A Podcast | Ben Serven

Pete Neubig: All right, welcome back, everybody. As promised, I got Ben Serven. I said that right? Right, Ben?

Ben Serven: You did, you did. You got it.

Pete Neubig: I got it right. So, uh, Ben, CEO, co founder of Black Sheep Global. So, Ben, tell us, tell the listeners a little bit about what Black Sheep is and then tell us kind of your journey, how you got in there and how you why you decided to create black sheep.

Ben Serven: Absolutely. So Black Sheep Global is a process tech and automation consulting and implementation firm. Now that's a lot of 10-cent words said in a row. So to maybe define it a little bit more clearly. We help property managers build out their tech stack in a way that is customized to their business and works for them, not against them. So we help you take your business, integrate technology where it makes sense, and hopefully build you a better business. That's really what we do. Now, as far as how we got started, I am, I would say relatively new to the property management space. Now, it's been about five years, I want to say. And technically speaking, it is Hurricane Harvey's fault. As all Houstonians know, Hurricane Harvey hit us about seven years ago, and I was one of the many who was displaced. And because of that, I had to drive about an hour and a half into work a couple of times a week. And that was the. That was the pits. But, lucky for me, I had recently discovered the BiggerPockets podcast and realized, oh, man, all that stuff I'd heard about real estate investing and property management was actually pretty dang cool. And it wasn't long after that, um, that I received a job offer from the team at LeadSimple. And I had the had the privilege of working with the LeadSimple team and joining their organization to be one of the first implementers that was a part of the company. So really got to dig into processes from the ground up when that software was still very new. And since that time, I've moved on to work for myself, but have continued in the same space of serving property managers with building out their technology on a very custom basis. So yeah, that's it in a nutshell.

Pete Neubig: And you're now like a LeadSimple like expert.

Ben Serven: Yeah. I've, I've spent enough time I was, I was running some just rough calculations the other day on, you know, the number of clients we served and, you know, average number of processes per client. And I think it's somewhere around, like 2500 processes that I've built custom for different PMs. And, like, yeah, you kind of get to know things a little bit after you do that many times in a row.

Pete Neubig: Yeah. You know, when I own my PM firm and I was I was one of the first that I know of, like building out my process. There was guys that had like, you know, checklists and stuff, but I was like literally flowing out the processes. And there was a lot of processes in property management. It's like you run three companies, right? You got your real estate piece, you got your management piece, and then you got your kind of like your vendor, your maintenance piece. And then of course there's all these little sub processes. So let's talk a little bit about that. When should a company because we have people that you know are on their first door. And we have people that are on their thousandth door. When should a company really look at processing or document processing and what is defined, what that is to you? Because that could mean different things to different people. Like when should they document their processes and what does that look like?

Ben Serven: Yeah, absolutely. So as far as when you should start, I'd say as soon as possible. I think documenting processes is the key to scalability. So if you ever have the intention to build your company into something more than just you. Documenting processes needs to happen as soon as possible. Now, as far as the specifics of what that means, I think that varies widely between specific companies and really where you're at in your growth trajectory. Right? When you're a small company, you don't need an extremely technologically fancy software that runs your processes for you. Just having a checklist is a really solid start. Um, and that literally is as simple as taking a sheet of paper and writing something down. Now you want to level it up significantly. Throw that puppy in a Google doc, right? That's a simple upgrade that makes it a lot more scalable, because you've made it replicable much more easily than a physical sheet of paper. And then the next level is, you know, putting it into maybe a project management software where you have some checklists and then you start thinking about process management softwares. Right? Like LeadSimple or APTLY or some of these other tools that are on the market today. There's all kinds of ways to to skin the cat here, but I would certainly encourage anyone at the beginning of your property management business journey to start thinking about processes from day one. Because again, if you plan to scale, if you plan to do something more than just manage a half dozen or 20 properties by yourself, which I think most people do, right? Aside from some of the real estate agents who are kind of accidentally in this space. Um, but anybody who's really looking for that growth trajectory needs to be thinking about processes, um, regardless of of where their business is at at that current point.

