish. That's how I am able to peel apart and figure out what is it that I need as, as it pertains to this particular system.

Gil Bean (11m 31s):

If I may add to Terry's point, which I think is a, an excellent one. If, if I may add to it, I think one of the strongest questions you can ask anyone is how do you do it now? So if, if, if there's a whiteboard in the room, you hand them the marker and say, please explain to me how you do it now. And then if you don't say anything, they will trip over themselves 15, 20, or 30 times during the conversation. And what they'll see is where the problem areas are.

And invariably, those have nothing to do with the system itself. Wow.

Terry Chevalier (12m 8s):

Well said. Well said.

Kim Bentson (12m 11s):

 I'm feeling a little self-conscious about my own business right now, Gil, with you saying

Gil Bean (12m 18s):

That. I'm, I'm sorry. Yeah,

Kim Bentson (12m 23s):

No. Okay. Terry, let's talk a, you mentioned a little bit about what the buyers actually care about, but let's, let's go, let's deep dive a little bit on the buyer's lens. 'cause I think a lot of owners, and I've, I've seen some people that they think they need that enterprise level system to look credible to the outside world. But what, what do buyers really care about when it comes to systems or processes?

Terry Chevalier (12m 51s):

Well, it boils back down to I want predictability. I want some level of maturity in the business that if I buy this business and you disappear tomorrow, that it still predictably creates the output and the widgets and the revenue that you know it's doing today or it's going to grow with going forward. A lot of people mistake, and, and I've seen this so many times, and there's so many times where people are trying to game who their buyer is. Oh, well it's this buyer and they like this system, so I'm gonna implement this system.

That could be the horrible system for your business. But they're thinking they're gaming the system, gonna make themselves more attractive. Then when it falls apart, you know, they look worse as a result of it. So I wanna make sure that if I'm a buyer coming in, that I can look at the business and I can understand, okay, so what, what business are you in? What's your unique differentiated position? Are you growing? How do you make money? What is your revenue and business model as a result? How do you deliver against that? How is this process written down?

Are you using systems? How do I know? Where are your measurements, your KPIs, your key performance indicators? You know, and how do have they tracked over time? I'm looking for, you know, a set of data that gives me confidence that this is gonna keep going through. You know, a lot of times people talk, for example about, you know, CRM systems, you brought it up earlier. The, the primary CRM in the, you know, economy right now continues to be Salesforce. But Salesforce is a, it's a much more complex system.

You may not need Salesforce. There's a host of simple things down to, if you're really simple and small, a spreadsheet just well maintained, well kept up, backed up and available. That can be as simple as you need to be. You need to have your systems at the maturity of your business not accelerating because you will have some problems. I have seen it and it's gonna happen again if you absorb and and try to take on too much at that time, you know. So Gil, I mean you've, you've seen a bunch of this stuff too.

I mean, what, what would you add to, to some of those points?

Gil Bean (15m 3s):

I, i, not a whole lot. I think you did a, I think you did well with it. No, not, not a whole lot.

Kim Bentson (15m 12s):

One of the things I see happening, I've seen happening in multiple organizations that I've either been a part of or running, is adoption of the product. We, I heard this one lady, she refused to move everything over into the shared drive. She had her own calculations of what she was gonna do on her personal spreadsheet in Excel.

Nobody had access to it, it was only hers. And so adoption caused real headache when she did not go with the flow on that. And, but once we got her over to it, because she had to, it was causing real stalls and impacting, you know, client experience and all those things and just how the business was operating that made the system real. When she had the adoption, we were all on the same page and, and it really helped us move forward.

Have you seen that, Gil, I know you're familiar with the EOS and some other systems, but is that adoption a key piece?

