I shouldn’t have to cross international borders to be reminded of something so simply “close to home,” but I wanted to thank BizLaunch Canada for a really good piece of advice: Get your advisors in a room together.
I remember the frustration a client went through when forming her business years ago. Together, we decided that forming an LLC would be in her best interests. She then spoke to her acocuntant, who pushed for an S Corp. She came back to me and explained the logic of the accountant, which didn’t seem right, based on what she had told me. Soon, this began to resemble a Wimbledon tennis match, with the client as the ball between the two advisors. Not a good situation.
So I took the bull by the horns, as it were, and got us in a room together. Turns out the client was divulging some things to me and others to the accountant. Based on the less-than-full information we each received, it was no surprise we came up with different approaches. Also, by sitting face-to-face, the accountant and I could speak in our technical language directly, without having to burden the client with being an imperfect translator. As a result, we were able to hash out the decision swiftly.
The client didn’t care which form of business she had–she just wanted to know that the decision was the right one for her, taking all factors into account. She also felt mightly relieved knowing that her trusted advisors were aligned on the best course of action for her. The investment in the advisors’ fees in the short run turned out to be a huge cost-saving device in the long run.
This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 24th, 2008 at 6:56 am and is filed under Business Planning, Your Advisory Team. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.One Response to “Benefits of the Small Business Advisor Pow-Wow”
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June 30th, 2009 at 2:34 pm
interesting post, will come back here, bookmarked your site