 

Pete Neubig: So if I have like, okay, I want to have I'm managing six properties right now. Let's just say and I want to get to 60, you know in another call it year. Um, so I should start documenting those processes of what I do today in a checklist. Um, is there is there a time when it's too soon. Like, do I just kind of do? Because what if I document the wrong thing? Could that could that be a problem?

Ben Serven: Uh, it could be, but I think it's actually okay to document the wrong things, because when you're building a business, you don't know what you don't know. And so you need to have an attitude of being willing to learn and to fall on your face and to get back up again and go back at it. And just starting to have the habit of being process driven and pushing yourself to document your processes. That's really the key function here. Um, like the to me, process building is more about it's kind of a weird way to say it, but it's a lifestyle, right? Um, when you start thinking in process, I know for me, like, I go to a restaurant, I'm like, okay, how did this meal make it to my table? You know, what are all the the things that had to happen in order for me to have this plate of lasagna, right? Or, um, you know, if I'm driving on the highway and I see a skyline building on the side of the road, it's like, it's like, wow, okay, what had to be true in order for that to happen? Well, you know, they had to have the funding and they, you know, had to have all the, you know, construction people and, you know, how did all this work? How did they get there? So to me, it really is like a mindset and a way of thinking and looking at the world. And that is really where I want to encourage people towards, not just the wrote, hey, let's write down what we have to do next. It's more about thinking in process.

Pete Neubig: Now, when I did my processes, by the way, that's a great like, I'm going to go back to that. I got more questions on that. But I want to I want to dive into this first because you and I, we have a very similar worldview, but most entrepreneurs don't. And we want to talk about that, how we can help them. Um, but um, before I, before I ask that. So like, if I'm documenting something and it's not, it can change. Right. Like things, things can change when when I'm documenting something. So you're saying like, hey, document everything you do this way it's documented. And then when something does change, you can see actually where it's changed for the for the better or for worse, but for the, for the better. And so it's important to actually what are you doing sometimes maybe you're doing stuff not the same time every time. So the the checklist will kind of keep you, uh, kind of in formation. Right. Doing the same thing. Exactly. Time.

Ben Serven: Exactly. And like a really easy way to do this from day one is to track your time, right? You don't even have to write down a whole process and be like, okay, here's all the 15 things that I'm going to do for this particular process. And I'm looking forward and knowing what's going to happen tomorrow. No, it's actually way easier just to start by, you know, get one of these super cheap or free, uh, time tracking apps, and you can just record what you do all day, right? You make it even easier. Just record with a pencil. Right. Write it down on a sheet of notes at 10 a.m.. I was doing this at 1030, I changed it. I'm doing this at, you know, 10:45 I switched. I'm doing this. And again, this is really more of a mindset thing of just changing to instead of just reactively doing right, thinking about where you are and what you're doing, and then recording it so that you actually have a reference point. Um, my, uh, my team gives me a hard time for this, but I actually track all the time that I spend off the clock. Right? All of my quote unquote personal time. Um, so that I can see. All right. Compared to how much time I spent working over the course of the year. How much time did I spend in personal stuff? I haven't gotten crazy on this. At some point, I promised myself I'm going to start tracking my sleep. Um, which there's stuff to do. You know, there's tools for that, right? You can get the Garmins or the Apple Watches or whatever. But, um, to me, having that ability to, you know.

Pete Neubig: I would say, don't you have a bunch of young kids? I don't think you get much sleep, actually.