Gil Bean (16m 33s):

Well, Kim, I don't mean to pick on you here, but I'm gonna, I'm gonna argue with the word adoption. Okay. Alright. Because, because I think assimilation is, is a better word. No,

Kim Bentson (16m 45s):

A better word. I agree with you

Gil Bean (16m 47s):

For, for the subject that we're talking about. And, and that issue here is whether or not the, the operations operational areas of the business can assimilate the system. And even more important than that, whether the culture can assimilate the, the system. Because when, when you assimilate something or when a culture assimilates something, it becomes part of your DNA, it's your natural way of doing things. The, the example that you cited with the woman who took a occlusive approach to it, adoption really applies to someone like that.

Be because they're, they're saying, yeah, I do this, I've adopted it, but it, it means nothing to the organization. It means nothing to the corporation. Okay. Which implies culture and, and assimilation. So yeah, I I just think assimilation at the, at the operational and cultural level is really the gating issue that, that everything we're talking about today filters into or, or funnels into it.

It's more than anything else, it's an indication of discipline. And I have offended more than one business owner by saying to them, you pay me for the discipline you don't have. And but that's exactly what that, that is being direct and that is the truth because if, if people had the appropriate degree of discipline, we wouldn't be making podcasts like this one.

Kim Bentson (18m 26s):

Right. Right. So Terry, how do these systems and like really give you a, a barometer of how the, how the leadership team is, is if they're actually leading through that system

Terry Chevalier (18m 47s):

In terms of, yeah, I, I think, you know, there, there's a few things that I, i, you know, I would be looking for. So if I'm a buyer and I wanna understand if the leadership team is, is using this, the first is is do I have a set of, do I have a dashboard? Do I have a set of metrics that are sort of help me understand, are they using the system? Am I seeing the system? But, you know, beyond that, I think it goes back to Gil's point and, and I just love the, the term assimilation. 'cause immediately I'm thinking about the Borg in enterprise now. Yeah, every time you say that, Gil, so it's, is it in the lexicon?

Meaning is it, do we talk about it? Do we talk about it naturally? Is it clear that it is part of what you do and how you do it? If it's a side thing, it's like, well, you know, leadership may be aware of it, but it's not really involved with it. If we, for example, we start talking about CRM systems, you know, here at Mastery Partners we have a CRM system. Our, our, our leader Tom Bronson, he knows that system inside. Now he'd be able to tell, you know, anybody from the outside how we use it, how we think about it, why we did it, why, how it adds value for us in, in, in our business.

I would expect every business owner who has a system and every leadership team would do that. So it really boils down those two things. It's like, do I see the evidence in terms of the KPIs that are coming out of it? And the second thing is it just, do I hear it? Do I hear it in the conversation? That to me tells me if, if we're, we're basically leadership is assimilated

Kim Bentson (20m 20s):

And then the buyers want that infrastructure, that leadership infrastructure and that it's not just there, but it's real and it's working.

Terry Chevalier (20m 31s):

Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah.

Kim Bentson (20m 36s):

So let's talk about what I think is the fear underneath this whole conversation, which is implementation. 'cause we're all very optimistic that software will work. Like once we've identified the underlying issue and okay, this is the thing that we think will help us become more efficient, will help us achieve our goal, right? That Terry mentioned, and will my team actually use it? So I Gil I kind of brought this up a little earlier and it's a legitimate fear of if I'm the only person using it.

So to me it sounds like, I guess it's a leadership issue as well. If your team's not gonna use it.

Gil Bean (21m 17s):

There, there is the leadership issue. I am, I, I have right now in my head I'm thinking about how many Gantt charts I've seen tacked to how many walls and how many offices. Yeah. About we're imp we're gonna implement this system. This is where we'll be in November, this is where we'll be next summer and so forth. Again, not to minimize the importance of, of that, of project management, so to speak.

But an equally if not more important question is why are we doing this?

Kim Bentson (21m 57s):

Yeah.

Gil Bean (21m 58s):

Why are we implementing this system and why is that important to the corporation and why is it important to individuals within the company? That really, to me is a thing that has to be emphasized or, and possibly even overly emphasized. The other thing is whether leadership leads by example. I, I mean do they, does the, the president of the company, the head of the department, whoever you want to parse out here and talk about, do they, do they buy in?

