Victoria: Today on Power Tips Unscripted, we talked to Adi Klevit, founder of business Success Consulting Group. I often hear business owners say, my business has so much potential, yet few are able to truly harness and realize that potential. Adi is here to share how systematizing your business can transform that dormant promise into substantial, measurable success. And we’ll hear all about it in just a minute.

Victoria: Hi, I’m Victoria Downing and welcome to Power Tips Unscripted, where we talk about tips, tactics and techniques to help you build a strong, profitable remodeling company. And I’m here with my co-host, Mark Harari, hidey ho neighbor. Hey there. How are you? I’m good. How are you? Another exciting,

Victoria: Books here. Yeah. I mean, what’s not to be excited about when you’re talking systems? Yeah. And, you know, not only does it help a company get past that dormant stage, as you mentioned, but it adds huge value if anybody ever wants to resell. Right. You have to have process systems in place. Otherwise you’re not selling anything. That’s right.

Victoria: All right. So shall we dive in? Yes. Jump in. All right. Adi Klevit is the founder of Business Success Consulting Group, and she’s really focused on the documentation and the building of processes and procedures. And she’s done this for over 30 years. They’ve helped hundreds of fast growing companies who lack consistency, but she’s helped them scale and grow and achieve their goals.

Victoria: Welcome to Power Tips unscripted, Adi.

Adi: Thank you. It’s so good to be here. Thank you for having me.

Victoria: Now, while we’ve mentioned a couple of reasons why people should focus on processes and procedures and systematizing their businesses. What did we miss? What are some of the other really strong reasons why people should focus on this?

Adi: So first of all, is, you know, it’s the scaling. I mean, that’s what drives it, right? If you want to scale your business. So I guess there are two reasons, two main reasons. And then I’m going to break it down to the reasons why you want to scale and grow your business, or you want to exit and you want to actually extract yourself out of the business, doesn’t have to be a complete exit.

Adi: I mean, you spoke about reselling or selling the business, but it can also be an owner that is basically hands on on the business, and they want to get out of the business even to take a vacation. Right. So that would be like getting out of the business, scaling the business, and it goes together. Now, if you are scaling the business, you have to have a way to onboard new employees.

Adi: You have to have a way to train employees. You have to have a way to, increase efficiency. Yes. You know, risk mitigation. As you are growing and scaling, you’re going to get more customers, more clients, and you want to make sure that that signature service that you had at the beginning with it was maybe, maybe only you and a track and going around a stick will remain.

Adi: Well, how do you do that? Is by actually documenting and making sure that the processes are implemented. It’s also your legacy, your future. What you are creating the knowledge transfer.

Adi: And again in terms of risk mitigation maybe you have a key employee that what happens if they leave and you don’t know what they’re doing. So those are some of the aspects.

Victoria: So there’s you’ve been doing this for 30 years. You deal with all sorts of different kinds of companies. There’s different areas of business. But we’re just one start to build these processes and procedures.

Adi: You know, you started the area that will give you the biggest ROI, and you have to define the return on investment or ROI for yourself, whatever it is. If, for instance, you know, you are, sitting burned out, you can’t wear all the hats. If you are waste time so you don’t have to wear all the hats, you can actually have time working on your business.

Adi: And you realize that the hat that you want to pass on is maybe the project management hat is an example. I have a client that we we figure out, like, where are we going to start? Well, first of all, all the administrative stuff. So the first thing that we did is we hired an office manager. So that gave him like immediate time to sell more, to produce more and do more.

Adi: So that would be the first area you will start by documenting the processes that you want. Your office manager to do. Okay. Next let’s say you’re doing all the project management as well. Okay. You are hiring a project manager. Let’s figure out that part. Maybe you are getting complaints. Maybe there is callbacks warranty problems okay. So your production your operations is suffering.

Adi: Let’s really look at the processes there and improve upon them. So you can actually have streamlined processes. So you eliminate, dissatisfaction callbacks or having to do the work over and over again.

Victoria: Okay. That makes a lot of sense. I gotta ask. I gotta jump in here. One thing we do, we’re big on here at Remodelers advantages. The desk assessments. The personality assessments. Right. And, all our members take it. We do it internally with staff, so we know each other’s profiles and such. I know all those high CS out there.

Victoria: It’s like, ooh. I’m excited to to document everything in my life. Right. But, but we’re not all that. We’re not all high CS I can’t stand it. So how do you and how do you, recommend business owners, how do you get buy in from the whole team and even the ones that can’t stand doing that kind of thing?