Ben Serven: That's the reality, right? That's why I want to track it. Then I can graph out, you know, my months of sleep and, you know, compared to the age of the kids and, you know, where we were living. To me, it's just it's fascinating to be able to look at this information. Um, there's a there's a book I really like. Um, and I'm blanking on the name of the author, but the title is called The Gap and The Gain. Right? And, um, the idea of the gap and the gain is that rather than always focusing on where you want to get to and where you are, let me rephrase that. Focusing on where you are to where you want to get to, instead, looking at where you are versus where you've come from. Right. And looking at that trailing data. Right. The the time data or the process data or whatever it is that's such a valuable resource because it develops this attitude of of gratefulness. Right. You can see your growth, right? Maybe I only got six hours of sleep for, you know, five months in a row. Um, but it's getting better, right? I'm getting another 30 minutes because my kids are maybe sleeping more.

 

Pete Neubig: So I think what happens is people get analysis paralysis because they feel like when they say document the process, I have to have to document every little thing I do in this process. Um, where do you come out on that? Do we have to document every little thing we do, or can you kind of can you get away with doing kind of high level and then over time, you, you build a more detailed SOP?

Ben Serven: Yeah, I would certainly fall on the, the latter side of the equation there, Pete. When we build processes with our clients, we actually focus on building a very streamlined, simple workflow. First we're going to talk through the high points, and we even document when we, um, when we are documenting a process, we'll start out with, you know, the, the broadest parameters of the process. What is this about? What do we want this process to accomplish? Who's involved in the process as far as we know right now? Right. We don't even talk about what we're doing in the process until we thought about the bigger picture. But to answer your question a little bit more directly, I would highly encourage anyone who is thinking about process documentation to just start. It doesn't have to be perfect. Again, if you're looking for a process mindset as the outcome rather than my business is now all process-ified and I can do whatever the heck I want because that's not going to be true, right? But if you're thinking about becoming a different person, instead of just about doing this one thing as part of your business journey, then it's a whole different way of looking at life.

Pete Neubig: Yeah, and one of the things that I did when I started is very similar to what you just what you just laid out. We, we create a process flow in like a Visio or a Lucidchart, which is kind of a high level. Right? What to do you really at that point you're looking at all the decision points. And then we went behind as we kind of dove in and created, you know, basically a process manual off of that. So then you can click on a certain box and it might bring you to a word doc section of how to do that, that thing which is a little rudimentary. Now you have, you know, the LeadSimples and the APTLYs and all that stuff to kind of help you with that. So I kind of like that that idea that you laid out. So you keep bringing about like, okay, becoming this person. Right. And we talked about that. You hear about that a lot, especially with these, you know, these business coaches, like you have to become right. Become this, become that. Who are you going to become? And so you're saying the same thing, like you have to become this process operator guy but let's be frank, most entrepreneurs are high eyes, which means they're very little detail. And I live this right. I, you and I are very similar. We speak the same language. I love getting on the board and writing down process flows like I'm a geek like you in that respect. My business partner. As soon as I started writing on the board, like his eyes would go in the back of his head like he'd have a seizure. So how does how does a business owner who maybe doesn't have that skill set or that you know, that personality profile. How do they tackle this?

