Work longer hours

Increase hourly price

Sell time more than once

If you are already working enough hours that you feel the junior doctors have it easy the only way to do option 1 is to outsource functions within your business. For instance, the time I spend on entering information onto an online accounting package could be done more effectively and as efficiently by a bookkeeper and I could do something more complex and forward looking – something much more highly valued by my client, an annual budget or a cash flow projection maybe or think in terms of new markets and processes. Of course that then means that clients start to become self-selecting – if the bookkeeping is all a prospect wants to do, I must needs send them in the direction of a more appropriate adviser. The trick is not to worry about this and think of it as “giving away” work. In this particular circumstance I have just become involved in a joint venture with a firm of bookkeepers. They do their bit, I do the twiddly bits and we share in profits 50:50 after our normal charges. From their viewpoint they have a way of retaining an interest in a growing client that might seek to replace them with a one-stop shop for all their accounting needs and I get an incubator for growing businesses that will need the more complicated “stuff” later on down the line that I cannot realistically service at the same time as maximising my returns. Win win win. I shall return to options 2 and 3 in future posts. Please please get in touch with any comments, suggestions, ideas – I will read them all. Finally, my competition of last week. Where was the picture? Tina Campbell – well done, I’m paying for coffee next time we meet. Oh, the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin. Is it me or do the b100dy menu bars on this site wander about? I’m sure the word count was elsewhere last week, ditto Preview/Publish. Pretty easy this week. Or not?]]>