Do they use the system or do they see it as something that is there for their convenience? And again, a a rather harsh comment, i I I admit, but information has to flow in. It has to be bidirectional. If, if information is just gonna flow up to management so that they can keep score, that's one thing. But if, if management is going to use it to direct the activities of the, of the people that report to them, then it becomes bidirectional.

And systems like that have real power. My last comment on this is that's a, a very prevalent problem with CRM systems is information only flows in one direction. It only flows from the end user back to the, the mothership, so to speak.

Kim Bentson (23m 39s):

Yeah. So Terry, I have a, a question kinda out of the blue here as I was as, as our conversation is heading along, how do you know when to give up on a system, not a system, maybe software? 'cause you invest all this time and energy and effort and then you're like, it is just not gonna, it's just not yielding the results. It's not, the people don't like it, they hate it. It's not intuitive.

And one of the things I'm thinking about as I'm doing this is subsystems, you have to give it a wide lane to take into account. I'm, I'm particularly thinking of EOS personally, where it just takes time to get it into your system because it is such a, a, a structured approach. But beyond that, like you have a CRM and you're like, yeah, I'm not using it. It's not working. When do you just like, okay, that was a lesson learned and move on.

Terry Chevalier (24m 44s):

I think you answered your question. Oh, sorry. It's, it's, it's a problem when you go, it's not working, I don't like it, I'm not using it, you know, air go. I probably don't need to to use it. So I, I think, you know, when you go to these things, again, you know, remember what I said earlier is that a, the implementation of a system is in response to a need. So you have to be clear about what your need is and then have a vision of what success looks like at the end of this.

So I should then have an idea of what success looks like. Am I getting to success? And if I'm not, I I, you know, I have an issue and, and I just, and, and kind of a side note, I just have to mention, 'cause I mean, we were talking about implementation and I, I don't know if everybody else has had this, but I don't know why, but project managers, for some reason when there's a big implementation, they always call it Project Everest. I don't know why, I don't know why we, we decide to choose the tallest mountain in the world as the example and the, the moniker that we're gonna use every day about doing this.

It does not need to be this complex folks. I mean, it really doesn't, but you do have to think about that implementation. A lot of times, you know, and I'll, I'll I'll take this is one of the things that I learned from some of the consulting firms that I'd worked with in the past is, you know, we talked about this thing called change management, you know, which is a very corporate kind of word. But really basically it, it boils down to if I implement a change in the business, it's going to have one of three effects on, on people.

And, and it's gonna be different for everybody. It's either gonna make their life better, yay, I'm gonna promote this change up 'cause they're gonna be all over it. It's gonna have no impact one way or the other. I need to educate 'em and make sure they don't go the other way or it's gonna make their life worse. And I gotta have a solution for that. So if I'm talking about these, these systems, this is where I was saying you don't just throw money at it. You have to think about what does success look like at the end of this?

What's gonna get in the way of me actually getting to that success? So if I'm implementing a system, I gotta put the system in place. How am I training people to it? How are we gonna use it? What are our expectations on timeline? Are we going to start small and build over time? How are we gonna do that? All of that has to be thought through. And, and I'll say this, the bigger the organization, the more time it takes to do that thought. If you're a smaller organization, that could be literally having a conversation over 30 minutes if you're a big multinational.

I mean, that's like months of work to figure that out. People immediately go to Project Everest and the multinational and what we're talking about. This is the, the 30 minute conversation. You know, sketch it out on a piece of paper, refine it, and go forward and execute.

Kim Bentson (27m 43s):

Yeah, it's so funny that you say that that was not the, the project name that we used when we, we had our com, a company I worked with got bought and we had to migrate the CRM system. We had been using to Salesforce to align with what they were using, which was Salesforce, so they could get the dashboards and all those things. Well it took, you know, everyone's like, oh, it'll just take a couple months to migrate the CRM over.

And it took, it took 10 months to move everything over, and this was a mid, mid-size company. But we took that approach that you took, that you just outlined here of what was, what did the system do and what did we like about what the system did and what were the gaps? And then can this new system, I mean, we didn't have a choice of choosing which system, but there were, there's a lot of pieces along the way.