Ben Serven: Yeah, that's a good question. There's a lot of different ways. But let's talk through a couple of them. So number one is bringing in talent right. Not everybody is good at this. And it's okay to not be good at it, but it is something that you need as a business owner. And I think bringing in talent, whether you are hiring a new team member or bringing in, um, a firm or hiring a temporary consultant, whatever that looks like, there's a lot of different ways to bring people in who can help you tremendously. Um, just because they have a different way of looking at things. And if you're looking for somebody who can help you find VAs, you should talk to Pete Neubig. But, um, there there are lots of ways to skin the cat here. Um, the second way to do this is to determine that you need to do it, and then to build the process, right. What is the process of becoming a more process oriented person? So to me, again, I'll use a little personal anecdote here. When I initially started getting interested in real estate, Hark back to the BiggerPockets podcast. I remember hearing one of the hosts at the time say something along the lines of, if you want to do real estate stuff, you should just talk about real estate all the time and it'll happen eventually. It's like, oh, I can do that. That's free, right? I already like to talk about stuff that I'm interested in, so I'm going to talk to people about real estate. And so I did and I talked to everybody about real estate. I talked to my family and my extended family and people at church and people at work. And everybody was talking to me about real estate. And about six months later, I had a buddy who came to me and was like, hey, Ben, I heard you were doing some real estate stuff. Can I give you some money to invest in a property? Like, absolutely. Let's do this thing right. But that only happened because I started getting habitual about doing the thing that I knew would help me accomplish the goal that I wanted. So if I'm thinking about how I could become a more process oriented person, like my own mindset. Um, for me, that starts with getting really nerdy about processes. So I'm going to start reading books. I'm going to start listening to podcasts and hearing other people talk about processes like this conversation. Right. If you're here, you're you've already taken the first step. Y'all, you are hearing two grown men talk about processes for a period of time. This is step one, right? Step two you should go order some books about process and I'll throw out there just a book mention here. The Checklist Manifesto, one of the best books I've ever read on processes and process development.

Pete Neubig: That's a great book.

Ben Serven: So there's tons of resources out there. And I think for the business owners who are high, I and Pete, side note I'm a higher I than you might expect. There are so many ways and opportunities for us to develop new skill sets. We just have to gather the troops enough mentally to focus in on the thing and force ourselves to do what needs to be done. And I think the last thing I would mention here is, and this is really kind of on top of the the other potentials of bringing in talent or kind of forcing yourself to grow here is accountability. You have to have accountability if you want to make this happen. And again, super important for people who are high eyes, um, we've got so many ideas and so many different things that we want to do, um, without having someone or several someones to hold your nose to the grindstone, it's going to be really challenging for you to actually execute. And this, I think, is a great place for you to involve masterminds or accountability groups or have a partner who is on the same route. Maybe you know someone who is working with you or someone who's a who's a competitor or someone in another state who's on the same journey, whatever that looks like. Building in some levels of accountability is huge, and there's professional organizations for that. There's tons of mastermind groups, so it really is just as simple as saying, I want to get better at processes and then starting to do the things that you see other people who are process people are doing.

Pete Neubig: I'll add one more. I think that that that you can you might be able to find somebody inside your organization already who just might be process driven instead of finding, uh, a virtual assistant, um, or hiring outside or whatever. But there might be some talent in your, in your organization already. So you talked about like, just getting started and I'm going to ask you here, like where should they start. Like what's the process. But before I do that, many property management firms are Incredibly busy. They're very reactive. They're in chaos mode. Okay, so how do you even start to start? How do you get this to, like, you know, like, there's more work here is my guess. How do you get the team buy in? Why document processes. What's the end result? What's the vision you can tell your team like that's once we do this, this is what the business looks like?

Ben Serven: Okay, so that's like 15 questions rolled into one, but I love it. Um all right. So the first the first question, how do you even get to the point of starting this when life is so crazy, the business is blowing up. Everything is happening at the wrong time. Um, capacity. Right. Everyone has 24 hours a day, and that's it, nothing more. Now, if you're 24 hours are full, the only way that you get more time is by cutting out something that you're doing. So you have to take a long, hard look at your life and say, okay, what of this, can I delegate? What of this? Can I trash right? What are the things that I'm doing that are wasting time? And decide how serious you are about making this happen. So that may be a little bit of cold hard truth here, but to me, I think that's what you have to do now.

Pete Neubig: And more importantly, you can actually do that with your team as well. Have them look at what they're doing as well. Right.

