Virtuoso Team Consulting, Inc.

While I grant this posting is later than I had wished, it is still timely and relevant. I was working on a project last week from Monday through Thursday, averaging 20-hour days. After everything had been accepted by the client, I passed out on the couch for a few hours. Upon waking I decided to unplug everything electronic for the whole weekend and spend time with my wife and friends. We traveled to Orlando (Winter Springs) for the Central Florida Scottish Highland Games.  I didn’t take phone calls, check emails or texts, and I felt great!

At first I had a great deal of trepidation, but in this 24-hour a day, always-on world it is easy to burnout. Intellectually, particularly as a business owner, I know I have to spend more time working than most in order to create a revenue stream that can operate without me in the future. This situation brought the balancing act many of us perform into stark relief, and I was forced to decide where to draw the line. Luckily, I have friends who are caring enough to remind me when to take some down time, but I also have clients who are able to work me to death, and I am grateful for both. The big surprise was that I met a vendor from Bradenton, Robin McAllister of Faire Isles Trading Company, and we hit it off while discussing the finer points of our Utilikilts. After all of the work I had done I still remained excited to talk shop on my vacation, a reminder to myself of how much I love my chosen career path.

I try to do everything in moderation, work and play, but it’s unrealistic to suggest that will happen all of the time. Sometimes the best any of us can do is to find some degree of balance. Hard work is nothing to whine about, but to balance it I followed with a tech disconnect and a couple of days out-of-town. Having been through slow times, and the current economic situation, I can honestly say I will never complain about being too busy, but I will also try harder to secure the freedom to enjoy my life, family and friends and to take the time to smell the roses and watch men and women in kilts toss the caber. : )

Do you live to work, or work to live? How do you decompress?

With a new year come new goals, new challenges, and new opportunities for success. Regrettably I have let my blog get lost in the shuffle of life and work, and that is something I resolve to fix this year. I will make a concerted effort to post, at least a small article, once per week. There are a lot of facets to business, and I should have no problem coming up with topics, but I would like to hear from others. If there is a topic you are interested in, have a question about, or even something would like to write a guest post, please email or call. It will help me collect ideas as to what to write about and also ensure everyone gets timely information about what really matters.

At a New Year’s party last weekend a number of people expressed interest in starting their own businesses this month. It seems since the economy is still in a state of flux people would rather cut their expenses and make a go of business ownership than continue worrying about losing jobs. They want to have a sense of control of their own lives, their future, and they want to do what makes them happy. While I, being in the business of helping businesses, wanted to get each and every one of these people on contracts, it occurred to me that in most cases they did not have the funds to hire my company. After a few conversations, all similar in scope if different in substance, these realities lead me to a new offering. I want to help each of these businesses get started along the right path, but do not have a great amount of time to dedicate to them. As such, I or a colleague will be meeting with the principals of each company for an hour or two this week to ensure they have a plan laid out, know where they want to go, and set them on the path to achieving their goals, and we will be doing it for FREE. They will have to do all of the heavy lifting, and will succeed or fail based on their own effort, but they will have the solid foundations many companies lack at startup.

Why are we doing this?

Quite simply, because we can! Small companies:

• Represent 99.7 percent of all employer firms.

• Employ just over half of all private sector employees.

• Pay 44 percent of total U.S. private payroll.

• Have generated 64 percent of net new jobs over the past 15 years.

• Create more than half of the nonfarm private gross domes­tic product (GDP).

• Hire 40 percent of high tech workers (such as scientists, engineers, and computer programmers).

As a sector, this is the easiest way to help create jobs, stabilize the economy, and help people do what they are passionate about.

Is there something in it for us?

Absolutely! Once these small businesses start to flourish their goals are going to change, they will outgrow their current business models. They will need to hire or retain a business consulting firm, and we will have the opportunity to solicit that business. Nothing will compel them aside from the fact that we helped when they needed it, and we did it well.

This is not necessarily going to be an ongoing offering, but if you are considering starting your own business, please contact us. We would love to help!

Thank you for taking the time to read this, and I will make every effort to have another post by next Monday.

I recently did a corporate valuation for a client and in going through the financials for the last few years it occurred to me that his business was worth little on paper but was actually quite lucrative. In fact, after a long conversation about possible valuation methods and the effects of the current downturn, the owner asked me what I would do in his position. My brain had been juggling all sorts of possible plans of action for two days, so I was prepared to state my singular thought, “I wouldn’t sell.”

What?

I had to play it backwards and forwards, different amounts, and different tweaks, but no matter how much I reordered the data I kept coming up with the same answer. To sell now would be leaving far too much money on the table. The buyer had not yet had access to the numbers I was working with, but I feel certain he thought he would be getting a steal. Certainly there is no shortage of business owners who would rather be bought out than just close the doors and turn the keys over to the landlord or bank. Something is better than nothing.