But one of the things we did when we implemented is we didn't turn on everything. We weren't at that full, you know, 90 miles an hour. Everything's working bells and whistles. We turned on some automations to start when we rolled it out. And then once everyone got used to how it worked, then we rolled out different features that really like, turned up the efficiency once people were assimilated, Gil, that one was for you.

So anyway, I think, I think that's just an interesting way when you're talking about implementation, about answering those questions and how we're gonna go forward. And Gil you have anything to add on that?

Gil Bean (29m 36s):

No, no, it was great. Thank you.

Kim Bentson (29m 40s):

Okay. So I think, Terry, you also mentioned the communication side of it, like reframing how we are introducing the software, like bringing them along for the journey, but also here's how we're eliminating, here's how we're solving this problem and this should be nicer and easier for you.

Terry Chevalier (30m 5s):

Yeah, it's, that's, it's predictable. Like what, what you'll find is certain systems have different effects in different apart departments. Like some may be for, for procurement, maybe it's a, you know, a godsend, but maybe for the sales team, it's horrible. So you can, you can figure out where those problems are and you start working through how you're gonna solve those before you even get started because you know, the, the last thing you want to do is start implementing something that's just not gonna work.

So a lot of times that's where the failure, you know, happens.

Kim Bentson (30m 40s):

Well, and honestly, I have done this, we had a project management tool that we were using and thought we thought it was going well and we kept missing. There were things that were missing and the list that were not getting done. And it was just the way the system was running. And I'm like, okay, I guess we need to find a new project management tool, which was not something I wanted to spend time, effort, or money on, but it did in, it did in the end save us a lot of time, energy, and effort once, once we made that decision and move forward.

So the cost of poor systems, it really d doesn't show up on a p and l like what you're paying for it, like Gil mentioned earlier, it shows up when projects stall, the client's unhappy, the sale doesn't close. You know, all of those things that we've mentioned before. So, and sometimes you don't feel what that cost is actually, you know, costing you until you're trying to grow or scale, and then you feel it, feel it a lot that, that owner cost of bearing the weight of what, what, what's happening to your business when those things happen.

So that's a good transition into the transition readiness assessment. This is exactly why that matters so much because most owners don't know what they don't know. They're too close to the business to see the operational blind spots clearly. So Terry, why don't you talk a little bit about what the TRA is actually looking for and what it is.

Terry Chevalier (32m 33s):

Sure, yeah. The, the, the, the TRA is essentially a, it's a diagnostic tool that we use at Mastery Partners and it's been calibrated over, you know, hundreds of, of different businesses. And we look at the business through a variety of different dimensions and we're looking at it, frankly, as a buyer would look at it, we, you know, which is a unique perspective, you know, we're not going to tell you what you think it's worth. We're gonna tell you what I think a buyer would probably tell you it's worth. So we're looking at your leadership, how you make decisions.

We're looking at your systems themselves. Are you using them consistently? We're looking for accountability structures, we're testing for key risks. Like do you have too much customer concentration? Do you have too much a vendor concentration? How predictable is your revenue? Is it clear about what your u unique selling proposition is? How do you back that up? How do you know, what are your competitors doing? What are your competi customers saying? Are you scalable? And ultimately, are you transferrable? Because it's really nice to have a great business, but it's not a great business if the owner disappears and it doesn't work anymore.

So it, it's, it's very critical that, you know, it is, when I say structured, I really mean structured because we basically have a scoring methodology that we use and we're looking at you relative to other businesses. So it's not opinion, I mean this is, this is, we can pinpoint, yeah, if you answer this way, this is what your score's gonna be and we can look at this over, you know, more than 300 questions that we're, we're evaluating and it surfaces those gaps that you have, even the ones that are probably invisible to you today.

Kim Bentson (34m 16s):

Yeah. Gil, anything else you wanna add to the TRA?