Ben Serven: Absolutely. And on that capacity front, I've told this to more than one of my clients. You need to stop selling. Stop taking in more business. You're hurting your team, right? You have to stop selling so that you can build up the systems that will support your business. Now, that's not a stop selling forever and ever take in another door, right? It's. Take a break. Pump the brakes for a minute. Let's get things a little bit more established and stop overloading the Reloading the machine. Right. And to me, that is, you have to force yourself to create that capacity. Um, but again, that that's a pretty uncomfortable thing to do. Um, so it really takes wanting it, right? Uh, just like anything else. Right. If you want to get up. Pete, I know you're a runner. Um, if you want to get up and be a runner, you got to get out of bed early in the morning and actually get out the door and go do the running, right?

Pete Neubig: Especially in Houston where it's super hot.

Ben Serven: It's not just as simple as saying I want to be a runner, right? You actually have to do the work and it's painful. Um, so I think there's a lot of, uh, a lot of equivalency between, um, any type of self-development, honestly, and building out and doing business development, because that's what this is, right? You're developing your business into something that it wasn't before. What was your other question?

Pete Neubig: How do you get team buy in?

Ben Serven: How do you team buy in

Pete Neubig: Right. Ben, I'm already working eight hours, nine hours a day. This is going to cost me more hours. And I don't see the I don't see the benefit. How do you get the team buy in?

Ben Serven: Yeah. So a lot of a lot of different things here. And honestly, in my opinion, team buying is the hardest part of all of process adoption and process thinking and all this jazz, right. Um, it is the the number one most challenging issue. I don't have any secret sauce for you, but I'll share some things that I have observed to work well. Um, there's two approaches that I have seen, um, in terms of kind of creating process adoption. Uh, number one is what I call the burn the ships method, which is we're doing this, get on board or get out. It's very effective, but it's incredibly painful. And you will have churn and it's really going to suck. Number two would be the coaching method. Now this is where it's a, Our team, this is happening. We're all in this together. We're all going to have to sacrifice. Let's give ourselves some time to make this happen so that we can all ramp up to making this change. And that, honestly, is necessary in both the documenting of the processes and also in the adoption of the processes, because those are really two separate things, right? The documentation is one phase, the implementation is another phase, and the adoption is its own thing. So all of these things have to happen in order for you to be successful. Now is it possible? Absolutely. Is it easy? Heck, no. And it takes a lot of blood, sweat and tears to get there. You're going to add something.

Pete Neubig: I was going to say, I think your point is spot on. How many times have we documented something and then we don't follow it, right? We just don't like, it's like, yeah, we document it. Great. But yeah, but that's not what you're doing. So you you just documented vaporware. You know? One of the things that we did, and I don't know if this is this not a magic bullet by any means, but just just an add on is, um, we, uh, talked about the vision of what their life would look like in six months or however long we thought it would take to change a process. Right. So we'd say, you know, right now you're you're completely stressed. You're working late, right? Imagine when you know exactly what needs to be done each time, every time. And you can give. And so, you know, that reduces stress. Imagine if you were proactive. Imagine if you get your day done in six hours instead of eight hours. This is all the stuff that we believe, you know, would help you out. So if you can build a nice vision of a picture, that usually helps get buy in. Not all the time, but it usually helps.

Ben Serven: Yeah, absolutely. That's that's what I would call the the WIFM. Right. The 'what's in it for me?'

Pete Neubig: That's right.

Ben Serven: Being able to ultimately kind of put yourself in someone else's shoes and think about what are their priorities. Um, and that can vary wildly between each person. So I think this is where I generally kind of prefer that coaching methodology because it is more personalized, right? Yes, you have to lead a team, but it's a team of individuals, right? So that means you need to have relationships and understand where people are coming from and what is motivating them and how you can, as a leader, get your team to the finish line or at least to the next stop.

Pete Neubig: So okay, so now you know somebody's listening. They decide, I'm going to do this. I, you know, I'm going to I'm going to reach out to Ben. Um, I have somebody that can that can be, you know, the go-to guy on our side that they can kind of head the project. I found somebody, you know, internally. That's going to be great. Um, I am going to buy this check the checklist manifesto book. I'm going to be behind this. I'm going to I'm going to support my team. I'm going to get buy in. Where do I start? Do you have a specific process that you that you want them to them to start with you or just where they start.

