How Clear Processes Add Value, with Marie Mills, Clear Solutions, LLC (How To Sell a Business Podcast, Episode 10)
Marie Mills, Owner of Clear Solutions, LLC, is an experienced business process analyst, and she joined host Ed Mysogland to talk about the value of documenting processes for a business. Marie discussed the importance of clear and efficient processes regardless of the industry or size of business. They also covered how to get started, why two weeks isn’t enough time to create documentation, who should do it, the return on the investment, the impact on the sale of the business, and much more.
How To Sell a Business Podcast is produced and broadcast by the North Fulton Studio of Business RadioX® in Atlanta.
Clear Solutions, LLC
Whether you’re ready to scale, preparing to sell, or simply tired of putting out fires, clarifying your processes is key to success.
Clear Solutions works with you and your team to capture the knowledge and expertise that is key to running your business well. They show you how to shift from running your business out of your head to running it from clear and user-friendly instructions and information, written at the right level of detail.
Marie’s method takes a structured approach to ensure your documentation and processes support you as your business grows and shifts. Most documentation efforts fail because they don’t include the framework to effectively build, manage, and maintain the work. Clear content is key and the framework will keep it going.
The process: Clear Solutions uses any existing documentation as the foundation. They focus on your top priority processes. They provide templates that will make the documents easy to find, easy to use, and easy to build upon. They transform your detailed knowledge and vision of how you want your business to run into clear instructions for everyone on your team.
As you work together, you can take on as much or little of the work as you want. They track the work and keep it moving forward.
Company website | LinkedIn | Facebook
Marie Mills, Owner, Clear Solutions, LLC
Marie Mills has over 15 years of experience helping organizations capture and clarify their processes to create a shared understanding and improve efficiencies.
She has a passion for understanding the nuts and bolts of business operations. Launching two small businesses prior to starting Clear Solutions provided her with first-hand experience running a business and all the challenges that go with it.
As a business process analyst, Marie learned how to ask the right questions to understand the work at a detailed level. She worked with employees in a variety of roles, in small, medium, and large businesses, across different industries. She developed a practical approach to capturing the process details, in plain language, that worked every time.
Clear Solutions helps business owners succeed by freeing up their time for what they do best – running their business.
Ed Mysogland, Host of How To Sell a Business Podcast
The How To Sell a Business Podcast combines 30 years of exit planning, valuation, and exit execution working with business owners. Ed Mysogland has a mission and vision to help business owners understand the value of their business and what makes it salable. Most of the small business owner’s net worth is locked in the company; to unlock it, a business owner has to sell it. Unfortunately, the odds are against business owners that they won’t be able to sell their companies because they don’t know what creates a saleable asset.
Ed interviews battle-tested experts who help business owners prepare, build, preserve, and one-day transfer value with the sale of the business for maximum value.
How To Sell a Business Podcast is produced virtually from the North Fulton studio of Business RadioX® in Alpharetta. The show can be found on all the major podcast apps and a full archive can be found here.
Ed is the Managing Partner of Indiana Business Advisors. He guides the development of the organization, its knowledge strategy, and the IBA initiative, which is to continue to be Indiana’s premier business brokerage by bringing investment-banker-caliber of transactional advisory services to small and mid-sized businesses. Over the last 29 years, Ed has been appraising and providing pre-sale consulting services for small and medium-size privately-held businesses as part of the brokerage process. He has worked with entrepreneurs of every pedigree and offers a unique insight into consulting with them toward a successful outcome.
Connect with Ed: LinkedIn | Twitter | Facebook
TRANSCRIPT
Intro: [00:00:00] Business owners likely will have only one shot to sell a business. Most don’t understand what drives value and how buyers look at a business. Until now. Welcome to the How to Sell a Business podcast, where, every week, we talk to the subject matter experts, advisors, and those around the deal table about how to sell at maximum value. Every business will go to sell one day. It’s only a matter of when. We’re glad you’re here. The podcast starts now.
Ed Mysogland : [00:00:36] On today’s episode, I had the opportunity to interview Mary Mills. And great timing, you know, we’re having some turnover, and it’s one of those things of – oh, my gosh – as far as what I don’t know about the role that I’m trying to fill. And it was just awesome and so fortuitous for me to talk to Mary Mills of Clear Solutions. That’s what she does. She is all about documenting procedures and processes.
Ed Mysogland : [00:01:13] And from a business value standpoint, one of the things I really believe is that a business that has documented processes and you can hand those to a buyer is a more valuable business. And Marie, she hit it out of the park as far as how this process works, why perhaps you shouldn’t do it yourself, how your employees might react if you started down that path of documentation, and a whole host of other things. Out of all of the niche businesses, I think she’s got a great one. And I hope that you’ll – in fact, I shouldn’t say I hope. I know that you’ll enjoy this conversation I had with Mary Mills of Clear Solutions.
