Fire your Accountant & Hire a Partner

Your Small Business Success Team

Posted on 24 December 2009

Your small business success team needs more than you alone!  Unless, you have figured out how to be in several places at the same time and perform multiple tasks at the same time.  If you have, can you please teach me.

Making your small business grow is a full time job. Add employees or contractors and your hands are full! If you are anything like me, it’s tough to keep it all going.  To help me overcome some challenges, I rely on my team.

The people I can’t live without include:

• My accountant
• My banker
• My lawyer
• My financial advisor
• My computer technician

Large corporations have a CEO, COO, CFO, CIO, CMO and on and on……. Who do you have? Just you?  In a big company, decisions are shared and experts are used to help.  This gives them a strategic advantage over you.  All those Chiefs (C__’s) have a vested interest in the company. Your team should too!

If you don’t have a good small business team, you may find yourself in over your head.  On this blog, we have given you some helpful tips to find a good accountant for your small business.  You can use those same tips to find a good banker, lawyer, financial advisor, even a good computer tech.  If you need help to rephrase them, post a question in the comment field below.

The key to building your team is “Relationship” and I don’t mean, “call ya when I need ya!”  I mean…. you should know these people.  Do you know their families, dreams, and aspirations? Do they care about your success? Do you care about theirs?

When the executives of the company meet to make decisions and review important issues, they are all together in the same room. They all know the important issues with the company.  And they all have the same goal – company growth and profit.

Does your team have the same goal? Do they know that their success and your success is linked together? Do they know your important issues?

If you currently don’t talk to your team members monthly, then start.  Call your banker. Ask him for coffee. At coffee find out if the interest rates are going up or down and what the banks lending strategies are. Ask him if he can recommend how to use the banks money to grow your business.

Call your accountant. Ask him for lunch. At lunch find out if your long term debt should be liquidated in the next year and how that will affect your cash flow. Also ask how to decrease your accounts receivable and what products make you the most money.

You are the CEO of your small business and they are your team! Use your team. Call them today, right now, or at least before the week is up.

On your team,

Mark Kennedy