Adi: Yeah. And I can relate. I’m not a high C at all. I’m more like I combine, so it’s not like. But I still love processes because it allows me to to be who I am, right? I mean, that is the thing is that you have to understand your why and you have to understand why you are actually doing this.

Adi: Why are you like, let’s say, for instance, you take a high C and I will ask, okay, why are you doing this? Why are we actually going to document everything that exists? What are you going to do with it? And if the answer is just document for the sake of documentation, you don’t have to do that. And that’s why it’s really a, important to understand why we are doing it.

Adi: And the reason that I get buy in from the entire group, whether, you know, salespeople are not going to be your high says and I work with many sales teams to document the processes and procedures. And I got by. And that’s the first thing that I did. I’ll tell you a story and then I’m going to I’m answering in a roundabout way, but I wanted to accompany what they had to very well established construction company.

Adi: And they had salespeople. They’re estimators that have been with the company for about 25 years, some between 20 and 30 years, very seasoned. Of course, they made a lot of money for the company, and they knew that no matter what they’re going to do, they can say if the owner says, let’s document. And if they say, no, he’s not going to do anything because they make all the money, right.

Adi: So we needed to be more creative. And so what I did is I did I conducted a survey and I asked them, you know, I really wanted to find out from each and every one of them what is in it for them. If they had well documented processes and procedures for their area, where are their pain points that processes and procedures would solve?

Adi: And then we would just concentrate first of all on documenting that, show the wins and continue with the rest. So with them, the pain point was the lack, I mean the passing the baton between them and and installation. Right. Because there was a missing piece there. And if that doesn’t happen and the ball get dropped, then customers can get upset, cancel the contract.

Adi: And I see no commission. Right. So that pointing fingers, you know between installation and sales. Well they didn’t give me enough data. They didn’t move fast enough. All right. We need to figure it out. So we actually figured out the streamlining of that particular process. We documented it. And that resulted in a better environment. And it solve the problem for the salespeople.

Adi: So now they became raving fans of us, of processes of using that tool. Another thing that they really wanted was an admin. Because, you know, I work with many salespeople. I actually the one at the beginning and beginning of my career, I, you know, I was a sales manager, I manage salespeople. I know, you know, they like to close.

Adi: They never they don’t like to admit when it’s a no close. It’s never their you know, it’s not right. And they had admin and I know that you know, it’s kind of like yeah. But you know you close. That’s awesome. We need to document everything because then we need to you know somebody else needs to take the data and service the client.

Adi: But they don’t like doing that. And that is the processes that they wanted help with. So they wanted like an admin person said, okay, let’s document what actually needs to be done. What do you do? And let’s figure out if it’s, you know, if we can actually get, somebody to help with the admin. And we did that and we saw that if we actually get somebody to, write, you know, to, to fill out all the paperwork, do all the admin, etc., that we did splits things up and they were able to sell more and just go from the next cell to the next cell to the next cell.

Adi: So they again, they saw that they actually implementing the right process and figuring out the right improvement actually helps them. So that’s the by the by and is always what is it in it for you for the person with. Otherwise how can we get by?

Victoria: And what are some of the other obstacles to putting these things into place?

Adi: Well, it’s always production. Always will come first, right? So it’s the owner’s mindset. That’s the first obstacle. If the owner goes, well, yeah, you know processes I know I need to do it because I read it in some book, but I’m not into it and I’m just going to continue doing what I’m doing. That’s an obstacle. Answering questions.

Adi: When somebody comes to you and you know that there is a procedure for it, but you answer the question anyway because it’s only takes two minutes, it’s faster. That’s an obstacle. Another obstacle is changing what is written because, yeah, this is our procedure. But just this time I’m going to do it. I’m going to cut a corner here, and I’m going to do it a little bit differently.

Adi: That’s an obstacle.

Victoria: For sure.

Adi: Not an obstacle is to let the processes go obsolete, not to review them on a regular basis because you know it’s the point of truth. So if you read something and you go well this is not the way we do it anymore. So if there is one point like that immediately your mind goes boom. If that point is incorrect, I wonder what else is incorrect?

Adi: Right now. Like when you catch somebody lying to you? Well, if they lie to me on that one wonder, what did they say? You know what other lies I heard. So that’s why it’s very important to keep those processes up to date.

Victoria: Let’s so talk a little bit more about that. You know really even here like we’re writing down we have a specific software we used to do whole how was our processes and so on. It’s almost as soon as we get them written we have changed something because life changes. How do you how do you keep up?