Ben Serven: Yeah. So the way I look at property management is there's, um, there's a ton of different things that are happening. Right? But most of the pain and challenges on the operational side of the business, right. Because there's more than just the operations, there's, you know, operations and accounting and leadership and HR and, you know, all the other things that need to happen within the business. Business development. Right. Um, I usually focus on operations. That's just me. Other people have different opinions, but that's where I would suggest you start. Now, in terms of where you start in your operations, um, this is where I would think a little bit more about where you are in the business and what's going on. Right. So, um, I would consider where are you having to spend the most time? Where are the fires? Right. Because to me, if I'm thinking about process implementation, I want to do that where it matters most, not where it matters least. Right? I want to do that in that in the high impact areas versus in the low impact. So usually I'm looking at onboarding or renewals. Those are usually the highest pain points in the business. Sometimes a third category is going to be dealing with delinquent rents. Right. And again I'm mentioning these because these are high repetition processes. And if you start with these processes your team is going to have to adopt to the processes quickly because you already have a lot of them going on. And that's really that that key piece. Right. The more you do it, the better you're going to get at it.

Pete Neubig: When okay, I like that. I like that a lot. When do you start looking to automation? Do you tell me what you like? Yeah. Tell me kind of process what you recommend.

Ben Serven: So, so many, so many thoughts and ideas around this. But here's what I would suggest. Um, automation is incredible and also terrible. It will do the wrong thing the right way. So many times in a row. It will screw everything up. If you don't have very clear controls about what you're trying to accomplish. So I would not do automation. I would not dive into Zapier or Airtable or Monday.com or any of these other no code softwares until you have first written out your processes on paper or in a Google doc or something like this, and you are consistently able to follow those processes. I wouldn't even necessarily jump into another software until you can consistently follow your processes on paper. Now, when you're when you can do that, level up right. There's so much opportunity in implementing technology and even, you know, relatively simple automations. And then you can get to the more sophisticated stuff. But I would go slow.

Pete Neubig: How long do you think that takes? So I'm running it on paper and it smooths out. I let that run for like a month?

Ben Serven: If It's different with every team, if I'm being honest. And this is one of the, one of the key screening criteria that I have when I'm talking to a client is how tech friendly is your team, right? So I would say for most people, going from no documented processes to writing down your processes and actually following them consistently, probably going to be maybe three, maybe four months, right. And we're talking again, specifically about operational processes, not necessarily everything else. And um, in practice, this is really literally a checklist or a sheet that someone can print out and have next to their desk. Um, but as far as the next phase, I'm guessing that's where you're going here, Pete. Uh, doing the implementation in a more technology facing solution. That is a bigger project, in my opinion. Um, it takes a lot more to build out, you know, all the different, um, ideations and conditional logic and the things that we do in our heads without necessarily thinking about them. So to me, in my experience, the fastest I've seen that go through all operational processes is probably about six months. And that's building processes in a software of your choice. I'm going to say LeadSimple, because that's what I've seen it done in and that time frame at about six months. And you can have a pretty smooth operating system. It's not going to be super duper automated, but it will work and it will assist your team dramatically.

Pete Neubig: If somebody's like, man, I just don't have the time and the money to go with a LeadSimple solution or a fully automated solution. Um, do you find that some of the softwares out there, like Appfolio, Buildium, stuff like that, do they have some automation built into them, like auto like auto emails and like you can use some of that before you actually level up into a LeadSimple or APTLY or something like that?

