From Tribal Knowledge to Process Culture: How to Scale Without Losing Control | Benjamin Serven

A Podcast | Benjamin Serven

Pete Neubig: Welcome everybody to another episode of the NARPM Radio Podcast. I'm your host, Pete Neubig, the voice of NARPM. And today we have my good buddy, Ben Serven, who's the founder and CEO of Black Sheep Global. Ben and his team have helped over 250 PM firms to stay accountable and foster a process-driven culture. His innovative approach frees up teams, enhances resident and owner satisfaction, and drives growth for your business by ensuring operational excellence and efficiency. And if you guys know me, I used to be called the Process King. If you see the video, you actually see the Process King board behind me. I am now the Process Prince, and I've given my mantle to Ben, the Process King. Ben, welcome, buddy.

Benjamin Serven: Thanks, Pete. Stoked to be here, man.

Pete Neubig: All right, let's get into it. I got this burning question I've been wanting to ask you.

Benjamin Serven: All right, hit it.

Pete Neubig: All right, Ben. With softwares like LeadSimple and Aptly, process automation continues to be a big topic. Unfortunately, some PMs purchase these softwares only to abandon them. In your experience, what is the difference between a company that is successful and one that is not successful when it comes to building out and automating their processes?

Benjamin Serven: Such a great question, and there's like 10 million things to talk about here. So let's jump in. Okay, so I think a first key thing that we need to think about here is your belief system. The way that we operate in the world all happens on a basis of what we believe, what we believe about simple things like gravity, or whether taxes are going to go up or down. They're going up, yes. And whether I'm going to get paid today or next week. There's lots of things that we just accept and we believe. And we plan our life on the basis of these things that we believe. So it's very all-encompassing. And the reality of this is that most of the beliefs that we have, they just happen. Something in our life happens, and then we decide, oh, well, this thing is true. And so it's always true. It's true forever, right? And tons of this, and I'm not going to get too woo-woo here, but there's psychology that goes back to this. You look at how you grow up and your family and your experience as a kid. Did you get bullied or not? Did you go to a summer camp or not? All this stuff, right? All these things play into who we are and what we think about. So here's what I want to come back to. I know I'm going off on rabbit trails here. But belief is really, really important. And when we talk about processes and being successful with software or truly taking software away from the question at all and just saying being successful in building a business, what you believe is pretty much the number one indicator of how successful you will be or not. It's like if you think about, well, am I going to succeed at this thing or not? Well, if you believe that you're not going to succeed, you're definitely not going to succeed. If you believe you will succeed, you have for sure a better shot at succeeding because you've told yourself that it's possible.

Pete Neubig: So when we think about- What's the old, there's an old saying, whether you believe you can do it or you can't, you're right.

Benjamin Serven: Exactly, right? That is 100% true. And so often when we go to a software company, what we believe initially is this software company is going to solve my problem, right? We hear a sales pitch. We see someone else who has a really great outcome. And then we believe, oh, this can happen for me too. And it's a good thing. I want people to believe that, right? Because it is possible. But once we take that first step and we realize that I can't just believe, believing is only part of the battle, I actually have to do something, then it gets a lot less comfortable, right? It's like you go to the gym and you see the guy who's super jacked, like, oh, that guy's got great genetics. Well, that's not true, right? He had to start somewhere and believe that he could do it and then do the work in order to get the outcome. So I guess this core idea, the core answer to your question, Pete, is that what we believe or our culture or our worldview is really what dictates how successful we are with software or business or anything. And what I found to be true in this world of property management and just business development in general is that the companies who have a process culture, right, a culture or a worldview that is obsessed with building systems, they're the ones that are the most successful.

Pete Neubig: So let's pause there. A lot to chew on. So I understand, okay, so I have this belief that I'm going to buy LeadSimple or Aptly, and I believe this software is going to be successful. Then I get back into the office, tell the team, they're all excited for a short period of time, and then we try to implement, we get punched in the face, and now it's hard, and then we stop. Most likely because the belief wasn't strong enough for the action to solve the challenge. Does that sound about right in my power?