Adi: Very good points. So you do need to have somebody who is in charge of the processes and procedures. Okay. I’m going to talk about my own company. So what happens here like with us is that we know that when something changes. So first of all, everybody knows the processes and procedures. Then if we run into any issues. Right?

Adi: I mean, when the processes change, they can even be driven by an event where you have to change it. They can be driven by a new software, or they can be driven by time. You know, the time, you know, you basically have to review it every so often to see if they changed. So we have to have that time driven set up in the calendar.

Adi: So every quarter we go through all of our processes and procedures. If you do it every quarter, it doesn’t have to take a long time. and especially if you run a company, you know, your clients, you consult them, you help them, you get them organized. You are driven by time. You’re driven by quarters. You have quarterly goals.

Adi: You have by by yearly goals. You have yearly goals, right? So you’re already used to having some kind of a closure at the end of a period of time. So let’s say you operate quarterly, okay. Part of it should be to go over to procedural processes and procedural quarterly review them. We have actually a checklist of how to do that.

Adi: And one of it is you check you check all the links that you included. You check the software. You check if this is still relevant. You go from beginning to end and see if it actually works. Right. So it is a checklist we follow and then you make the changes. But then it also needs to be driven by event driven.

Adi: So if you encounter an issue for instance let’s say you know ordering supplies, there was like some kind of a mix up or something happened on a job and the supplies were not there on time. And then your subs are waiting and then you can proceed, etc.. Well, what is the problem here? You have to analyze that issue and then you go, okay, is it the people problem or a process problem or both?

Adi: Do we have the process? Is the process written? Was the process followed? You know, there was a whole checklist on that as well. So you always pull the process, you pull up the process. And if you have a process management software, process documentation software, it’s very easy to pull it up. But you have to don’t be lazy, pull it up and then see the process and go, okay, what is it here that we didn’t follow?

Adi: We followed everything. Okay, so what is missing and change it. And I can tell you internally in our company we do it all the time. All the time. We change because processes do need to be refined. They need to be change, not the entire process. no, I do hear it. I’m sure Victoria might probably heard it too.

Adi: People tell me well, why? Documented processes are constantly changing.

Adi: Okay, so let’s talk about that. I know you asking me questions, but I want.

Victoria: This is whatever you answer I’m going to also use when my son says, why do I have to make my bed? I’m going to sleep in it tonight.

Adi: Exactly. That’s a great example. Okay. So why why are you making the bed right again? It’s why it’s like, well, you know, if you don’t have the process documented, then how do you know what you’re doing? How do you know what to improve? Because then it’s kind of like you are just shooting errors in the dark because you don’t know what you are improving.

Adi: It’s either working or not working, or maybe and especially if you are a successful company, if you start, you know, positively just changing things, you are not going to be able to figure out what actually caused the change. And you might think that this caused the change. But the other thing cause the change and you can monitor it.

Adi: And it’s also a point of not the entire the entire process is not changing. And that’s what people are kind of like, have to differentiate not everything equal to the other small change doesn’t mean the entire process change. And I, you know, I, I really challenge our listeners to really look at it. If you have a process that has ten steps and something changed, it’s probably one aspect of one step, and then you do it one at a time.

Adi: You measure it and you see if it’s successful. Are there any.

Victoria: Particular.

Adi: Tricks.

Victoria: That people can use to speed up the process? Because I know, again, I’m not a a high C, I am the owner. I got a lot of stuff going on. I love the idea of having more documentation, but I don’t want to do it. So a lot of these owners don’t want to. They don’t have the time to do it.

Victoria: They don’t want to do it. What are some tricks to get these processes created?

Adi: Very good. So let me go over it like, you know, I’ll give you the overview. Of course. You know, the main trick is they can hire us to do it.

Victoria: Yes.

Adi: Okay. Let me answer it. I’m going to give you the formula. So the first thing is we go in layers okay. So having a little bit of documentation is better than having no documentation because once you start it puts more ordering. So take a whiteboard. You know I like to use it electronically. Like, you know there is software out there.

Adi: you know, I’m just like we use Miro. Miro. But there are several of them. So I’m not like, biased in terms of one. You can even on a zoom, there is a whiteboard, take a whiteboard, take a regular whiteboard, take sticky notes and start writing basically every area of your organization that you would like to document sales, operations, installation, customer surveys, quality control, business development, HR, marketing.