Ed Mysogland : [00:02:01] I’m your host, Ed Mysogland. I interview buyers, sellers, dealmakers, and other professional advisors about what creates value in a business and how that business is effectively sold at a premium value. On today’s show, you have no idea how excited I am to have Marie Mills of Clear Solutions.
Ed Mysogland : [00:02:22] So, like I said in the introduction, Marie helps businesses clarify, and prove, and document processes in plain language so the business can run consistently and efficiently. She’s been doing this for over 15 years, and has provided this service through her own business, Clear Solutions, for the past six years. So, Marie, welcome to the show. It’s great to have you.
Marie Mills: [00:02:47] Thank you. Great to be here, Ed.
Ed Mysogland : [00:02:51] So, I’m in this now with a situation where we have a team member that is leaving and, you know, I’m stuck. I know how to do her job. I have done her job. And I’m the guy. And here I am, how fortuitous that you and I are talking. You know, you have quite a niche, but can you tell a little bit more about Clear Solutions and just the organization, how you work, and where you’re working.
Marie Mills: [00:03:33] Yeah. You bet. So, I work with a number of different companies, big, small, different industries, what industry they work in is really not that important. They could be making about 200,000 a year. They could be making over 20 million. All of those have been my clients. They might have zero employees and they might have over 150 employees. So, what they all have in common is they have some issues, they have some challenges running their business that has to do with process, that has to do with the lack of clear and efficient process. And that’s where I come in and that’s where I help them.
Ed Mysogland : [00:04:19] Well, like I was saying, in my situation, I don’t want to say I’m stuck, but as a practitioner, I’m sitting here going, “All right. You know, this is not that big of a deal.” But whether it be preparing for this podcast or all the other things that I have to do today, I’m now focused on, “All right. I got to think about this onboarding or hiring and then onboarding this person.” And, boy, wouldn’t it be great if I had, you know, here’s kind of the playbook on your position. And I’ve been doing it for 30 years. So, I guess that’s kind of where I want to start, is, am I alone?
Marie Mills: [00:05:00] You’re definitely not alone. I mean, I have got a few panicked calls from businesses like, “Hey. My key person is leaving. They’ve been here 5 years, 10 years, 15 years, and they just gave two weeks notice. And they’ve always kept things running smoothly and now they’re leaving. And believe it or not, I don’t actually know what they do.” And that’s in addition to the I have to hire, I have to onboard, I have to do all those things. And if you don’t have a clear process, now you know, it’s a lot. Now, you have to think of the process as you need it.
Ed Mysogland : [00:05:39] Yeah. And the funny thing is, you know, you don’t think of the process complexity until you start being empathetic to the next person. And you take for granted all of the experience, all of the reps that you’ve had, either doing it or overseeing it or whatever role you’re playing. Now, all of a sudden, it’s a different animal, where someone coming is in cold. They have a working knowledge of the industry, but they have no idea how to work in your environment.
Ed Mysogland : [00:06:21] So, I know there wasn’t a question there. I’m crying on your shoulder, really. So, one of the things that we talked about or we wanted to talk about is the difference between process and procedure. So, what’s the difference?
Marie Mills: [00:06:37] Yeah. Great question, there’s a lot of confusion around that. And I like to keep things simple whenever possible to avoid confusion. I think, technically, if you talk to people who are really into process, they’ll say, “Well, a process is more general. It’s higher level. And in a big company, it will cross multiple departments. And a procedure is more of the step by step instructions.”
Marie Mills: [00:07:02] So, with the work I do, I think keeping it simple is really the best approach. So, I use the terms interchangeably. I’ll say process, procedure. And people talk about their SOPs or their standard operating procedures. I’m like, “Yeah. It’s all the same thing.” Define it. What is it? It’s like you’re following a series of steps to achieve a desired outcome. So, if you weren’t following a process or you didn’t have a process, you would be working randomly and just kind of doing it however every single time. So, the whole point is to have a series of steps to that desired outcome.
Ed Mysogland : [00:07:42] So, I was forced to think about how I am going to do this. I have options. I could I could dump it into the other staff members, kind of divide the roles. But you can’t grow doing that. And we’re always constantly trying to grow our business. And by saying, “Okay. We have a hole here, we’ll just kind of divide roles because it’s the easy way and they have an understanding of the process.”
Ed Mysogland : [00:08:24] So, where I’m heading with this is from a development standpoint, like I said earlier, if I could just hand somebody, “This is the playbook.” So, how do I do that? Because I was thinking about, “All right. Here’s what I’ll do. I’m going to strap on my dictation machine and I’m just going to talk through this. And then, I’m going to memorialize it, this is how you do it.” But I suspect that’s probably not the way this whole thing goes.