Ben Serven: Yeah, there definitely are a decent number of native automations within you know, Rentvine, Buildium. Appfolio. And there's a lot that you can do there. That said, I would still encourage you rather than thinking, okay, you know, I'm never going to make it to LeadSimple or APTLY or whatever. Um, the way I like to think about these softwares is your Buildium, Appfolio, Rentvine. These are systems of record, right? So they tell you what is. They tell you the truth, right? Um, and your operational aspects of this are mainly going to be around, uh, work orders and maybe, um, some of the financial aspects of the business. Um, but the rest of your operational tasks. Right. Your processes really aren't going to find a home in those softwares, at least not a super clean one. Now, to be fair, I know that Appfolio has recently launched Realm-X. I'm really excited about what's possible there. We're doing some exploring on that internally, and I'm hopeful that there's going to be a lot of juice there in the future. But I think where those softwares are today is still relatively limited when it comes to workflows and automations around operational tasks.

Pete Neubig: Nailed it the brother, we're going to hit a commercial break, and then I'm going to come back and put you in the lightning round. You ready for the lightning round?

Ben Serven: Let's do it.

Pete Neubig: All right. We'll be right back.

Pete Neubig: All right. Welcome back, everybody. I got Ben Serven here from Black Sheep global, process guru, by the way. Um, if you're watching this on video, I don't know if you can see behind me. Ben. You see, I have the process, King. Now, I got the process king there, but I think I'm going to have to relinquish that title to you, buddy. You're like the new process king. I'm like the process jester now. All right, let's get you on the lightning round. Here you go. Um, do you have BDMs in your company?

Ben Serven: Uh, yes. And that is me. Um, I put, uh, that's really important to me that, um, all business development goes through me, at least for the time being, because I have the vision and the ownership of the company, and I want to ensure that the clients we work with directly align with the vision that we have, and also that I'm protecting my team from clients who we don't want to work with.

Pete Neubig: It's usually the last, um, it's usually the last kind of job role that the entrepreneur gives up is the the sales piece.

Ben Serven: Yeah.

Pete Neubig: Uh, do you use virtual team?

Ben Serven: Yes. We are all virtual. Um, the entire team is, um, all over the country. We've got a few people who are stateside. We've got one currently in Canada. Uh, we've got, uh, two in South America. And planning to hire more virtual talent in the future.

Pete Neubig: What is one piece of advice you'd give someone just starting out in business?

Ben Serven: Um, well, we talked about document. Document, document. Um, that's still very true advice, but I guess, um, maybe a different piece of advice I would give is, that your mindset is everything. And I am realizing this more and more as time passes, that the developments that I do in my business and the growth that I go after is all about building my own mindset and becoming more than I was yesterday.

Pete Neubig: Your company will only grow to the level of the CEO.

Ben Serven: Amen to that.

Pete Neubig: Does pineapple belong on pizza?

Ben Serven: Yes it does.

Pete Neubig: When you hit the fast food joints, which I know no one wants to admit that they hit the fast food joints. What is your go to?

Ben Serven: Uh, it's going to be chick fil A, and it's going to be. Oh, man, I can't remember what it's called, but the the super deluxe sandwich with the spicy cheese, that's that is my go to pick.

Pete Neubig: I love it, man. I like the number three, which is the spicy chicken at Chick-Fil-A. What was your first job?

Ben Serven: Oh, man. Uh, let me give you a caveat or ask a clarifying question. Is this, uh, actually employed job or job that I created for myself?

Pete Neubig: Could be a job you created for yourself.

Ben Serven: All right. First job I created for myself was selling cookies and eggs to my neighbors at. I want to say 7 or 8.

Pete Neubig: You are a high eye.

Ben Serven: After that, dog watching. Uh, that was. That was the next level up.

Pete Neubig: I gotta ask, so your age eight. You're selling cookies? Did you create a process for it, like in your mind? Like, before you even knew what it was?

Ben Serven: So, interestingly, I won't say that I completely had a process, but I remember having a conversation with my parents who were kind enough to front our, uh, our goods that we needed to make the cookies, and having no concept of the fact that, oh, there's actually expense up front for me to create this product, it's like, whoa, my mind is blown right now. But yeah, that was definitely a big, big eye opener.