Gil Bean (34m 21s):

Yeah, I think the, the process is very effective at shining a light on what the real problem is, rather than what the owner or the leadership team might believe that the problem is, it's easy to say the problem is revenue, but un underneath there's probably 5, 6, 7 things that, that are causing the prop, the causing the weaknesses in operations that affect revenue.

It's not a revenue problem at all. And I think that's one of the best things about the, the TRA bringing those things to light.

Kim Bentson (35m 2s): 

Yeah. Yeah. And the earlier you see it, those gaps, the more options you have to address it before it matters, before you have to transition. Because as we all know on this call, and hope you do too, a hundred percent of business owners will transition their business. Whether that's shutting down, hopefully it's selling for maximum value. That would, that's our ideal dream exit that we want for every business owner who is an earshot of us.

But you wanna know this before, especially before a transition, but as Terry said earlier, it also makes running your business a lot more fun when you can fix those problems and know what they are. So, all right, last question. If someone's listening and thinking, okay, maybe we do need better systems, and what's the single most important thing to do first? Gil, I'm gonna start with you.

Gil Bean (35m 59s): 

I, I think the most important thing is to get a quick win. So rather than, rather than trying to cover the earth, so to speak, I, I think it's much more useful and effective to identify an area where you can get a quick win. It demonstrates to everyone that the, the process of implementing the system and why you're doing it, that it works. And people will say, oh, that, that really is cool, that, that made a difference in the way I do my job.

It made a difference in maybe even my life. So we should, we should do more of this. We should expand our use of this system. That would be my counsel.

Kim Bentson (36m 46s): 

Yeah. Terry, what about you?

Terry Chevalier (36m 49s): 

Well, I mean, I, I think Gil kinda nailed it because it, that's the, the hardest thing is getting started in that. I, I guess the one caution I'm gonna add for folks to just consider is remember to give yourself some grace in the process of implementing a system because you still have to deliver day to day. You still have to meet with customers and clients and partners and vendors, and you still have to work with your team and do the things that you do today, and now you need to do something on top. And that something on top will not go right the first time.

It will go wrong. There will be days you will question whether that's the right thing to do. So give yourself some grace, give yourself some space as you implement something new because you're going to learn. Learn means fail. You're gonna fail some along the way, but you're gonna learn and then you're gonna be better and now you have a new baseline to implement the next one.

Kim Bentson (37m 39s): 

Yeah. So I know the question was about software, but the answer isn't really about software. It's about building that operational maturity, the kind that gives your business all the things that Gil and Terry mentioned today. Visibility, accountability, consistency, and those things that hold up, whether you're scaling, stepping back, or preparing for what's next, if that's a future transition.

And it's in, in our experience, the business with the most options in the future are usually the ones that are built who have built that infrastructure intentionally and solved problems and not the ones who scrambled to create it under pressure or have the shiny new thing. So if you're listening and realizing that you may not have the full picture of where your business stands operationally, that's exactly what the transition readiness assessment is designed to reveal.

At Mastery Partners, we help business owners identify where they're building real value and where operational gaps among other things may be quietly limiting your scalability, your transferability, and your future options. And nobody wants that. So you can learn more@masterypartners.com, you can find Gil and Terry there, reach out to them if you have more questions. They are great people to be in your corner. So the sooner you see it clearly, the more options you have.

And if today's conversation gave you one honest look at something you've been avoiding, then that's enough. That's the work. I definitely got something from Gill's, directness today, and an action item from Terry. So Gil Terry, y'all are amazing. Thank you so much.

Terry Chevalier (39m 36s): 

Thanks Kim.

Gil Bean (39m 38s): 

Thanks for inviting me, Kim, thank you.

Kim Bentson (39m 40s): 

And to the business owner who submitted today's question, thank you. I guarantee you're not the only one who needed to hear this today. If you found this valuable, please sit and subscribe so you don't miss what's coming next. And until then, keep maximizing business value. Thanks y'all.

Tom Bronson (39m 58s): 

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@masterypartners.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.com to learn more about the transition readiness assessment.

So until next time, keep maximizing business value.