Marie Mills: [00:09:00] Well, it’s not a bad idea of how it goes. I mean, so you start with finding out who understands how the job works, like whatever the individual tasks that’s involved. And then, for each task, each process, what are you trying to do and how do you do it. And then, you need to write it down because it’s not enough just to have it in your head. That doesn’t work very well. It’s too easy to have misunderstandings. So, you write it down.
Marie Mills: [00:09:29] So, you could get your dictation machine on and you could speak into it, and then you could have somebody just dictate it word for word. And that would be a good start. And that’s what I would call the brain dump. That’s your initial brain dump. So, first you’ve identified what it is you’re going to document. And then, you go to each piece and you do the initial brain dump of how it works.
Marie Mills: [00:09:51] Now, the difference between how it’s going to come out of your mouth and how easy it is for somebody else to read that and understand it – that’s the next step – you’ve got to organize it. You have to organize it so that you could hand that document to somebody, and with relatively little explanation from you, you want to provide some basic context, but relatively little explanation. Now, they can read that and understand what is it they’re trying to do and how do they do it, and how do they know that they’ve done it correctly in the end.
Marie Mills: [00:10:24] And so, when I work with companies, that’s basically what I’m doing. I’m sitting down and I’m saying, “What are the issues you’re facing? Okay. So, these processes aren’t clear. Let’s start talking about each process individually, and then let’s get really clear on that until it’s done.”
Ed Mysogland : [00:10:45] Okay. So, your role is one of scrutinizing the clarity of the process. Is that a fair statement or no?
Marie Mills: [00:10:54] Yes, it is. And it’s also capturing it. It’s capturing it. Because many, many businesses, they don’t really have the processes written down. Somebody comes in, they’re trained. There might be a few notes here and there. It’s what I call the oral tradition. You’re just passing it down through oral tradition. And it’s from my head, now it’s in your head. And maybe you understood what I said, maybe you didn’t, maybe you remembered everything I told you, maybe you didn’t, probably you didn’t.
Marie Mills: [00:11:26] And so then, I’m helping them really capture all the details. And then, as we do it, as we’re capturing all the details, that initial brain dump, it’s like, “Okay. Let’s go through and organize this and see where’s the sequence, where are the handoffs, who else is involved in this, and how do you go from the beginning to the end, and what’s the end and all that.” So, it’s the capturing and the clarifying and the organizing.
Ed Mysogland : [00:11:56] I get it. So, who does this? You know, is it the business owner that documents it and oversees it? Or do you say, “You know what? Valued employee, I need your help here. Just in case you get run over by a bus, we need to figure out how to keep going.” Is it fair to ask them to help at this initial stage?
Marie Mills: [00:12:27] Yeah. Absolutely. Because they are like the keepers of the knowledge. They’re the ones that know how this works. So, they’re the subject matter experts. So, now, you’ve identified which processes you need to write down and who’s the subject matter expert. And then, you go talk to them and you could start. It’s a great thing to ask your people to write down what they do. And that is, again, a great start.
Marie Mills: [00:12:54] It will only take you so far, because usually the people who are really good at doing the work aren’t necessarily really good at writing down what they do. So, not everybody is a great writer. Not everybody is great at organizing information.
Marie Mills: [00:13:09] And the other thing is it’s kind of counterintuitive. But the more you know, the more likely you are to leave a detail out. Because all these assumptions, you know, we’re so used to doing this, “Oh, yeah. I forgot you wouldn’t know that. Oh, yeah. I forgot not everybody would know that.”
Marie Mills: [00:13:28] So then, the subject matter expert – absolutely – they could start by writing it down. And then, you want somebody who’s more objective, who’s not actually the expert to come in and read it, and then start saying, “Well, wait a minute. What did you mean by this? And what does this acronym mean?” And then, that’s how you refine it. Sometimes that’s the owner and sometimes it’s the person doing it. It’s whoever’s doing the most familiar.
Ed Mysogland : [00:13:58] I wonder whether the employee feels threatened, like, “Here. Write the playbook for how you do your job. Just in case.”
Marie Mills: [00:14:15] “Just in case. And get it done within two weeks, if you don’t mind.” This comes up a lot. And so, when I work with a company, usually there’s one main point person. It could be the owner or it could be somebody else who’s in charge of a division. And I work with them, so they’re my primary liaison between me and all the people I’ll talk to. And I first want to make sure that everybody understands why we’re doing this. And it’s not because we’re going to then replace you or take away your job. And then, when I work with them directly, I let them know that.
Marie Mills: [00:14:54] And it’s not just saying we’re doing this because we want to run more efficiently. It’s really showing the advantages of doing it. It’s like, This should make your job easier. This will make it easier for somebody to fill in if you want to go on vacation. This is going to make it easier for you to go on vacation because somebody else is going to know how to fill in for you when they need to.