Benjamin Serven: That's about right. Have you ever thought about the conviction that it takes to go out and start a business? You've started several businesses. I've started a few. I remember early on in some of my super early entrepreneurial endeavors, actually, I'm going to go way back here. When I was like seven, I wanted to make some money. We lived out in the country, and there were not a lot of jobs for me to just go out and get at seven years old. I was like, you know what, I'm going to sell something, and we didn't have eggs to sell. We had chickens, but we didn't have enough eggs to sell because we had nine kids eating all the eggs in the family, and I thought, you know what, I'm going to sell rock dust. I'm going to steal my dad's hammer from the garage, and I'm going to take these little, let's see, disintegrated granite chunks from our driveway, and I'm going to smash them, and I'm going to put it in a little bag and wind it up like a dime bag, which I had no idea what these actually looked like, but I had these little baggies of dust that I went and knocked on the neighbor's doors, and I sold them for 25 cents apiece, and God bless them. I think I had two or three neighbors who actually paid me a quarter for a little bag of rock dust.

Pete Neubig: It was for the effort.

Benjamin Serven: It was for the effort, but I believed that I could do this, and as ridiculous as it was, it was at some level successful because I did the work, and I went out, and I believed that I could sell it, and people very kindly went and bought. Maybe those were pity sales, but they were actual sales.

Pete Neubig: Got it, but even if I believe in it, but when it gets hard, what type of person or what type of company have you seen where when it gets hard, they don't quit? You and I are integrators, so is it like most people start businesses or visionaries? Is there anything about like, hey, is the type of personality, is there anything about the buying of the company? There's lots of layers here, so belief is the first piece of it, but again, what other pieces are there that you're seeing?

Benjamin Serven: Yeah, I think the next step is the conviction to keep doing it even when it's uncomfortable.

Pete Neubig: I'm with you on this. I believe that too. How do they get through that hard time? Is it just telling themselves like, this is what it looks like when it's at the end result? Kind of like when you said the bodybuilder guy, right? If I eat healthy and take steroids and go lift weights and I become that body. Is it just the belief that the end result is going to make the business and then you can add in all the adjectives there?

Benjamin Serven: Yeah, I think there's a couple of ways to do it. You can stick with belief and just believe your way to doing it and if you can pull that off, great, right? You're the exception. For the rest of us, the reality of getting there requires more than belief and it requires more than conviction and more than even discipline. I think what it requires is accountability. I think this is where you have to think about that whole adage of, if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. I think the discipline of accountability and putting yourself in an uncomfortable position of having someone else who also believes, but is pushing you, oftentimes someone who's not even a part of your business or a part of your immediate circle. Someone who's just going to say, hey, you said that you were going to do this. Did you do it?

Pete Neubig: That's where coaching becomes very, very important, right? When I went there to lose a bunch of weight, I've literally hired a workout coach. I've been doing triathlon for 20 years. I know what to do. I hired him, why? Accountability, right?

Benjamin Serven: You need the accountability. It's not for a lack of expertise. You've got all the expertise. Even I have tons of expertise in my particular area, but I still need a coach. I still need someone to help me apply what I know internally. There's still a requirement for accountability to cross the finish line.

Pete Neubig: Do you see companies that are led by a visionary be successful in creating processes? If so, how so?

Benjamin Serven: Yeah, great question. They get an integrator. They don't stay visionary led. Having a visionary is great. The visionary has that belief. The visionary gets you out of bed in the morning and gets you to start doing the thing. Having someone who is an integrator is what actually makes it continue to happen consistently. I was reading the EOS book recently and it was citing a statistic that the ratio of integrators to visionaries is one to four, meaning there's four times as many visionaries as there are integrators, which is kind of scary when you think about it, but it makes a lot of sense. If you think about all the businesses that start and fail and start and fail, there's so many visionaries who are pushing for, I just need to make it happen. That's where you go back to that belief. You need that. You've got to have the belief, but if all you have is belief and you don't have any discipline or accountability to get you across the finish line, it's not going to take you anywhere.

