131: SOPs and How Adi Klevit Helps Businesses Thrive with Process Documentation

Talk a little bit about a playbook, because I think that's something a lot of us in sports can understand, right?

I mean, what's the purpose of the playbook, to set up the rules, to explain about the game? And it's something that the coach can use, is can use in order to motivate and to also correct and guide his players, and that's what it is. So you basically taking that analogy. Let's say you own a law firm, and you hired several paralegals, you have associates, you have admin staff, but you don't give them the rules. So you are basically playing a game. What's the difference between playing that and playing basketball? You're playing a game, you're the coach, you're the leader, but you don't tell them how to play the game. What's going to happen? Confusion. Are you ever going to win? How can you win if you don't have a playbook? And that is really the analogy that I look at. Well,

Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, whatever time this podcast finds you. Welcome to the 10 Golden Rules of Internet Marketing for Law Firms. Podcast. My name is Jay Berkowitz. We've got a great guest today, Adi Klevit. Gonna get to Adi in just one minute. First, I want to talk about tgr live growth strategies for law firms, our live event. And I haven't tried this yet, but I'm gonna, for those of you on the YouTube I'm gonna share the wrong screen probably here it is. We have an awesome, world class speaker lineup. Mike Morris wrote fireproof $200 million law firm. Charlie Mann's going to talk about $500,000 worth of referrals and receivers. Case status, New Product of the Year. Justin lovely. The AI attorney. I mean, we have an awesome speaker lineup. And equally fantastic, we've got phenomenal speakers. Matter of fact, Hilma just signed on to sponsor our cocktail party. Intaker, case status, smart advocate. Supio is an amazing AI for law firms. You can actually run cases on your AI. And of course, such a great event wouldn't be as great without a super offer just for our podcast listeners. So don't spread this around. But if you go to 10 golden rules.com forward, slash tgr live, like 10 golden rules, tgr, live, dash, golden, you can get our regular ticket price, which right now is 397, but we'll upgrade you to VIP gold. So VIP seating, VIP at the cocktail party, VIP gift bag and access to the VIP speaker room. So just special for the podcast listeners. 10 golden rules.com, forward, slash tgr live, dash, golden. Tgr, live hype and gold. So without further. ADO. Adi, thank you for letting me drop a commercial in there. Oh,

you're very welcome. Sounds like a very exciting event. Where is it going to be held? Oh, that's a

great point that the beautiful Opal grand right on the ocean in Delray Beach, Florida and Delray is right in between Palm Beach and Fort Lauderdale. It's adjacent to Boca Raton and it's on the east coast of Florida. Adi is in Tampa, on the west coast of Florida. So yeah, we'd love it if you guys can make it. Yeah, sounds exciting. So without further ado, let me introduce Adi, and I had a great opportunity to see her live at a conference introduced by my friends. So I had a great chance to see a D at an event put on by my one of my business coaches, and that's the profit recipe, and they are our EOS consultants, and they hired a D to write all their systems and processes. So I don't want to steal a Dee's thunder, but why don't you go ahead and tell us a little bit about yourself and your company.

Absolutely, when Jay, first of all, thank you for having me. And yes, we met at an event A few months ago, and what we do as a company, we create document, optimize and implement processes and procedures for companies. That's what we do. My background is, I'm an industrial engineer, so if you're asking me, why processes, well, that's what I chose to do in terms of process improvement, process documentation, etc. But you know what the funny thing is? In terms of, I don't know if it's funny, but the interesting thing is that, as an industrial engineer, why did I go study Industrial Engineering? Because it combined process organization science, which I was very good at, and also people skills and understanding people. So it's that combination that really drew me into this arena of process improvement, because you can't really do it without understanding people. So I've been doing it now for almost 30 years. I love it. That's my passion, to bring order into companies, into organizations. I have a whole team that works with me, and. That's in a nutshell, my bio. That's

great. And so I don't know if you referred to it at the conference, but I I'd say about a third of all of our podcast listeners, I asked them their best business book, and about a third of them say E Myth and email is this book that I read very early on in my business. And I always tell people, if you write down your system, so when you have new employees, you can easily train them on the system, and if somebody makes a mistake, you can go back to that template they were trained on and say, Hey, you missed this important step. And here's the step, and here's how we course correct and obviously, not obviously, but obviously. To me, after sitting with you for a couple hours, you all take it to a whole new level. So what's the difference between the basic checklist that that we created when we first started our business and real process, documentation, training and automation? It's