Ed Mysogland : [00:15:17] Sure. No, that’s a great point.
Marie Mills: [00:15:20] And, also, oftentimes when you get these employees and they’ve been around for a long time, it’s not so much – I won’t to say taken for granted, but people, they’re used to that person really handling all this work. And then, when you write it down, I’ve had managers and owners just go, “Oh, my gosh. I had no idea how valuable this employee is and how much they did.” And the employee will say the same thing, “I didn’t realize I did so much.” So, really, it’s like a way of recognizing all their hard work.
Ed Mysogland : [00:15:58] Yeah. Let’s visit at my next review about just how valuable I am.
Marie Mills: [00:16:03] Exactly. Right?
Ed Mysogland : [00:16:04] Oh, my goodness. Right.
Marie Mills: [00:16:05] Yeah. Exactly.
Ed Mysogland : [00:16:07] So, how do you prioritize? I mean, where do you start? I mean, I’m sitting here, for me, I’m going to say, “All right. I started the money and work backwards. Whatever gets me closest to being able to pay the bills is where I probably should start.” Is that right or no?
Marie Mills: [00:16:25] Okay. So, oftentimes, there’s many, many processes that need to be documented and improved, so you can start by looking at what is a priority for the business right now. Now, if you have an employee who just gave two weeks notice and they’re a key employee and there’s a lot that employee knows that maybe somebody else doesn’t know, that’s a priority right there, that person’s job.
Marie Mills: [00:16:54] And then, within that job, to be perfectly honest, two weeks is not enough time to document what somebody knows. So, you’re not going to be able to even capture everything that they know. So then, you’re going to say, What are those things that, if you walked away tomorrow, and nobody else knew that could really cripple a business or at least cost a lot churn and scrambling to reinvent the wheel? Those are the kinds of things. And so, I start by trying to get an outline of what are the tasks that you do and what are the most important ones.
Marie Mills: [00:17:32] And if you’re not used to documenting processes, I also recommend don’t pick the easiest and don’t pick the hardest. Pick something in between and start warming up to what this is going to take.
Ed Mysogland : [00:17:49] Well, I know a lot of business owners that we’re bumping into these days are using Loom, and this is a video. And to me, I don’t think it’s any different than the dictation illustration I used earlier. I mean, you can show me but somebody’s got to document it. You know, what I thought was super easy as far as procedural, it may not be for the next person. You can watch that video over and over and over again and kind of get the gist. But the finer points, I’m with you. I don’t think that’s the best way to say it. I like Loom. It may be great for here’s kind of an example at a high level of how this works. But as a replacement for my SOP, probably not. Do you agree?
Marie Mills: [00:18:55] I agree. I think video has its place. Like things that are highly visual, like if you’re going through a complicated software procedure, trying to write that line by line, that’s not easy to follow. But if you have a little video about that, that’s good. But, yeah, I mean, having context and having the outline of what you’re doing is most helpful in most cases.
Ed Mysogland : [00:19:22] I get it. Well, earlier, you had talked about capturing and clarifying the process. Can you talk a little bit about why that works so well?
Marie Mills: [00:19:36] Why it’s so important to capture and clarify it?
Ed Mysogland : [00:19:39] Yeah. So, the best approach was capturing and clarifying a process is an iterative approach. And I’m just wondering what makes that approach work so well? Because I’m assuming, this is a living document that, once you get it down, you’re constantly tweaking it and updating it, right?
Marie Mills: [00:20:08] Yes. Right. Yes. That’s a really good point. So, it’s not a one and done. Your process documentation is living documentation that needs to be updated as your business changes. And capturing it, initially, I found that an iterative process is really the most efficient way to go, because there’s usually more to it than you think. When you go into it, you say, “Oh. I’m going to document this. This is so easy. It’s going to take me an hour. And then, we’ll do a review and then it’ll be done.”
Marie Mills: [00:20:42] And the reality is, again, going back to kind of the curse of excellency or whatever, where somebody knows it so well, they write it down, they say I think this is everything. And then, somebody else reads it and go, “Wait a minute. I don’t quite understand this or this.”
Marie Mills: [00:21:00] And so, the iterative approach is where you start with a brain dump and then you have somebody else review it and organize it. And then, you go back and let’s review the draft. Now, here’s our questions. Now, expand on it again. And you just keep doing that. And the key point is that you walk away from it for a while. Because you’re going to come back to it with fresh eyes and that’s where the things that don’t quite make sense and aren’t completely explained, that’s where you’re going to catch that.
Ed Mysogland : [00:21:33] That’s a great point. I guess this is a long term process. And for someone like me that is scrambling now trying to document a 40 year old business and all the processes that we have implemented over the years, that’s a big ask. And for people that are looking at selling their business, something is better than nothing. But at the same time, I don’t think that you’re going to see the value benefit by just throwing together a Google Doc and thinking that this is my SOP, and, oh, by the way, we wrote it a month ago.