Adi: You know, just put it out there like in sticky notes on the top, then take sticky notes and start writing the main things that you do. So estimating what do you do under estimating. You know, you basically you go like to say you have the measurement part. You go in there to do an inspection and you measure okay.

Adi: Then you come back to the office. You write a quote. Good. Submit a quote good. Follow up. Good, close good. Fill out paperwork and pass to, installation or to operations or whatever you do. Oh. Construction. Good, good. So now you had that’s what I call a process map. No more complex. And that do it for everyone. Now you have a sticky all those sticky notes.

Adi: Now what you do is you go, okay, I’m looking at all this. Where do I start? What area here, if I had it documented, today will get me the biggest return on investment. Just identify that and put a star next to it. All right. So let’s say for instance I don’t know Victoria give me an area like like let’s say you did it.

Adi: What do you think. Like sending a quote maybe I don’t I’m not sending quotes on time because it takes me forever. And I say, okay, I need it. Good. Sending a quote. Excellent. What I do go to your computer, pull up the software that you use, hit record, you know, use. There is many recording ways of recording yourself on the screen or record a screen and talk talk as you are.

Adi: You are basically training someone new on how to write a quote. Okay, don’t make it perfect. You make a mistake. Whatever. You know, you swear in the middle, I don’t care. You know, whatever. Just talk. Talk. You’re rambling because that’s why you do ramble. No matter. Just do it. Just get a video explaining to somebody how you create a quote.

Adi: When you do that, make sure that you talk it over. Don’t just like, you know, go with your mouse on the screen and nobody can see say, I’m going here, I’m going there and explain why. Why do you do that? I always write a note to the customer because it’s important for me that they remember blah, blah, blah.

Adi: I always check this one because later on I will need it. I always, right here if we need a permit or not, because then the estimator can look it later. Whatever it is, it’s also the why behind it. Finish the video. If you don’t like to write, you now have more than you had before. Yes, something happens to you.

Adi: Somebody can watch it and do it the same way that you did. Better than that. Find somebody in your organization. If you have somebody that is a high C and they can actually go in and basically take the video and write it as instructions. but and another thing that I would like to recommend is if you make those videos, name them with a name that you remember what it is like.

Adi: For instance, the procedure on how to create a quote with a date and the time that you created it. Because if not, you’re going to end up with ten videos with no names. And no, you’re never going to watch them again. And it’s a waste of time, right? Oh, where you are actually storing them. And then don’t give it a secret.

Adi: Tell it to the rest of the estimator. So your office manager or whomever you want to know where it is located and have them watch it as well.

Victoria: do you think there’s is there a degree of too much getting too finite, too granular on these processes? Absolutely. Because that’s one of the concerns I have. I mean, we’ve had people in the past and they’re telling you, you know, click this button, the drop down will drop. The third item down is this click that item and it gets to be a 62 page document on sending an email.

Victoria: You know, and it’s it’s crazy.

Adi: It is. And you know, that’s why we have to, really write to our audience. Meaning who are you writing to? If you are writing to an EST, for instance, let’s say, let’s say we, working with a restoration company. Okay. And they need to write, an estimate, like, you know, they use a software. Let’s say they use exact.

Adi: Am I do any other software that they use in order to write an estimate. So you’re going to hire somebody that already knows how to use it. That’s not what you’re documenting here. Or let’s say you are hiring, a bookkeeper. You’re not going to write instructions on how to use QuickBooks because you better hire somebody with experience in QuickBooks.

Adi: What you’re going to write is your own best practices is what is important to you. Like for instance, the invoice has to go out a day after the job is done. In our organization we send 50 like an estimate and then we invoice for 50% after the first sales meeting. You know. So we assume that they know how to write an estimate like how to do an estimate and how to write an invoice.

Adi: We could document and I probably will document that like what is the like. What do we write there, you know, like in the description because we wanted to make it uniform. We want to make it consistent. But that’s not the purpose is to teach somebody how to do a bookkeeper, their bookkeeper, if this is what I mean. Sometimes we do need to go to those details where, for instance, you can’t find somebody, you know, you or you think you can’t find somebody to, that is already trained and you need to train them from scratch.

Adi: Right? Fine. Then we will do it. But again, it’s the difference between those processes to use for consistency. There’s processes to use for training. You know what I guess the main thing is like what problem are you trying to solve? Sure. You’re trying to solve the problem that I can’t find good qualified candidates and I need to start to train somebody from scratch.