an excellent question. It's the knowledge that you accumulate that is your asset. Is the knowledge, if you really think about it, you created. So when you first started a business, you probably had no idea what you were doing, right? I mean, you would Okay, I have some idea. But, I mean, do you relate to that? I mean, that's

true, that's true, but don't tell anyone. I'm not it's a it's

a secret, but it's confession. I mean, that's what happened also when I started my business, when I started my business, there was in 2011 I already was very successful as a business consultant. I was very successful as a strategist. That was very successful at process improvement. But now I have to start my own and I have to run my own business, right? I mean, it's very similar to a lawyer that can be a great lawyer, but now they have to run their own practice. So there is all these systems, all these things that you do, all the processes. I mean, what's your process for acquiring new clients? I don't know. Let's see. Let's try it out. That's what I learned. That's what I observed, right? But then you perfect it, and you do it better and better. But that knowledge is very important. It's your asset. So now you're operating. But that knowledge somehow has to be distilled, has to be documented, has to be systematized, in order for you to have the legacy of you have now something you can actually, it's a real business, right? Or really we refer to it. This is a real business because we have ways and things of doing it. And also, of course, to train new employees, as you mentioned, but it's also for risk mitigation, right? I mean, you have new clients. You want every single client to experience the same results. Give you an example. We were working with a company where it was a financial advising company, so also in the professional services. And I asked my client, what will need to happen for you to know that it was worthwhile for you to document all your processes. You know what she said. She said, I want zero errors. I want to reduce the errors to zero. So okay, fine. So that's what we're going for. So now, if you actually have processes that people will follow, not just processes, but people will follow, then you can identify where the errors are happening. And as you mentioned, Jay, it's either a person that is not following it, so you will have to make sure that the processes are being followed by the person, or it's a flaw in the process, and we have to fix the process.

That's great. So give us an example for a small business, and let's use lawyers. That's thank you for reminding me, it is the 10 golden rules Internet Marketing for law firms.

For law firms, that's right.

Let's say a couple attorneys are successful, and they're generating a lot of cases on their own, and they go out and start their own law firm. So what are some of the initial tips you could give them for developing processes before they're ready to engage someone like yourself.

Yeah. So the first thing I would say is, if you just started your law firm, don't worry about the processes. Go get clients. I mean, do marketing? Go get clients. And now you will hear me say that like people ask, well, when should I, you know, should I document your processes? And you think, yeah, we said yes for everything. I said, No, we just go get clients, get things rolling, right? You know what to do? Of course, we all have processes when we wake up in the morning, when you make your coffee or tea or whatever you drink in the morning. Do you do it the same way? Or do you do it differently every single day?

Well, typically once you make a mistake and like, overfill it and it spills all over the place, you figure out a better way to do it, and you develop a new, better process to do it

exactly. But most of us would still do the same thing every day, right that you have a process. You just know how to do it. You start

the same way, and then I would process improve if I find a better way to do.

It mutually got it. And then if you have to teach somebody else to do that, then it's like the followed by all, you teach them how to do it. You teach your process exactly. You are a lawyer that just started, just go get clients, build your practice. Then when you are ready to hire an administrator, when you are ready to hire a paralegal, when you are ready to expand and grow and scale, that is the time to start documenting your processes.

Yeah, that's the classic story, again, from email, and they had the example. I always get it wrong, but I call it Annie's pie shop, but I think that they had a different name for the protagonist in the story. But this woman made these unbelievable pies, and she was taught by her aunt, and her aunt taught her all the steps, and she made these pies that were so delicious that within a few months, she had lineups out the door, and people lined up when she opened up in the morning to get these unbelievable pies. And then she was just so busy she had to hire someone. So she hired someone, but she was too busy to train her properly, and she got super frustrated because now this other person was doing it her way, and the pies weren't coming out as good, and the customer service wasn't as good, and then she was completely at despair, and the business started slowing down. And that's when this consultant came in, and he said, but you've gotta teach her everything. You've gotta document everything first, and then you've gotta teach her everything that your aunt taught you about making these delicious pies and how to clean up at the end of the day, and how to box the pies, and how to do customer service. And so by developing those documents and those checklists, she was able to do the transition of the best processes.

