Latest / Daily Influence / 645. Unlocking Potential: The Power of S.M.A.R.T. Management and S.M.A.R.T. BizVision (rerun)

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645. Unlocking Potential: The Power of S.M.A.R.T. Management and S.M.A.R.T. BizVision (rerun) · Daily Influence

• 0:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: Welcome to Daily Influence, your daily dose of positive influence.
• 0:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm Brian Smith founder of IA Business Advisors and co-author of the Iain team series.
• 0:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: Each day we share stories and insights to help you find be and build your influence in a positive and responsible way.
• 0:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I'm Greg Clino, partner at IE Business Advisors, and co-host of Daily Influence.
• 0:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: Be sure to follow, subscribe, and share Daily Influence with someone who could use a little extra positivity today.
• 0:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: And make us part of your Daily routine, whether it's during your commute on a walk or an quiet moment just for you, because you're influenced matters.
• 0:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: Welcome to Daily Influence and your host, Greg Kalino.
• 0:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for joining us for another episode.
• 0:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: In today's episode, I'm going to share a presentation that I did back in June of 2024 to a group of business owners in Delaware.
• 1:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: This presentation is on smart management and the smart vision process.
• 1:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: I hope you enjoy this episode.
• 1:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: My career spans over quite a few years.
• 1:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: My experience is working with small businesses in the business.
• 1:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: So my expertise is building operational infrastructure for growth.
• 1:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: So for example, for 14 years, I work with an organization when I started, we are 20 employees.
• 1:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: We grew the organization over those 14 years, so 1100 employees.
• 1:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: It was a wonderful opportunity, and when I left, I wanted to find another small business to do the same.
• 1:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I ran into IA Business Advisors through networking.
• 1:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: The power of networking is absolutely amazing.
• 1:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: And now I have my new home at IA for the past five years.
• 1:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I get to work with lots of small businesses, helping them take their business from where they are today to where they want to go.
• 2:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: So I'm going to tell you a little bit about how we do that.
• 2:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: And Todd gave me permission to share an example of how we help them.
• 2:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, full disclosure.
• 2:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: Normally, this information is confidential between us and our clients.
• 2:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I see many of my clients here in the room.
• 2:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, thank you for being here and supporting me.
• 2:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, just a little bit about IA business advisors.
• 2:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: Brian Smith, he's my business partner.
• 2:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: He founded us 28 years ago.
• 2:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: Our goal is to help small businesses accelerate.
• 2:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: We specialize in leveraging the individual advantages of the individual humans, but also the individual organization.
• 2:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: We know we all have our unique values.
• 2:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: We talked about that a little bit with Mark already, but our mission at IA is to unlock the potential of individuals and organizations.
• 3:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: rooted in our core values and smart management principles, we empower our clients to achieve significant measurable results.
• 3:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: How many of you have heard of smart goals before mentioned smart goals?
• 3:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: Great.
• 3:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's important to build those smart goals.
• 3:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: But that smart goal, that's a noun.
• 3:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's what you're want to get to.
• 3:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: There's no verb in it, there's no action.
• 3:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's the action to take to reach your goal.
• 3:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: So smart, specific, measurable, attainable, reasonable and timely.
• 3:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: If you think about that in everything you do in today's life, whether it's just communicating with a coworker or talking with a client, it will really help.
• 3:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: you be more efficient, it will help you become a better business person, make better business decisions.
• 3:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: So we teach our clients about smart management and we teach it to all their employees because if you're not, if your employees aren't communicating in a smart way with each other, things are going to fall through the gaps.
• 4:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: There's things won't be clear, people may not understand.
• 4:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: We're all humans, right?
• 4:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: We all have different experiences.
• 4:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: Someone tells you a story, you think of it one way, but someone perceives it as another way.
• 4:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: So with our core values, we're all about the people.
• 4:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: So let's talk about business challenges.
• 4:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: I like everyone who does not have a business challenge
• 4:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: If you did, I would say, can you come up here and tell us how you told them any business challenge?
• 4:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: We all have business challenges.
• 4:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: Whether we like to admit it or not.
• 4:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: And we know that a lot of those challenges stem from people, humans have egos.