Pete Neubig: Ben, I've always been taught the why has to be powerful enough. If you want to start a business, what's the why? They always say, well, it can't just be money. The money's a tool. You got to keep asking yourself almost like seven times. You and I have done this numerous times as far as building processes or all that stuff. It is not easy. It's not easy building processes. We know that. There's lots of challenges there. Do you see a bigger why with people who are successful versus somebody who doesn't maybe have a big as why? Why they're doing this and what the end result looks like?

Benjamin Serven: Interestingly, I would actually say no. I would say while the why definitely matters and the why gets you started, what actually causes you to cross the finish line is just the accountability and discipline. In fact, I've got some, I'm not going to name drop here, but I've got some clients who I brought on a few years ago and we helped them with a lead simple build out. They took off and I've just absolutely crushed it. I was doing an interview with one of the leaders. I was almost digging for great comments. Like, oh, Black Sheep is awesome. You guys are the best, all this stuff. What he told me was almost a little bit frustrating, but it was so illuminating because what he said to me is, you guys were just one step along the journey. We really just kept doing what we were doing to adhere to our plan and so we succeeded because we just kept doing the next thing in the plan. It wasn't really about the why so much as it was about execution. You just had to do the next thing and it was the next thing relative to the plan that they had designed, which was running relative to their why, but- You just said, I was going to say, the plan is the why though, right?

Pete Neubig: If I'm building a plan, the plan is to have better customer service, reduce churn, make less mistakes. Before, I'm going to ask you a little bit of what all the benefits are of having processes, and then I want to ask you about your process culture. Before that, have you seen any correlation about team and team buy-in versus not buy-in or the type of team for people who are successful or not successful in actually implementing the processes and the systems behind it?

Benjamin Serven: A couple of things here. I will say I have observed that the teams that have the hardest time are typically portfolio teams. Take that for what you will. I find that departmental teams or pods or hybrids are usually more successful with adopting technology and having a more process-oriented culture. Take that for what you will.

Pete Neubig: I would surmise a portfolio manager, they have their hands in everything and they're worried about giving stuff up. They don't trust as much.

Benjamin Serven: It is a high control environment where there's a lot of freedom given to that individual to make a judgment call. That's not a bad thing. Portfolio businesses can be massively successful, but they are a lot harder to scale and they're a lot harder to systematize because you have a bunch of basically free agents, 1099s, who don't have to adhere to a certain standard necessarily. It's a lot harder.

Pete Neubig: Even if they are employees, they tend to all do things just a little bit differently. All my portfolio managers, when I was portfolio-based, they had guidelines, but they did everything a little bit differently. Then when we went departmental, we were able to streamline some stuff. If we could build a persona, I'm going to say, okay, this is what I think is the perfect person to get through this and then you can add or subtract to it. If I'm an integrator or a visionary that has an integrator on staff, I have a big enough why we have a coach or somebody like Black Sheep to keep us accountable and can help us create a plan. I have a team that has buy-in and we understand it's going to be a consistency around, let's call it, we're going to dedicate six months to this project. All those hit all the check marks of this would be a successful project?

Benjamin Serven: Yeah. Honestly, if you have that crew, you can take off and conquer the world.

Pete Neubig: What have you seen with some of your clients? Give me a before and after of, this is what the business looked like before. Then we went in, we helped them with their main systems. Maybe didn't systemize everything, but at least some of the main systems. What did the organization look like after?