Adi: Go ahead and do it. If the problem you’re trying to solve is consistency and making sure we have best practices, then do that correctly. But I can tell you, I’ve seen before I went to companies asking, do you have well documented processes and procedures? Yes. What’s the problem? Nobody follows it. Show me. And I see this 60 page document.

Adi: Oh, nothing. I was like, I would never read it. So that’s why.

Victoria: Yeah, that’s a great point. Thank you. So, one of our processes here is to have a great, fantastic, informative interview and then pound you with six lightning round questions. What do you think.

Adi: Let’s do it. And I think it was a great you guys are such great interviewers.

Victoria: Yes. Thank you.

Adi: You delivered on that. So now let’s do it.

Victoria: All right.

Adi: I’m ready.

Victoria: All right 66 questions and 60s. Here we go. What is your favorite business book and why?

Adi: You know I would say Go Giver by Bob Berg I love the philosophy. I love how it’s written and I can totally relate to it.

Victoria: If you weren’t helping businesses create, document and implement processes, what do you think you’d be doing?

Adi: I will be a business matchmaker. I love networking, I love connecting people. I love seeing people get connected and really have a fruitful relationship out of that. So I will do that all day long.

Victoria: What do you not very good at?

Adi: I am not very good at sitting still and be patient.

Victoria: What’s your biggest pet peeve?

Adi: when people don’t follow the directions and instructions, do.

Victoria: What’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever eaten?

Adi: Pancreas.

Victoria: Oh, wow. Oh, yeah.

Adi: Oh, you know, like, the innards of cow is was, like, cooked, like, you know, like, Yeah. It was like a potato that had kidneys and pancreas.

Victoria: Yeah. tell me in one word, describe your high school self.

Adi: I was a really good student. I was very active. I had great friends, and I was also working. I mean, you know, I started my entrepreneurial job then. I mean, I had a very, great tutoring business that I did really well.

Victoria: Oh that’s great. All right. That fits in into. So a deep, thank you so much. This has been awesome. Now, if people want to learn more about you, where do they go?

Adi: They go. And they can text us at (503) 662-2911. And they can look me up on LinkedIn. I declare it. And our website is this success cigar com.

Victoria: Okay, great. Now before I let you go, however, I want you to share your five words of wisdom with our listening audience and tell us why they resonate with you.

Adi: Yes, so it is a process should be used daily and the resonate with me because this is the key for the process to be followed by all because I tell my clients that those that want to be our clients, if you’re not going to use those processes and put it into use, then don’t hire us. Because just documenting for the sake of documentation is a waste of time.

Adi: You’ve got to implement them. You’ve got to use them daily. And that is the work. That is the way to true scaling and success and freedom.

Victoria: All right. Thank you so much. That was great. So thank you again for being with us. It was a lot of fun. And you know, I think you shared some awesome tips. So we appreciate it. And, would hope our paths.

Adi: Cross.

Victoria: Again in the future.

Adi: Absolutely. Thank you for having me back.

Victoria: Thanks. A the all right. Give it as I. That was fun. She’s a live wire, right? Yeah, sometimes. Me too. You that high energy? Yeah. I got to like it. you know, she’s. I think it’s. I think it’s hilarious that, a die is is a, specialist in process. Procedure? Yeah. Really? That is talking about knowing a need.

Victoria: You need to feel regardless of how you feel about it. Right? Right. I have a feeling she probably delegates a development of systems to some of her staff after she gets people revved up about it, right? Yeah. You can certainly see how important having the processes. Yeah, 100%. I’ve. I’ve never said anything to the contrary. It’s just so difficult for me to do it.

Victoria: Oh, yeah. I, I it makes my skin crawl. You know, one of the things that made me think is that we’ve got to get in and review ours now. I mean, it’s right. It’s time. It’s time for a good review. And data and get rid of all the old junk and all that. So I thought that was a good tip to I have think we might want to just start from scratch on everything might be easier than going back.

Victoria: Yeah. This. Yeah, maybe. maybe so. But you know, a D.

Adi: Has a podcast.

Victoria: Of her own. Yeah. Oh, you were on it, right? Yes.

Adi: And it’s called Systems Simplified Podcast.

Victoria: Cool, cool. and she was a lot of fun for me to be interviewed by. Okay. When I did that. So that’s a good one to follow as well. Yeah. Cool. That’s great. I have to check it out. Well we want to thank Addie for sharing these tips on systematizing your business. And of course we want to thank you for listening.

Victoria: Week in and week out I am Mark Harari and I’m Victoria Downing. See you.