That's true, I know, and it's actually also true. I mean, I can tell you my own story. I started as, I mean, I had a business partner, and we just great consultants. We got clients right away. And client, you know, the word of mouth, so I got more clients, and I was happy in terms of, okay, we are making it happen. We because when you start your business, you don't know if you're going to be successful or not. I'm sure. I mean, that's the same thing with the law practice. Okay, you might be a great lawyer, but can I run a business here? And then it just develops. But it was always the situation of, I can't grow the business until I go, You know what? I'm going to take my own medicine. I have to actually do what I teach others to do. And when I actually stopped, and I started to document, and I started to create the processes, and was able to successfully pass it on to a manager under me. I mean, obviously I hired correctly, but I was able to pass it on to a manager that then was able to manage the technical writers under her, and I did not have to worry about it. That's when I really started to feel the freedom of being a business owner. That's

a great point, because even hiring, you develop a process, and I got pretty good at hiring. For the most part, I post, write a great job description, and even figured out use chat GPT to help you write a great job description. And then I posted on LinkedIn, and then I boosted a little bit, so I get a little bit more traffic. And then I triage. Every day I'll get eight or 10 applications, and I send two or three of them a link to my Calendly. So they themselves, put themselves on my calendar, and I let them know it's a Zoom meeting. They're going to be on camera. They have to be presentable. And so all these steps, and for the first time in the past year, we grew past the stage where everybody reports to me, and we now have a management layer. And so now I had to offload hiring, but I didn't have a documented checklist. And guess what? The hiring manager took about four months to get candidates we like. It's so important to do all this stuff. How do you make it happen in an organization?

The way you make it happen is the first thing you need to do is you need to have the mindset of understanding that this is important. I mean, that's really the number one, because you as the visionary and as a creative or somebody that is running around and make things happen, you may be the Rainmaker, you are able to make things happen. And sometimes it's hard to understand how others cannot make it happen, especially if you are a go getter. You are busy, you make things happen. So the first thing is the mindset that there may be other people that are not going to be like you, but you have to somehow clone yourself and duplicate yourself. So that's the first thing is to understand that this is needed, and it doesn't have to be tedious. It doesn't have to take a long time, but you do have to invest time, energy, money, whatever it is, to create a road that others can travel after you, because you can just go, you can go on a side road, on a unbuilt road. You're going to make it happen, but other people have to follow you, so you have to make sure that they can actually follow you. That's number one. Then what I would do is I would ask yourself. What area of your business, if you had well documented processes and procedures, will get you the biggest return on investment? And that is a big question, right? I mean, what is return on investment? Maybe return on investment for you, it's time you're going to get your time back. Maybe you don't have time to spend with your family, and you want some time you're working 6080 hours. You want to work 40 hours, good. So what do you need to do? So that area? What's the areas is taking you away from doing that? Maybe it's sales, all right. So then let's figure out your processes for the sales department, or do your sales function of the company, so then you can pass it on to somebody else. That is how I'm going to start, is by really looking at getting a return, getting something that that will be there, that you will say, Yeah, this is worthwhile. We don't just document. I mean, I'm saying we, like, you know, like as business owners, right? We don't just document for the sake of documentation, that's not correct, because that is just go make more sales or go service clients you are going to document for the purpose of either training or delegating, or they want to sell your business, or you want to bring on a new employee that you need to onboard, whatever it is, maybe you need To bring an associate. I mean, I had a one of our clients in a law firm that we created a playbook for them, for the new associate, how to be a superstar attorney in this XYZ attorney firm, because they realize that when you bring somebody on, if you don't have that, then you have to spend time training the person. They're not going to get this, and they're and they were growing and scaling very fast, so it was several associates. You're not going to give the same training to everyone, because you might not have the time, you might not be available there, and you might not and the thing is also, how much people retain. It's kind of like I hear people say, Well, you know, I told him everything on the first day, yeah, but on the first day, think about it, if you ever had a job, not your own business, okay, you had a job the first day. You people are shocked. I mean, how much do you think people retain I haven't researched that, but I think probably maybe 25% of what you tell them,

yeah, right,

yeah, yeah.