Benjamin Serven: Sure. I'll use a client here we brought on a couple of years back. They found us at about 1,200 doors if I remember right. They had basically brute-forced their way through growth while having enormous churn through regular acquisitions. They just continued buying more and more and more portfolios. The reason they came to us was ostensibly, hey, we need you to build LeadSimple. What we discovered was their deeper problem was the business owner continued to acquire without really listening to his operations team. They all hated him. They hated him because he kept pouring more fuel on the fire without seeing that they were losing business hand over foot and just washing down the drain. What we did for them initially was we looked at their onboarding. We looked at their sales process and I had to tell that client, hey, you need to stop acquiring businesses for a couple of months while we figure this out. That was a very funny conversation. It was not an easy one. But it ended up in a massive win for that company and they have completely restructured. They weren't a portfolio model. They were relying on 40 different team members to handle 1,200 doors, which I know you know this and I know this. That's a lot of people to handle 1,200 doors. You don't need that many people, especially stateside people. They reorganized. They've been able to grow dramatically because they moved to a departmental style structure. Now they have processes for everything and their business runs incredibly consistently and they can actually handle their continual acquisitions because they turn that faucet back on and the company continues to grow and grow and grow.

Pete Neubig: I know people don't like hearing door count, but we got to use this for operationally. You and I, I like talking door count because it just changes your operations, right? 300 doors versus 1,200 doors. In your opinion, how many doors does somebody need to have until they really need- now they need to create a process or they need to have some type of automation is there a number that you think like, hey, that's when you start starting to look at this, seriously?

Benjamin Serven: Don't say zero. Can I say one? Yeah. So there's the reality that every business needs documentation and structure. So I think that is the major caveat. It doesn't matter how many doors you have. If you don't have some level of documented processes, you're shooting yourself in the foot. That said, you can get away with it. You can get away without a lot of documentation, probably till about 100, 120 doors, depending on your market. I've seen some companies go up to like 150 and not have meaningful documentation. But you have to remember that the only reason you're getting away with it at that point is that you're relying on really excellent humans. And you are probably, if you're the business owner and you're listening to this, you are probably one of those excellent humans. And there's nothing wrong with being an excellent human. I highly encourage it. Please pursue excellence. But if you are the backbone of your business, you don't have a business. You're just an employee. You are a tool being used by the machine that is not really getting you the outcome that you started that business for. I don't think there's any person I've ever met who decided to start a business because they wanted to work more hours. Just never happened.

Pete Neubig: And get paid less.

Benjamin Serven: And get paid less. I talked with a gentleman this last week who told me he was working 16 hour days, six days a week. And that's just brutal. And he was at about 120 doors and he had one employee. And my friend, I hate to break it to you, but there's more work that has to happen before you can get out of that slump. You have to build systems in order to escape this other system that you've created. And that's why I encourage people to build and document earlier before your time is completely sucked away.

Pete Neubig: That's great advice because I was working about 12 hour days, six days a week. And when we went and started building our processes, those went from 12 to 14, 15 hour days. But then when it was done, I was down to like 20 hours a week.

Benjamin Serven: Yeah. It's got to get worse before it gets better. But when it gets better, it's a whole lot better.

Pete Neubig: And it's better in perpetuity. You get your time back forever. So I heard you speak at Tony Cline's Onyx retreat a few months ago. And you talked about the process culture and you talked about the four levels of the evolution of a process in a business. Can you share that? And then I want to talk a little bit about how to actually create a process culture and then we're going to let everybody go. So talk to me about those four levels. Is it the process culture or the four levels of just the levels of process? I feel like- Yeah.

Benjamin Serven: I call it four levels of process culture. So level number one is where most people start the business and candidly often stay for a really long time. And this is going to be your tribal knowledge level. Now, tribal knowledge is so named because everything passes around very verbally, very tribally. It's like a storytelling culture, if you will. Right? I know the process and you're the new hire. So I'm going to tell you what to do and I'll show you what to do. And then you know, and then you are able to carry on the tradition of the knowledge that has been passed to you. Right? And in this type of culture, you always have one person who's like, oh, this person, they have all the knowledge. They know all the things. The oracle. Right? The oracle. And again, this is not to rag on people who are in this position. It's just like, this is the reality of how the business operates.

Pete Neubig: I would also say, I ran, I literally was at that level for a long time. And we would like, depending on how I felt that day, that's how I'd make decisions sometimes. If I was in a good mood, I'm like, get them back there full screen. But if I was in a bad mood, no, fight them to the death. You know? So yeah, so you can easily, because there's nothing written down, you can easily sway your decision making, which is not a good thing, especially in property management. So that's level one. So level two.