Ed Mysogland : [00:22:30] And that’s kind of my next question, is, from a value standpoint – I know this is kind of a loaded question – I know from where I sit that a business is more valuable that has documentable processes. You read it in Michael Gerber’s E-Myth, the whole franchise world, they’re about that. Let the system be the expert, not the people.
Ed Mysogland : [00:23:09] I mean, I want to ask you about value, but I’m not really certain how to ask the question, other than you’ve been to different businesses, you’ve seen it, can you tell the difference pre and post implementation of this process? You know what I mean? Because I’m certain you worked with them on a long term basis. And I know that was the longest question that you’ve ever heard, but you know where I’m going with it, right?
Marie Mills: [00:23:42] Yeah. It’s an investment for sure. It’s an investment. And then, how does it pay off? How soon can you get the payoff? Obviously, it depends on the situation, but I almost always see a payoff right away. Because one of the biggest benefits to doing this, is that, yes, you have clear documented processes, but you’ve also had the discussion.
Marie Mills: [00:24:09] It generates a discussion that is so valuable. Because people come in and they just do the work and why did they do that. “Well, I’ve always done it this way.” And then, when you sit down and say, “Hey, I really want to make this clear and write this down,” it generates a discussion about why do we do it that way, why do we do it that way.
Marie Mills: [00:24:28] And I’ll tell you a story, a true story. So, I was working with a company and I was documenting the receiving processes. And the guy is telling me, “This packet comes in, we check it off, blah, blah, blah. We take the packing list and then we walk over to accounting and we put it in their inbox.” “What does accounting do with it?” “Oh, I have no idea. That’s just what I was told.”
Ed Mysogland : [00:24:52] So, later, I go down to accounting and I said, “Hey, you know, that packing list that receiving gives you, what do you do with it?” And they go, “Oh, yeah. I put it in the recycle bin.” And I said, “Why do you think they give it to you?” “Well, I don’t know. They always did so I just let them do it.” And so, I said, “Well, we should talk.” And we all got in the room and kind of talked it out and we all had a really good laugh.
Marie Mills: [00:25:14] But it’s that kind of thing, you know, that’s a small thing, but you take that and then you multiply it by all your different processes, now you’ve got time wasted, energy wasted.
Ed Mysogland : [00:25:29] A hundred percent. That’s a great example. Because the same kind of thing, I mean, if you came in our business, you would see the same thing. It was like, “Well, that’s how we do it. What do you mean?” Ignore the efficiency. This is just how we do it.
Marie Mills: [00:25:53] This is just the way it is.
Ed Mysogland : [00:25:55] And the funny thing is – and I know I’m asking you some questions that we didn’t really talk about – for the older folks, the older sellers, let’s take 60 and up, I’m trying to figure out whether this is an easy process to sell them or not. You know what I mean?
Ed Mysogland : [00:26:28] Because we talk to a lot of business owners that are getting ready to sell and they’re saying, “Hey. What can I do in order to prepare and maximize value?” And, certainly, this is on the list. But at the same time, I’m not certain they buy into it. Maybe I’m wrong. But I mean, the people you work with based on age – and sorry, I’m kind of in that camp – how do you work through that?
Marie Mills: [00:27:02] Yeah. So, I don’t know if it’s so much about age or if it’s just about kind of mindset about how the business runs. But I think one thing I see – I’ve seen this several times – is that the owner manager says, “Yeah. Yeah. This is what my people do.” Well, guess what? That’s not what their people do. Their people do something else, and they don’t know that until it’s written down.
Marie Mills: [00:27:33] And so, if you’re preparing to sell your business, what comes to mind is a couple of things. You want to be informed. You don’t want to show up to sell your business and say, “Oh, by the way, I had no idea that’s what we did.” That’s not going to look good. You want to know how your business is currently running.
Marie Mills: [00:27:57] And my understanding when you sell a business, isn’t there some kind of transition period from the old owner to the new owner and training. So, what are you going to do? Just fill, like, 100 million phone calls from the new owner or you could have your processes.
Ed Mysogland : [00:28:14] You know what? That’s a great example. And to be honest with you, one of the things why a business owner would want to do this is that it lessens the amount of time they have to work with the buyer post-sale. Because that could be a one to three year process. I mean, it takes time to transition the business. So, having all of this knowledge out of people’s heads onto paper, and then it becomes clarifying, like you said, clarifying the process, do you understand how we operate then, then it’s a matter of getting out. So, if I’m a business owner, I’m like, “Man, if I could reduce the amount of transition time, this is a really good investment.” That’s a great point. Go ahead.