• 5:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: Whether we like it or not, we all have an ego.
• 5:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: And if we can't put that ego aside and admit where our shortcomings are,
• 5:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: We have issues within the organization.
• 5:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: So we always look at it as people process in technology because the people are the most important part of the organization.
• 5:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then our clients help us or hire us to help them overcome those challenges.
• 5:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: Blue Rock, when they came to the Pete DeTont Freedom Foundation, they had three challenges they wanted to address.
• 5:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I know each of you are probably going to be able to relate to these three challenges, attracting clients.
• 5:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: time management, and more high-level management team members.
• 5:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: So I saw hands earlier, a lot of you work in smaller organizations.
• 5:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: How many of you have all the team members reporting to you?
• 5:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: So few of you in here.
• 5:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: Feel like a lot on your shoulders, right?
• 6:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: So that was one of the areas that we work with Lou Rakhon.
• 6:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, how we do this is we do a deep dive with our clients.
• 6:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: And we have a proprietary process that we call business vision.
• 6:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: We take all of our clients through this process, but we don't put them in a box.
• 6:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: A lot of programs will put you in a box, but no business is like any other business.
• 6:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, what we do is we identify your gaps through this process.
• 6:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: The business vision process, it really takes a holistic view of people, process, and technology.
• 6:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: Looks at the system.
• 6:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: The entire organization is a system, the communication internally, externally, and we seek to understand not only the operational intricacies of your business,
• 6:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: But how they were formed, your culture, all of these pieces, how the organization has developed over time.
• 7:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: These are all pieces that come together.
• 7:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: We need to figure out what the root causes of your issues are.
• 7:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: When we identify these gaps, complex within the system, including human conflict, we're able to help the organization figure out a plan to overcome those challenges.
• 7:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: So a lot of times we these rose-colored glasses on, and we don't want to admit that we have these issues, but we have to put our egos aside so that we can
• 7:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: address these issues to help our organization grow.
• 7:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: So the actual process consists of a data collection process.
• 7:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: We start with a questionnaire.
• 7:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: How many of you have done a deep dive on your organization to figure out what your issues are?
• 8:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: Wow, this is a good number of hands.
• 8:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: Congratulations, that's amazing.
• 8:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: Most businesses as owners were working in our business, not on our business, and we don't take the time to figure out what our issues are.
• 8:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: And we just often put band-aids on or push on the side, versus peeling back the onion and figuring out the root cause of them.
• 8:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: So we're able to do that through,
• 8:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: The questionnaire, we gather a lot of data, your financials, processes, procedures, job descriptions, org charts, all that information, and then we can really take a deep look at those pieces of information and then have one-on-one interviews with your team members.
• 8:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's amazing how your team members will open up to someone outside the organization.
• 8:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: A lot of times our team members won't share their problems with us.
• 9:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: They may complain to other co-workers, but when you come in from the outside, and we tell them if they have something that's confidential, we'll keep that confidential.
• 9:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'll give you an example.
• 9:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: We were working with an organization that had two partners, one of the partners was stealing from the organization money.
• 9:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: And the bookkeeper, we met one on one with her.
• 9:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: And she said, I have to share something with you, but it has to be kept confidential.
• 9:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: OK?
• 9:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: She said, partner X is still in money.
• 9:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: So through that information, we did an audit, which we probably wouldn't have done normally.
• 9:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: and we were able to uncover this and share the information.
• 9:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: So these employees really open up to us and they want the help.
• 9:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: So once we gather all this data, then we put together our recommendations in a customized way for the organization.
• 10:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: So we document our observations, we have our Taylor recommendations and this is where we identify the gaps.
• 10:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's a hard conversation.
• 10:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: You can ask Todd and Steve when we sat down with them to uncover where their areas of opportunity were.
• 10:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: They had ideas.
• 10:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: They knew, but they didn't want to deal with them.
• 10:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: Todd shaking his head over there.
• 10:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: So how many of you know that you have gaps in your organization, you're like, I just don't want to do with it today, right?
• 10:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: Many of you, they're challenging.
• 10:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: So I'm going to give you some examples from BlueRock in how this applied to their business.