Benjamin Serven: So that's, so travel knowledge is level one. Level two is where you have some documentation. Right? Now this is good. And I want every, again, I want to describe these levels as progression. Right? If you are at one of these levels, great. Keep moving forward. Right? We'll meet the Robinson's here. Keep moving forward. So our level two is documentation. You've got stuff that's written down. Right? And that's excellent. Keep on doing that. Now, where you write it down matters, but you can have it written down almost anywhere. You can have sticky notes, you can have whiteboards, you can have spreadsheets, you can have Google Doc. It doesn't matter. It's being captured somewhere. You should do it in one consolidated way in one organized place, but it's being documented. And that's the important part. When we document it, we create an operational asset. And this allows your business to run consistently. Just like you said, you can take the emotion and still have it, but follow the process. All right. But at this stage, all you have is the documentation. You don't have people really using it. You don't have any kind of enforcement around it. And it's just, this is the very typical binder that's sitting on the shelf that everybody cracks open about once a year, maybe.

Pete Neubig: It's like a check box.

Benjamin Serven: Yeah, very much. Now, level three, this is where your documentation moves and actually becomes operational. And this is where a lot of companies sit today with the modern technologies that we have. You can take your written documentation and turn it into a process, right? A process that lives in a technology that helps you keep your team accountable. It has deadlines and timelines, all the good things that any business owner would want. It starts forcing some of that accountability. But the key issue at this stage is you're still forcing it, right? We're really only staying accountable to the process because you as a leader are there and you're making it happen. Saying, hey guys, come on, let's line up with the process. All right, three levels. Here's level four. Level four is process culture. This is where your people, your team value the processes that you have just as much as getting to the outcome. Where the processes themselves are something that we take joy in, that we improve over time. And when I say we, I mean we. Not just you, the business owner. Your team is actually looking for opportunity to make their processes better because they care about it that much. Because they care about your clients that much. And this is where your employees trust the process fully. Where there's no second guessing about whether this is the right thing to do. Because there's constant iteration of the process and they have buy-in to the process because they're involved in improving it over time. And where building systems and doing documentation is the default, not the exception.

Pete Neubig: So in this process culture, they're the ones coming to you, the business owner, with ideas on how to update or make changes to the process that would enhance the process.

Benjamin Serven: Yeah, this is like, hey Pete, I just was doing this process. I was doing move-outs and I discovered that X, Y, and Z is true. And I had to do this like five times. Why can't we update this in the process and have a better process?

Pete Neubig: I'm going to give you a real world example of this, Ben. So at Empire, we're doing lease renewals. We had a process for it. Jessica ran the lease renewal department and we used to start them at 60 days out. And one day I was meeting with her and she goes, oh yeah, start them at 90 days out. And I'm like, what do you mean start them at 90 days out? She goes, well, I was having challenges with X, Y, and Z and it was not enough time. So once I just did 90 days out, it solved everything. And so that was somebody who owned the process, saw a challenge, turned around and just changed the trigger. And I always tell people, if you change a process and it doesn't work, I never get mad at you. Because to me, that's the process culture. That's ownership, accountability, responsibility. And so I never get upset. And if I have to write a check, I write a check. You can't change policy, you can change the process, especially if you take an ownership of it. So we had some of that process culture. Can you have some departments have that process culture and some departments be at that level three?

Benjamin Serven: Oh, heck yeah. Anybody who's ever worked in a big company, especially like a 200 or 300 people company, you can see this easily. You can look at, oh, well, sales is super disorganized. Operations is super organized. Accounting, well, they've got their ducks in a row. And you can easily point fingers. When you have a smaller company, it's harder, though, because everything's a lot more personal. And when you're pointing fingers, oftentimes there's fingers pointing right back at you. So I think, yes, you can absolutely have levels of organization in some parts and disorganization in others. But in that smaller ecosystem, there's a greater need for that culture. Otherwise, it really just can lead to disunity.