Marie Mills: [00:29:11] And I was also going to say that you might meet a business buyer who buys the business, and then they’re saying, “Hey. How does this work?” And you say, “Well, this is how we do it.” And they’re like, “Why do you do it that way? That doesn’t seem to make much sense.” And I don’t know if you ever get into some debate about that, but if you have a written process, there’s a credibility there. You have taken the time to write this down, and to vet it, and to make sure this is a good way of doing the work. Then, you have more credibility when you’re in that transition phase and less debate.
Ed Mysogland : [00:29:46] Well, it’s funny you say that, because there’s some guys that are buying up foundries and that’s their thing, that they are way into process and efficiency and retooling, for lack of a better word, an antiquated industry. I mean, they’re just killing it just because of that. I mean, there is just an antiquated way of doing things. And you start documenting that one work in one particular business, and you take that playbook and you put it on the next acquisition, you’re miles ahead and your ROI is happening so much quicker.
Ed Mysogland : [00:30:34] One of the things I would love to know, and I have no way of quantifying it, is the increase in value. In valuation, it’s more about earnings and risk. And so, when you look at a franchise, all things being equal, you’re buying a process. I have to believe that by doing something like this, you are buying the business owner’s process and that lowers the risk and that increases your value. Wouldn’t you agree? I think so.
Marie Mills: [00:31:22] Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. And, again, let me talk a little bit more about the explicit benefits of doing this. And so, there are a lot of benefits. So, I was trying to narrow it down and make it easy to understand. So, the first thing is, when you document your processes, when you clarify them, you are creating a shared understanding in the business.
Marie Mills: [00:31:49] So, you don’t have opposing points of view of what you’re doing and how it’s supposed to get done. You get everybody on the same page and you create that transparency. So, like I had said before, the employees are more aware of what they’re doing, the managers are more aware of what the employees are doing. So, you have this shared understanding.
Marie Mills: [00:32:14] And so, I had this experience working with the business, and their business had to do with event planning. They had a long term employee, the salesperson, and she was great. Sales were coming in. There was no reason to question the process. But they wanted this documented because she was leaving the company.
Marie Mills: [00:32:37] And so, I went to talk to her and document it. It turns out, from the time they got the initial inquiry from a potential customer to when the deal was closed was about three months. And so, I wrote this down and got it all organized, reviewed it with the owners, and their jaws just dropped. “Three months? Three months to close a sale? We want that sale closed in three weeks.”
Marie Mills: [00:33:06] So, there you go. Now, you have a shared understanding when it’s written down. There’s not, like, an assumption of how it’s happening. You have the guidelines written up. This is how we want it to happen. So, that’s one main benefit.
Marie Mills: [00:33:22] The other we’ve talked about a little bit, what you’re kind of experiencing, the dependence or being overly dependent on a single employee. And that employee has knowledge that nobody else in the business knows. And this is a real risk. And sometimes you can figure out what they know pretty easily and sometimes you cannot. It depends on how complex. And that is a problem.
Marie Mills: [00:33:51] And my story there is about a company that did a lot of shipping. And then, somebody retires. And a few weeks later, the postage machine runs out of postage. And now you got three guys standing around the postage machine staring at it trying to figure it out. Because nobody knows how to refill the postage machine. Something really simple, right?
Marie Mills: [00:34:16] Often, it’s much more complicated than that. I mean, you probably can find that on the internet, but a lot of stuff you can’t. Either way, it’s a waste of time. It’s not a good deal.
Ed Mysogland : [00:34:31] A hundred percent. And it’s like you’re in our shop, because just a couple of days ago, I was trying to figure out how to print out the year-end postage by person who spent what. And I’m like, “Good, God. How do you do this?” And you’re right, I can’t tell you how much time I spent monkeying with that silly thing.
Marie Mills: [00:34:59] Because it’s rocket science, right? It’s just rocket science. And the thing is, people think, “Well, it’s so simple. I don’t have time to write it down.” But, actually, if you don’t know it, you don’t know it. It takes time to figure it out.
Ed Mysogland : [00:35:13] Yeah. And at the same time, you’re talking about employees, I’m looking at business owners too, what do you do. And we probably shouldn’t minimize their role because a lot of reasons the businesses don’t sell is because they believe that the business is the owner. So, if you can document the owner’s role, this is what I do every single day, there are certain duties that a business owner has on a regular basis, that, to me, will lessen the potential value penalty that the business owner may incur.
Marie Mills: [00:36:03] So, the funny thing, and I can hear the people talking, is, if these processes are so important to the business, why don’t I do this myself? I mean, why don’t I take the time? I mean, I know that they’re important. So, what advice do you have for those business owners that are listening to this going, “You know what? They actually have a point.” And they want to dip their toe into this world.