• 10:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: When we're a small organization, like when I was with the company where 20 employees, we have three people wearing pretty much all the hats outside of sales and IT in our controller.
• 11:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: So all the operational processes, you're wearing a lot of hats, organization.
• 11:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: But what we learn through the process is that looking at the people process and technology, they had an amazing team.
• 11:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: This isn't very common when we come into business.
• 11:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: There's lots of communication issues.
• 11:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: There's, you know, camaraderie, it was obvious with Blue Rock.
• 11:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: Their team was amazing.
• 11:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: They all were very proficient in their individual roles within the organization.
• 11:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: They were collaborative.
• 11:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: They liked coming to work.
• 11:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: They enjoyed working with each other.
• 11:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: So they didn't have that human conflict that many of us have.
• 11:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: But, and one thing that they did have that was amazing is an annual review.
• 11:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: They actually put smart goals together.
• 11:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's very rare that you come into a small business and they're putting smart goals together and actually implementing them and reviewing them quarterly annually to see how each individual person put their goals.
• 12:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: Their challenges were, and I know all of you were going to be thinking this in the back of your head.
• 12:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: These are mine, too.
• 12:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: They had a typical growing pains of a business, right?
• 12:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: Todd had a lot on his plate.
• 12:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: Each of the team members had a lot on their plates.
• 12:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: Everyone reported to Todd for the most part.
• 12:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: They were very flat organization.
• 12:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: They didn't have administrative redundancy.
• 12:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: So if one of their team members was out for some reason, administratively others were going to have to pick up the pieces and go to the process of documents versus just knowing how to do it.
• 12:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: So that was the people part.
• 12:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: The process part, they had worked diligently over the years to document their processes and put together
• 13:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: processes within the entire organization.
• 13:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then they implemented systems to support those processes.
• 13:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: So their processes and their technology were very well put together.
• 13:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: The only technology that they stumbled with a little bit was CRM.
• 13:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: How many of you have a CRM?
• 13:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: Keep your hand up if you like your CRM.
• 13:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it's working well for you.
• 13:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: Great, I want to talk to you afterwards, because I want to hear what CRM you're using.
• 13:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's a struggle to find a good CRM.
• 13:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: The CRM they had was really good.
• 13:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's just they weren't using it to its maximum abilities.
• 13:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: So that was one area.
• 13:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: So your gaps in your organization.
• 13:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: Does anyone want to share any areas that they think they can improve
• 13:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's hard to admit, no one ever wants to share them.
• 13:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes we don't want to share them with ourselves.
• 14:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: It gets in the way, right?
• 14:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: But it's nothing to be ashamed of.
• 14:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: We all have challenges, personally and professionally.
• 14:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's okay to have those challenges.
• 14:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: But it's really how you choose to overcome those challenges.
• 14:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: Are you able to do it internally within your group?
• 14:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: Or do you have to go externally and hire what we like to say is a business doctor that come in.
• 14:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: You have a doctor for your annual physical, something goes wrong, you go to your doctor, but you have a business doctor to come in and help you when something goes wrong with your business.
• 14:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's really important too.
• 14:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: have someone externally that can help you overcome your challenges.
• 14:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, when we gather all this information and we know all this about the business, then we create a report with the observations and the prioritized recommendations.
• 15:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: We don't sugarcoat anything.
• 15:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: How many times have you been talking to your friends about challenges and they use that toxic
• 15:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: right well that's not what we do and that's not what you want to hear.
• 15:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: You want to find someone that you can work with that's going to be truthful to you that is going to tell you like it is.
• 15:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's not going to be a yes person.
• 15:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: They're going to call you out in your BS.
• 15:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: So it's important to find that person.
• 15:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: When we met with Todd and Steve to share our findings
• 15:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: It was a difficult conversation.
• 15:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: They didn't want to hear it.
• 15:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: Right?
• 15:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: It was challenging.
• 15:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't very comfortable, but it's what they needed to hear.
• 15:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it wasn't terrible.
• 15:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: We've still heard a lot worse and for results to climb, let me tell you.
• 16:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: We've got all kinds of stories.
• 16:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: But our top recommendation for Blu-Raq was around the people in the organizational structure.