This is the love/hate aspect of consulting. I love my job, the analysis, brain storming, twisting and turning to see the whole picture and implementing solutions. After that comes the much harder part, when I can only give a factual account of what the numbers mean, and postulate the options the client has. In business I am, in game show terms, a “lifeline”, the real equivalent of “phone a friend”, “ask the audience”, or a “street shout-out.” I can apply all of my experience and education to a problem, and then break it down to the salient details to ensure each little part is understood. Ultimately, at the end of the day, the client is the one who has to pull the trigger and give their “final answer.” I get paid either way, only my reputation is on the line, and I can’t see into the future any more than anyone else.

I do everything I can to make money for my clients, or to mitigate losses when necessary, but imagine for a moment that your friend or family member is on a game show and has just been asked a question that could mean the difference between struggling to make ends meet and never having to work again, when all of a sudden, your phone rings…

There are a lot of independent business owners out there who feel as though they have, neither a pot to pee in, nor window to throw it out of. The economic slow down is causing a great many business owners to go out in search of a part-time or even full time job, thus relegating their businesses to an “as able” status.

Truth be told, historically, this is the best time to start a business, and the worst time to have already been running one. Many of my friends are business owners, as makes sense in my profession, and the majority have found other jobs. One, however, recently contacted me and has decided to become lean. He was remembering the old days of his start-up, the fun he had with only a handful of reliable clients. We are currently restructuring his company to take him back to that stage, and it occurred to me that this may be an excellent solution for others too! His revenue is going to drop, but so will his overhead and expenses. I love the idea; it feels like tech going artesian, growth through getting smaller.

Did you go from being a business owner, to having your business own you? If so, I would love to hear your story, and share what you did with others. Please leave a comment.

©2008-2009 Virtuoso Team Consulting, Inc.   All Rights Reserved.

The sheer volume of things that must be done to legally start a corporation in the state of Florida is astounding:

1.Register with the Department of State of Florida, Division of Corporations

2.If necessary, make sure you have an occupational license

3.Get an EIN (Employer Identification Number) from the IRS

4.Elect and file the paperwork to be a subchapter S corporation from the IRS

5.Pay to be licensed with the county and city, as required.

6.Don’t forget your license to collect sales tax, or pay unemployment tax

7.How about a worker’s compensation waiver?

That is just the legal and tax stuff someone has to go through, let’s not forget about actual business planning, for example:

1.Writing a business plan

2.Creating a marketing plan

3.Registering your domain name (in case you should want to have a web presence, which is highly recommended in this day and age)

4.Establishing your budget, pricing, cost structures and profitability

…to name but a few.

There are also miscellaneous things like bookkeeping software, hiring employees, and exit strategies that should be established.

It really makes me wonder why anyone would want to start their own business, but then I remember what one of my clients at the bank said to me, “Jer, if you do what you love, you’ll never work a day in your life.”

©2008-2009 Virtuoso Team Consulting, Inc.   All Rights Reserved.

During an economic downturn, if you can’t find a job, you make one. I was unlucky enough to finish graduate school during the down-swing of the worst recession since the Great Depression. In an effort to turn lemons into lemonade I decided to apply my new MBA and seven years of banking experience to helping small business owners achieve success during this difficult time. The following will be a record of the goals I plan to achieve, the lessons I learn, and the people I meet.

For the last thirteen years I have worked closely with the owners of small and medium sized businesses as their private banker, confidante, and advisor. This relationship allowed me to learn from their successes as well as their failures. By comparing and contrasting the different methods used by each person, I was able to determine what worked and where mistakes were being made. After spending the last eight years in banking I decided it was time for a change, so I started working on my MBA. Two years later I graduated with honors from Regis University, a Jesuit university in Denver, Colorado. It just so happened that during the last six months of my studies, the economy was sent into a dizzying tailspin from which it has yet to recover.

After applying to a number of positions over a period of months, I decided it was time for me to do what I always wanted to do, start my own consulting firm. It occurred to me that if I was unable to find a job, I should go ahead and create one with the possibility of creating more jobs for others. A number of my friends and classmates, each with different skill sets, agreed to lend me their experience in order to help me achieve this goal.

Virtuoso Team Consulting, Inc. was formed with the specific intent of helping the owners of small and medium sized businesses achieve their goals in a deliberate and cost effective manner. Ironically, this was also the first hurdle I was to experience. After working hard for two years in graduate school to earn a business degree, I discovered there was an important aspect of business that was missing from my education: How to start one. Again, not one to dwell on the negative, I took this as a learning opportunity and proceeded to gather information I would need to start a subchapter S Corporation in Florida. It has been a really interesting learning experience, and I now have enough experience to help others who want to follow their dreams.

©2008-2009 Virtuoso Team Consulting, Inc.   All Rights Reserved.