Marie Mills: [00:36:44] Yeah. Yeah. So, it is challenging for businesses to do this completely on their own. First of all, I hear this from pretty much every client I’ve ever had. They show up and they’re embarrassed, “I should have been able to do this myself. I should have been able to do it myself.” It’s very straightforward, but it’s not as easy as it looks.
Marie Mills: [00:37:07] And so, we’ve talked about not everybody is process-oriented, not everybody is really good at writing or organizing information. It takes time. People do not like doing it. Number one reason, “I hate writing processes.” I love writing processes that’s why I’m in this business. But most people don’t. And you don’t know where to start. You don’t know where to put it. So, guess what? You write a process. You put it out there. You can’t find it. You rewrite it. Now, you’ve got multiple versions. Now, what are you going to do?
Marie Mills: [00:37:44] So, it’s not just the documentation, it’s also there has to be a system for managing it. There has to be a system for managing it. It’s like a lot of things. It’s so beneficial when you do it, but it doesn’t make it any easier to do it.
Ed Mysogland : [00:38:03] Yeah. Go ahead. I’m sorry.
Marie Mills: [00:38:08] So, I was going to say, but I forgot the advice part. So, what’s the advice? The thing is, like we talked about, it’s not a one and done. It really needs to be a habit. And it needs to be a habit that’s integrated into doing your everyday work. And so, if you schedule, if you have each one of your people schedule some time out every single week, and all you get to do during that time is you work on your processes, even if you don’t make really fast headway, you’re now creating this habit. And it gets people thinking about, not just doing the work, but thinking about the work and starting to write it down.
Ed Mysogland : [00:38:53] Yeah. That part is really good. And from the standpoint, if I’m a business owner, I’m sitting here going, “When do I call Marie? Am I supposed to do this at myself and start here and then call her?” Do you start and you coach the whole process? How do you work?
Marie Mills: [00:39:27] Yeah. No, that’s great. So, I would say, if you have any questions, like, don’t hesitate to call. So, we’ll jump on a discovery call first. And the first thing I want to do is I want to make sure that the problem that you’re having really is process related. I actually have had somebody who wanted to hire me, and they’re like, “Yeah. This person is not doing the process.” And it’s like, “Well, do you have a process?” “Yes.” “Did you train them on it?” “Yes.” “They just don’t want to do it?” “Yes.” Okay. That’s not a process problem. That’s a performance problem.
Marie Mills: [00:39:59] So, now let’s clarify that the problem really is that you don’t have clear processes. And not that you have them, but people just aren’t using them. So, when I work with people, I can do all the writing. I can do some of the writing. I can coach you to do the writing. I can coach you through the whole process of writing your processes. So, every engagement is customized and it’s individual to your budget, and to what you need, and how willing and ready and interested you are in doing some of the work yourself.
Marie Mills: [00:40:34] And it can vary. It doesn’t have to be we decide that at the very beginning. We’ll decide like, let’s just jump in, document something together. Now, you get a sense. You want to write more, perfect. You don’t want to write more, perfect. I can work with any of that.
Ed Mysogland : [00:40:49] I got it. So, one of the questions we were talking about is how to overcome resistance when someone doesn’t want to adopt the new process. Because this is the way we’ve always done it. And aside from just the sheer embarrassment in doing this podcast and telling you all the things that are going wrong in my life, I could hear our staff going, “Well, this is the way we’ve always done it.” So, how do we overcome that?
Marie Mills: [00:41:25] Yeah. So, when there’s resistance, the first thing I always say is find out why. Because people always do things for a reason, even if they don’t think they do. They do it for a reason. Find out why they are resistant, what is behind it. If it is, in fact, it’s just we’ve always done it this way and I kind of am a lazy person and I don’t really want to change or whatever, that’s one thing. And a way to deal with that is, really, you got to get people thinking like this is best for the business. And if it’s good for the business, it’s going to be good for you ultimately.
Marie Mills: [00:42:00] So, we never want to ask you to do something just to do it a certain way just because or because that’s what I told you to do. There should be a good reason for why the process is being done a certain way. So, try to get them onboard by showing them that this is in their own benefit. This is in their own interests to work efficiently.
Marie Mills: [00:42:23] Now, let’s say that’s not the reason, but there’s some resistance. There’s some reason they’re not following the process – and I’ve had this happen. Again, you find out why. So, I had a fellow and he was working in H.R. and he was responsible for offboarding and terminating employees when they left the company, you know, terminating their access. And so, we had this process to make sure that the access was shut down, and it wasn’t happening.
Marie Mills: [00:42:52] And I went back to this guy and I said, “Are you following the process?” And he said, “Yeah.” I said, “Well, can I watch you?” “Okay.” And then, I watched him and I watched him skip a key step. So, he was shy to admit that he wasn’t following it. So, I got to find out what’s that about. And it turned out the way the process was written, he was sending an email to a manager and saying, “I need you to tell me what the termination date and time is.” Well, the manager and the manager’s worldview has better things to do with this time. So, he wasn’t replying.