• 16:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: We've all heard of org chart, so you have the human and their title and the next human and their title.
• 16:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: We work with our clients to build functional org charts.
• 16:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: So think of it as people process in technology.
• 16:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: So you have the person, we do Colby and Discus Sessments.
• 16:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: There's lots of assessments out there.
• 16:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: I highly recommend them.
• 16:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: We list their processes that they use, the systems that use the technology.
• 16:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then we have lines of communication between every single person within the organization and then externally.
• 16:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: So the clients, the vendors, and partners, whatever it may be, in this gives us a holistic view of the organization.
• 16:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: So that we can really see what the current state is in what we need to do for future state.
• 17:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: What do we need to develop?
• 17:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: When you're a flat organization and everyone's
• 17:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, that's not going to help you grow, because you're only one human.
• 17:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: You can only do so much, like we learned from Mark.
• 17:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: So in that process, then we can define different departments,
• 17:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: We look at, we don't create job descriptions, we create position guides.
• 17:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: So it's more robust.
• 17:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: It tells you exactly what you need for that position, whether it is with the Colby and Discosestment, so what kind of strengths you're looking for in a human, what processes that they would be good at.
• 17:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: So think about your current organizational structure.
• 17:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: What improvements could be made in that?
• 17:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: What tweaks can be made to help improve your organization?
• 18:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: You think about who uses what processes are there overlaps?
• 18:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: Are there other people that could to offload some of that work or do you have to bring someone else on to take on those responsibilities?
• 18:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: To someone of too much on their plate?
• 18:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: So then you develop a smart plan where all busy everyone in the organization is busy.
• 18:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: So putting a smart project plan together to accomplish what you're trying to accomplish will really help make it a smoother transition or make change in place.
• 18:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then we want to make sure we're documenting in these were the areas that we gave to Blue Rock and the information they gave and they did.
• 18:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it's proven to work.
• 18:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: They've been working on this over the past six to 12 months since we engaged with them for the first time and they had their best first quarter in the history of the company.
• 18:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: So congratulations, guys.
• 19:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you.
• 19:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: Bye, Ethan.
• 19:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: To be honest, we would have never hired IA or Greg is it wasn't for the beat to Pong for you foundation.
• 19:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: As she stands here and says, you know, we're the holes in your business.
• 19:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: But she asked me that this time last year, I was just saying, we'll happen.
• 19:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: How many holes does that have to find?
• 19:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: And it was a matter of, you know, I feel like we're pretty good at business.
• 19:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: I feel like we're pretty good at doing the day-to-day.
• 19:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: We're pretty good financial planners.
• 19:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: Um, but if you've noticed the theme of the morning, it's all about getting set up appropriated.
• 19:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's about the groundwork.
• 19:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's about the things that you don't really want to do.
• 19:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: All I saw when great came back with her recommendation was another investment of time.
• 19:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: We have to put more time into this, more time into that.
• 19:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: Well, as a result of what she shared with us, and Kudos to Steve, where I was to eat this, because he took the torch on this, and basically did everything for Blu-Rocky.
• 19:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: I was like, I really don't want to do this, he's like, I got him, I got him, I got him, I got him, I got him.
• 19:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: And way he did, because what ended up happening through the process is that we identified areas where Todd needed to pull back a little bit.
• 20:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: Where other people needed to put their phone in the gas, where we may have had some holes that we didn't really realize we had holes.
• 20:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: And we made three hires after the assessment that we have and like Greg said, it'll not only need to understand where I needed to focus.
• 20:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: But I have it all my head, right?
• 20:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: Everybody else is in my head.
• 20:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: So now, it'll allow them to step back and see where their focus was to be as well.
• 20:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: And again, we would've never engaged I.A.
• 20:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: So have it opened mind through these things because it was probably the best thing that we've done in the last decade.
• 20:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: So again, Kudos to what you were able to do for us back to you and they really have it open mind on us.
• 20:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for being with us today.
• 20:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: If today's episode inspired, you make us a part of your routine by subscribing on your favorite platform and share with those around you to help spread the positivity.
• 20:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: If you want to learn more about our smart management and smart vision process, please reach out to us.
• 21:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: We hope you have an amazing day.