It’s 11:30PM and I’ve been at the SGV Business Group, LLC offices for the last 3 hours getting all of our 2012 paperwork for Strategy Partners prepared to file, and stay compliant.
The reason I’m writing this, is because although I’ve been here for 3 hours, Robert at SGV has been prepping all this paperwork, and getting everything set up for at least 4 times as long, and is finding really interesting and awesome ways to keep us protected. Stuff we would have never have figured out without doing tons of research ourselves.
This probably goes without saying, but I’m surprised how many times over at Strategy Partners, we’ll start working with a new client, and they have no one handling the business management or operations. We’ll they have someone working on it, but it’s just not their core strengths and they miss stuff.
I can honestly say that my core strength is finding a holistic strategy that integrates design, technology, and business into a company’s presence. Staying compliant with government regulations, and making sure that everything required to keep our company in good standing with the Federal and State government, makes my head hurt.
What I’m getting at is that every business has 2 kinds of costs, real- tangible costs (like the stuff you pay money for) and opportunity costs, the things that cost you money, but you never had to pay anything for. The last year, I can genuinely say that I had a handful of awesome partnerships, and missed some huge opportunities, because I was busy handling knucklehead stuff because I did not want to pay someone else to do it for me.
Huge mistake.
By my count (and I’m sure I’ve got clients that share similar stories), Strategy Partners lost about $8,000 in revenue due to opportunity costs. The moral of the story to stick to your core strengths, and in the areas where you’re week figure out how to outsource it to someone with the domain expertise. Trust me, most of the time the “I can’t afford it” excuse it not going to be a relevant one, when you take the time your would have spend doing it yourself, and invest it in finding new business and building new relationships.
Gerardo Ritchey 