Marie Mills: [00:43:33] And this is a cultural issue. This is like an internal cultural issue that you have to deal with. You’re not going to solve it with the process. So, I informed the right people and they can deal with that in their own way. But what I ended up doing is we rewrote the process so that he sends the email to the manager and he says, “If I do not hear from you by such and such date, I will assume the termination date and time is this and this.” Now, the responsibility is on the manager. And that worked much better with that particular dynamic in that particular culture. So, always find out first why they’re resistant to it.
Ed Mysogland : [00:44:15] Well, to be honest with you, I would foresee that or I would assume that there is a certain level of being threatened. Threatened that someone’s going to find out that there’s greater throughput, I could be doing more.
Marie Mills: [00:44:36] Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Ed Mysogland : [00:44:37] I could see that.
Marie Mills: [00:44:42] That’s more of a performance issue. And I mean, it is threatening. Even when there’s nothing bad to discover, it is a little bit unsettling to your employees when someone comes in. It takes a really confident employee for somebody to come in from the outside and say, “Hey, tell me everything you do. I’m going to write it down.” And then, we’ll all know that you said it and this is the way you work. And I think you just have to be very gentle with people and very supportive and make sure that everybody understands this is for the sake of efficiency and clarity.
Ed Mysogland : [00:45:17] Yeah. And I think that as a business, you have to probably have the communication and culture dynamics down. Because I was trying to formulate one of my last questions of, you know, from a timing standpoint, throwing this on somebody, I think, puts them in a defensive position. But if you work on the culture and communication and what are some of the problems, here’s a solution that, collectively, will benefit all of us if we can document our work. Because if someone leaves, “Oh, by the way, Joe, you’re the guy that’s going to backfill all of the responsibilities that the outgoing employee has.” Don’t you think?
Marie Mills: [00:46:14] Yeah. Right, it can happen. I mean, I think that you just have to be very transparent as to the reasons of why you’re doing this, and to really help the employee know. And I had a brilliant thought there, it flew away out of my head. And maybe it’ll come back, but maybe not. Okay. I know what I was going to say.
Marie Mills: [00:46:40] So, it does help. It does help. This is another reason why you might want to bring in somebody from the outside. I have worked with dynamics where the manager employee dynamic is not good. And you know what the manager will say? “I need to know what this person does and I don’t want to ask. It’s not going to go well if I ask.” They may not even tell me the whole thing. I want you to ask.
Marie Mills: [00:47:01] Now, the employee knows that I’ve been hired by the manager or by the owner. But if I approach it neutrally, which I’m always going to, because my job is to show up and to understand, it’s not to judge. That’s not going to happen when I’m working there. Now, employees are much more willing and able to open up and talk to me because I am a neutral person, and I am an interested person, and I’m not going to judge them.
Ed Mysogland : [00:47:30] I get it. Well, I appreciate you going a little over talking to me. And at the end of every episode, I always ask, what’s the one piece of advice that you could give listeners that would have the greatest impact on their business. For you, what would that be?
Marie Mills: [00:47:48] Well, I would say, don’t wait for your employees to give two weeks notice. Start now. Start next week. Don’t wait. Don’t wait.
Ed Mysogland : [00:47:56] You had to jam that to me, didn’t you?
Marie Mills: [00:47:58] I know you don’t want to hear it. That is the thing, though, don’t wait.
Ed Mysogland : [00:48:05] Okay. So, where can we find you? And you do work all across the country, right?
Marie Mills: [00:48:12] I work all across the country. I don’t know if I mentioned earlier, I do all my work on Zoom. I do not need to be onsite. I have a process that works virtually.
Ed Mysogland : [00:48:25] So, what’s the best way we can connect with you?
Marie Mills: [00:48:27] So, I have a website, clearsolutionsbymarie.com. I’m on LinkedIn. I would love to LinkedIn with anybody who wants to LinkedIn.
Ed Mysogland : [00:48:37] Well, we will have every way that someone can possibly get in touch with you on in the show notes, on the website, and on your favorite podcast player. So, Marie, there’s different businesses that you see that are niched, and I got to tell you, you have one fascinating business. And to be honest with you, how I wish I would have known you so much sooner than now. So, I appreciate your time. I thoroughly enjoyed our conversation.
Marie Mills: [00:49:16] Yeah. Me, too. Thank you so much for having me on your show.
Outro: [00:49:21] Thank you for joining us today on the How to Sell your Business Podcast. If you want more episodes packed with strategies to help sell your business for the maximum value, visit howtosellabusinesspodcast.com for tips and best practices to make your exit life changing. Better yet, subscribe now so you never miss future episodes. This program is copyrighted by Myso, Inc. All rights reserved.