So we worked through you said it was great advice. Couple lawyers start a business, just worry about sales, and then when you bring on an assistant, now, you have to have some documentation and some training so you can get help in the areas that you do. And that's the kind of thing that you can pretty much do hands on training when you're just starting out, and particularly for you in person, we've learned one of the tricks is now we're we're mostly a remote business, and so you can't sit over their shoulder and they or they can't sit over your shoulder and watch how you do it. So we've had to learn how to do that on Zoom. So we developed some checklists, and I guess now we're at that next level where we have managers, and not everybody can learn directly from Jay or from the expert in the area. So we need, we really need processes, and we need training. Also, when you get to a certain size where around 20 people, one or two people are we're adding one or two people sometimes every quarter. So you want a training system to avoid missteps, and we've had those missteps too, where we didn't get someone trained well enough. We threw them in the fire. They got frustrated. We got frustrated too quickly. So give us a couple tips and strategies for that next level of business, and I consider that where we're at now, and we're just we're actually having conversations with a D about writing those next level of business documents for us. But when a business is at this level and they need to develop the processes and the training, what are some of the strategies to get that done?

Okay, so the first thing is, think about it. If you went to school, okay, let's say you went to school and there were no textbooks, and the teacher will sit there and maybe just lecture, and then you want to refer to back to it. Maybe you have a teacher, and then you have a substitute teacher and they teach you differently. There is no textbook. We can't train like that. So you do need to have textbooks, and because this is your business, you have to write your own book. There is no book that you can buy out there. Yes, you can buy a book or instructions on how to run QuickBooks, on how to run your CRM, on how to do this or how to do that, but there is no the book. There is no book about the 10 golden rules, there is no book. The book is in Jay's head or others other key people's heads, and that's the problem. So the first thing is, that's what we first document, but that's not what we do. That's not what we do as a company. Said no, but I thought you document processes like, well, yes, we do, but that's the first. Step, if you just want to document, then don't hire us, because we need to implement we need to actually get it into use. So the first thing is to document, you have to create your own playbooks. There is no way around it. There are people that can do it. There are different ways. Some people say, Okay, I'm going to video everything. That's not a bad idea. But sometimes you have people that don't retain a lot from just listening or seeing and who wants to watch a 40 minute video. So we have a combination. We definitely use videos, but we record everything, and then we cut clips of videos so people can see, like, a two minute here, a two minute there, but we also write written instructions so people can actually go over it. One thing I want to emphasize this is not about writing instructions on how to use a software because that you can get from the software company. We will write the instructions if you use it in a certain way. But here is the best advice that I can give you. You have to capture best practices. You have to ask yourself, what is working and what is not working? Whenever I look at any process with a client, I always ask, what's working for you right now and what is not working? Because then you're going to be able to capture the important things, because what can be dangerous is that you are doing something the same way you're doing things because you know it works, but because you don't analyze your actions, you just do them and you don't know it's important, right? I mean, Jay, you are a tennis player. You love playing tennis. It's a great sport. Yeah,

really good. You are. I pretend really well. You

pretend really well. But when you actually hit the ball with the racket, do you actually monitor each and every step that you do? I mean, you know, you can't play like that, right? You just go and play.

I only monitor after I miss exactly, and you beat yourself up,

but that's exactly. That's a great example. You see that that is exactly the same, like, when you know how to do things, like, you know how to talk to client on the first meeting. This is an example, actually, from a law firm that we created their processes also for intake. You know how to talk. You go and talk, and then you're like, Okay, well, I didn't do anything different. I do it like, I don't know how to teach it. It's me. It's my personality. Well, if you do it, then you will never be able to pass it to somebody else. So that's what you have to analyze, step by step. What exactly do you do? How do what is important there? And when you write the process, you have to say, This is important because, but you have to understand. Because if people don't understand the why behind something, they are going to do what. They're going to alter it, they're going to invent something, interpret it. Yeah, that's right, they're going to interpret it. And I know that very well from working with law firms. When I say, Oh, you have to do this, then the lawyer will go, what is this? Define this, but it's right, because you have to define what it is. Otherwise it's open for interpretation and what works and the do's and the don'ts. That's what separate a good documentation from just documenting something and writing it.