Pete Neubig: My first job I was a I was a New York Daily News newsboy, and I created a whole process on how to. Because there was no, like, Venmo back then. I create a process of how people can pay me. And I had like these envelope system that people can pay me. And every Thursday morning I'd get my money. So I was building processes even back then. Alright. What is your ideal vacation?

Ben Serven: Uh, beach? Um, beach in Florida. Somewhere up by Destin, probably. Um, nice clear water. Hanging out with my wife. And just chill. Do nothing.

Pete Neubig: What is one thing that most people don't know about you?

Ben Serven: Oh, boy. Uh, one thing that most people don't know about me is I come from a family of nine kids, and I'm. I'm the the middle child. Um, so I got the the short end of the stick. Both on being part of the younger group and the older group, and was my own independent country.

Pete Neubig: If you could have dinner with anyone alive, who would it be?

Ben Serven: Oh man, that's a really good question.

Pete Neubig: Um, it's the one that stumps the most people.

Ben Serven: I think, today. Based on this recording, I would be super curious to sit down for dinner with Elon Musk. Um, I'd be really curious just to pick his brain, because that's someone who I look at and say, wow, you are a super nerd. But the reason you have had so much success, in my opinion, is because you are also super process oriented. So I'd be really curious to glean process insights from someone of that caliber.

Pete Neubig: That's a great one. That is a great one. What Disney character do you most associate with?

Ben Serven: Oh, man. Um, I'm not a big fan of Disney, if I'm being honest here.

Pete Neubig: You can use Marvel or DC. I'll let you. I'll let you off the hook. You can use a comic.

Ben Serven: Okay. All right, all right. Um, let's see here. Um, I'm gonna go with Captain America.

Pete Neubig: I love it. What is one challenge you are currently facing in your business?

Ben Serven: Okay, a challenge that we're facing in our business is, um, capacity and growth. One of my commitments to my team and to our clients is that we do not operate above capacity. We always operate in a place where we can serve our clients fully and without restriction, and also not overburden the team with too much work. Now, because of that commitment to operate in a capacity, that means my growth is extremely limited by people. And because we are in a very technical space, it requires very technical people, which is something that I struggle to find. So finding the right person, the right character, the right personality, that's a real tough one. Um, but right now we have some solid people and now it's just about knowledge transfer and training.

Pete Neubig: And I bet you a property manager who's kind of tech savvy would be a great,  would be a great somebody great to to have you, like, once they're if they ever get burnt out of PM and they want to.

Ben Serven: Oh, yeah.

Pete Neubig: Service it. You know.

Ben Serven: I've had a couple who have asked like, hey, my future retirement, can I come work for you?

Pete Neubig: Yeah. Anybody that sells their business right, they'd be a good fit. All right, last question. Dogs or cats? Who do you prefer?

Ben Serven: Uh, dogs? Definitely.

Pete Neubig: You're off the hot seat, brother. Um, tell our our listeners how they can find you.

Ben Serven: Yeah. Um, a couple of places. The main place where we should, uh, where you can find us is on processesmadesimple.io. That'll get you in touch with our private Facebook group where we post weekly updates, walkthroughs. We get super down the the nerdy trail of all sorts of sorts of things today. Actually, we recorded right before this and we talked through for about an hour about Jotform, Calendly integrating those with LeadSimple and building out a process to handle all of that. That was super fun. So processesmadesimple.io or Benjaminserven.com.

Pete Neubig: Awesome, man. If you are listening to this and you're not a NARPM member, why not join? Go to narpm.org or call the good folks at (800) 782-3452. And if you want to be cool like Ben and have remote team members all over the world, you want to be able to find them, have them take some free training, and then pay them all through a platform for free, vpmsolutions.com or you can email me directly at pete@vpmolutions.com. Ben, thanks so much for being here today. See you everybody.

Ben Serven: Sweet.