Pete Neubig: If someone's listening to this and they're like, man, I really want to get to that process culture, but I really don't know how, what are some things that you would coach them on creating that process culture in their business?

Benjamin Serven: Great question. I think there's a couple of things that I would start with. Number one, just as a person, as an individual, not even thinking about your business, I would start looking to find processes. When the next time you go to, you know, go to UPS, look for the process. What are the things that they probably say every single time when every customer walks through the door? What are the actions that they repeat each time? They're always going to grab the sticker. Do they get the sticker from the same place or does it come from different machines depending on the package, right? Or if you go to the grocery store, again, silly examples here, but think about what's the supply chain that had to exist to put this orange on this display. So starting to kind of get your mind thinking about, all right, what are the processes that need to exist in order for things to happen around me? Because the reality of it is the world is one big system that's made up of 10 billion different processes. The processes support the system, right? You want to be the owner of the system. That's why you're building the business. So you have to take ownership of the processes. So that'd be number one. Number two is I would begin the discipline of documenting your processes. And I would block time on your calendar once a week, having to be the same time every week and bring in your team to that conversation. And depending on the size of your team, you can bring in all the people or just the key people you decide, right? But start having the discipline of documenting the processes. And there's easy frameworks for doing this. If you want to talk about it, reach out to me. I would love to take you through that. I don't know if we'll have time to talk through all that today, but begin documenting the process and that will provide enormous value.

Pete Neubig: Yeah. I think the main thing though is the process culture starts from the top down, just like any kind of culture does, any kind of core values starts from the top down. And then you need to, I think if you kind of, I don't want to say manipulate the team, that's not the right word. I think you show the team what their life could look like once processes are built. You can see, you can show them, hey, you can work less, less mistakes, less stress, less churn, business grows. I think that helps the buy-in when you kind of show them what life can be once you have some processes because everybody's gonna have to work a little bit harder for a shorter period of time. Correct, Ben? For sure.

Benjamin Serven: For sure. It's all about sales at this point. And just like when you sell anything, there's a little bit of effort involved. Sometimes there's a lot of effort that's involved in order to get to the outcome, but it's true here for your team.

Pete Neubig: All right. Last question I have for you, what process do you recommend that a property management company starts with?

Benjamin Serven: Yeah, great question. If you are at the very beginning of your documentation journey, I would start at the beginning of your processes, which is going to be your sales process and your onboarding process. That'll give you value day one, talk through your sales process, write it all down, do the same thing for your onboarding. And that will give you a consistent experience at the most important point of your relationship with your new client, where they really need a consistent experience.

Pete Neubig: And if they do need some, they need to be held accountable or they need some expertise in creating processes, expertise in lead simple and aptly, they can give you a call. How would they be able to get in touch with you, Ben?

Benjamin Serven: Yeah, two easy ways. Number one, you can visit our website, which is blacksheepglobal.net. Or you can email me directly, benjamin@blacksheepglobal.net. I'd love to talk with you.

Pete Neubig: Do you have that quiz on your... You created some awesome quiz.

Benjamin Serven: Do you have it? Oh, that's right. It's actually not on our website yet, but we have a... Not on your website yet, not on your website. Well, maybe we can include that in the show notes. It's called the Process Culture Assessment. We'll include it in the show notes.

Pete Neubig: Do me a favor, if you're listening to this and you're interested in this, email Ben and just in the title, just say, send me the quiz because it's awesome. You did a great job on it. And it takes about 10, 15 minutes, but it'll tell you where you are on your journey, what you need, if you need a process architect or not. So I thought it was very cool. So Ben, thanks so much for being here. If you are listening and you're not a NARPM member, like I say every week, shame on you. Give them a call at 800-782-3452 or go to narpm.org. And believe it or not, my remote team helped me build all my processes. So if you are looking for a remote team or, hey, I want to build some process, I want to hire some remote team members, shoot me an email, pete@vpmsolutions.com, or just go to vpmsolutions.com. Ben, thanks so much for being here. See everybody.

Benjamin Serven: Thanks, Pete.