You said something interesting that I always wondered about. You said that like when you when you went to school, there was the lectures and the textbooks. Why do you need a textbook?

Well, how can you do without Why do you need a

lecture? That's right, no, that's how people learn. Or why? Why is it structured that way? That's

a very good point. What my point is, and what we've mean, I actually did it in my own company, is that I eliminated the need for the one on one, like shadowing somebody and the one on one training by creating the textbook, and nowadays, when you can read it also with videos. So I'm not saying there is no human interaction. Of course there is, but it is then on the actual on the job training, as opposed to explaining to somebody, look, I'll give you an example. I was working with a company that they do billing for nursing homes. Yeah, they do, like they take the payroll and accounts payable and nursing for nursing homes, they that is super complicated because they have to build Medicare and so and deal with Social Security and Medicaid, and it's unbelievable how complicated it is. It used to take them six months to train a new biller. We basically shrank it to a month by using our what is documented, because we also recorded the videos, and then on top of it, it was all written so somebody could read it. And we also, of course, did also the train, the practicals and the exercises, somebody can read it, drill it. And. Then they can be thrown into a job, into a case to do it. They follow the instructions, and then you can have the questions and going back and forth, but it saved so much time that you can beat that.

So the advice is that you're going to create the training processes, probably some videos and some written documentation. One of the questions I always wonder is, like, where should it all sit? Like, how do you deliver that content?

Great question. You have to have one single source of truth, and that is, I like to talk as you see Kim, you know we're talking high level. I mean, I can go into right now, okay, use this software and that software, and then people say, Well, I like that software better, or you should do that. I'm not going to get into those softwares. You know, if you want to know about it, I'll be happy to show I'll be able to evaluate which software, yes or no. But the main thing that you have to understand is that you have to have a single source of truth, because if people are going to start storing things on their hard drive, on their computer, on their own, OneDrive, on this or that, or it's not going to work, because then becomes many sources of truth, and then you don't know what is the source of truth. So my advice is, choose one platform, one place, and do not allow anyone to create processes or store processes anywhere else.

That's great advice, and we, we actually created our online training program called tgr, you short for 10 golden rules University. I recorded about, I don't know, about 10 or 12 relatively long pieces of content that we then cut up into 15 minute segments, and there's a quiz for each of them, and then each of the department heads has recorded their content. But as I mentioned, it's now about a year and a half, two years old, but everybody has to graduate from tgru within their first three months as a part of their onboarding process. That's fantastic and and at least we have a really nice, solid foundation now. Alright, so I love that. You

know, Jay, you mentioned something. I want to just touch on that, if it's okay, you mentioned it's a year and a half old. Sure, that's a question I get a lot. Our processes change, or they're changing all the time. How do I keep them current? Of course, there is change. That's what we do. I mean, you know, there is change in the body. You know, it's like the way I'm a year and a half older than I was a year and a half ago. We all change, but there are things that do not some things stay the same. Some things are do change. So we need to be very alert to the change. But that's why having a foundation of documentation is very important, because then you can identify what exactly is changing, and then change it. And that is the key, because if you don't even have anything documented, then how are you going to jump to the next level? Because you don't know where to jump from, yeah. So that's why you have the baseline, and then you can jump from there.

These are definitely interesting challenges for growing businesses.

It is, and you know what? They all suffer from it.

So you used another word that I this came up on a previous 10 golden rules podcast because I interviewed Chris ronzio

from train Yeah, I interviewed him too, and I was on his podcast. Yeah, I know you

love trainual, and it's one of those platforms, absolutely Chris is the main source of truth. But I had just read Dan martells great book, buy back your time. And so Chris mentioned playbooks. You mentioned playbooks. And so I said to Chris, I said, Hey, you know, I just read Dan's book, you know, is he the inventor of playbooks? Is that where you got that from? And he said, No, Dan's on our board, or he's an investor in our company, and I think we shared the word playbook with him. Talk a little bit about a playbook, because I think that's something a lot of us in sports can understand, right?

