You decided that you need help. Whether that means the services of a lawyer, an accountant, a business coach, a designer, a PR consultant- whatever- you need to do your homework first. You need to decide if you want this professional to help you, to do the work for you, or to show you how to do it. [Obviously, if you need to appear in court, you want the lawyer to do the work. (Remember the adage: One who serves as his own lawyer has a fool for a client. The same applies if you need representation with the Internal Revenue Service, by the way.) An industrial designer or a product designer is going to do the work, as well. But, lawyers, accountants, consultants don’t just “do”, we provide advice- and it’s not free. A virtual assistant is hired so that you can do something else which makes you more money.] Now, the real work begins. Why? Let’s assume you hired us to help you develop a new business plan or a new marketing plan. And, you want us to work with you. (If you don’t, then please hire someone else- we can’t and won’t do this in a vacuum.) But, making a plan and executing the plan are two different things. You need to insure that there are folks in your enterprise that can carry it out and can determine when there may be a bottleneck or a new opportunity. That may mean you want us (or whomever you hire) to continue to provide services at a lesser number of hours over the course of a quarter or a year to insure you are on track. What if you don’t know what you need or want? You may need to hire a consultant to help you with that. If you are looking for long-term change, you need to define what your consultant/advisor/designer is going to provide or you may never get what you thought you wanted. And, you need to know how you want it- do you want reports? Phone conversations? eMails? Or, a combination thereof. If you don’t specify how you want to receive updates, issues, and findings, you can’t be certain to receive the data the way you can best assimilate it. Here’s where it gets a little tricky. A contract? Or a written document? If you want a contract, you will need lawyers- on both sides. That’s going to raise costs. But, if you are planning to spend $ 100,000 or more- or, for smaller firms, an amount equal to 1/6 your annual revenue, then it may be a very wise move. But, you want a written document to protect all sides. (We used to use handshake agreements. We stopped doing so when one of our long-term clients shafted us in 1984 to the tune of $ 3 million. A v-e-r-y expensive lesson.). Make sure the agreement specifies the scope, timing, and fee schedules. Trust me that you can’t foresee all the potential problems- and your contract won’t cover them either. We have signed more than 1,000 contracts over the years (for terms of at least 6 months)- and have had problems three times. (On the other hand, for our smaller projects, we have not generally used contracts, and have problems with about 5% (by number, not by value) of them- but the total amount for these issues has been less than $ 30,000. Finally, we suggest you make your agreements for projects of one year or less, unless you have extensive experience with the potential advisor. You need to make sure you work together well before you endeavor the larger efforts. The key point is that you must be sure you and your advisor have a win-win relationship. You both win or you both lose- you won’t be able to maintain a win-loss, either. Continue reading Help! And, I need it now! →

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