I mean, what's the purpose of the playbook, to set up the rules, to explain about the game? And it's something that the coach can use, is can use in order to motivate and to also correct and guide his players, and that's what it is. So you basically taking that analogy, let's say you own a law firm, and you hired several paralegals, you have associates, you have admin staff, but you don't give them the rules. So you are basically playing a game. What's the difference between playing that and playing basketball? You're playing a game. You're the coach, you're the leader, but you don't tell him how to play the game. What's going to happen? Confusion. Are you ever going to win? How can you win if you don't have a playbook? And that is really the analogy that I look at.

That's great. So we're at that time when we get to the quick one liners. Okay? And those who've listened to this podcast have heard. This hundreds of tips from folks. So what's one app or technique you use for personal productivity?

A key technique that I use for personal productivity is that we eliminated internal emails when we communicate internally, we do not communicate via email. It's all via slack or teams, and we do not we eliminated internal emails, and that increased the productivity tremendously. That's

a great tip, because whenever we send an email now, it often gets lost or misused. Well,

not only that, then, like it's not just the lost and misused, but it's the amount of emails that you get a day is uncontrollable, and if you are going to start talking to your teammates internally via emails, it's never going to end, and it's going to create more confusion. So in order to speed up the communication in the business, what we do is we use internal we use Slack internally so we can communicate faster, and we organize it very well in terms of having different channels. So So I guess the productivity tip I'm trying to to give you is that we control the communication, we organize it, and we make sure that it's very concise and to the point on the right channel, so we don't create confusion. Awesome.

Do you have a personal wellness and fitness routine? Absolutely.

I love wellness and eating healthy and exercising. So every morning I work out, I plan the meals, I cook really healthy food, and when the weather is right, then I go for walks and hikes. And I usually live in the Pacific Northwest, where hiking and spending time outside, outdoors is very common, very it's great. It's a great environment for that. So I definitely at least 30 day, 30 minutes every day I exercise. I mean, I like to do it more, but if not at least 30 minutes. But now

you're in the northwest of Florida, which is on the current Gulf of Mexico, and soon to be the Gulf of America, maybe by the time you hear this podcast, who knows?

But that's a great place to be, because then I go, I actually can I live next to the beach, and I just walk for walk, go for walks. And, yeah, beach

walk. Great. Yeah,

absolutely.

Next one is best business books.

Oh, that's hard, right? Now I'm reading this book. It's called Power questions by Gerald panas. It's such a great book. It's very easy to I mean, I listen to books on audible like the rest of us, but I also have the book itself, but those are great examples of great questions to ask in different business situations. I love it so I am, I just, I'm almost at the end of it. It's very easy read, but it's a great, great book to read. And, of course, I have

many more blogs, podcast and YouTube. What do you subscribe to? And when it hits your feed, you stop everything else, and you got to listen to that podcast or that YouTube.

You know, I subscribe to many, but i What i Right now, I'm into how we can, we're going to use, just like a lot of people, how we're going to use AI, and how I really try to keep up to date on how to do that, because I think this is the future. We have to stay ahead. We need to know so I don't know if I will stop everything I'm doing, because that's part of my productivity commitment of finishing what I'm doing in order to allocate specific time for research and learning, because if I don't do that, then I'm going to get sucked all into that. But definitely anything that has to do with AI, I'm fascinated, and I want to know more.

Who's your NFL or sports team?

Well, the Blazers, of course, it's on NFL. It's the NBA, but NFL, I'm not following football, but I love the Blazers.

And what's a great introduction for you. What kind of businesses should we send your way?

Fast growing companies that are lacking consistency. They're already through the stage of, I need clients or I'm but they're in the stage of, I'm growing right now. I'm fast growing, and I need consistency, and I cannot do it myself. So I am ready to invest the time, the energy, whatever it is, in order to get my company to the next level. And yes, I do understand that systems are important, and I would like for you to do it like awesome.

Last question, Where can people get in touch with you?

LinkedIn. Adi Klevit, I'm the only Adi Klevit on LinkedIn. You can also call or text at 503-662-2911, website be https://bizsuccesscg.com. I'm sure you're going to include it in the show notes. A lot of ways to get a hold of me.

Adi, thank you so much. This was great.

Thank you, Jay, for having me.