Robert had started his business right out of high school. He’d bought a junked tow truck, fixed it up enough to get it back on the road, and gone to work hauling vehicles for anyone who called. He didn’t know anything about business. But he was smart enough to ask. He sought free advice from attorneys, accountants, appraisers, auctioneers, real estate agents, bankers, and anyone else he met. Yet he also hired a young attorney right out of law school. Robert and the young attorney learned business together. The attorney helped Robert set up his LLC. Then he helped Robert lease a tiny shop inside a junkyard where Robert could keep his truck and sleep through the long nights waiting to make a tow. Then he helped Robert with employment contracts and handbooks. Then he helped Robert get state authority for long tow hauls. Within ten years, Robert was a huge success, owning his own tow yard, several trucks, his own home, and a vacation place up north. And the one thing Robert attributed his success to over anything else was his willingness to get the right help.
Advisors
Advisors can make the difference to your LLC’s success. Professionals of all kinds serve businesses. While those professionals generally charge fair fees for their services, their advice can be worth the fee tenfold or a hundredfold. They also give a lot of free advice. But more than the advice, professionals model and mentor sound attitudes, practices, and approaches for new business owners. The value to a new business owner retaining a professional is often more in the relationship and the confidence it instills than in the service transactions. With a team of skilled professionals available, LLC managers and members may attempt business initiatives they never would have otherwise entertained. And that courage and confidence may be worth every penny an advisor costs.
Networking
Make a deliberate effort to meet service professionals who could help you with your LLC, even before you need it. Professional networking groups and roundtables help new business owners meet professionals. You’ll find attorneys, accountants, real estate agents, insurance agents, advertising consultants, website designers, graphics designers, and other service professionals in those networking groups. But you can also meet professionals serving businesses through school alumni offices, churches and synagogues, community centers, charitable organizations, and other school, social, religious, and community groups. Or you can just stop in at service professional offices to introduce yourself, learn about their services, and get a business card. Build your professional network so that you have the help you need when you need it.
Retention
You don’t necessarily have to formally retain a professional to have the professional available when you need their services, especially if you have already met the professional. Many service professionals will supply their services on a transaction basis, even piecemeal. Do you need a real estate agent to help you evaluate office lease or purchase opportunities? Call one up. Do you need an attorney to review your LLC’s operating agreement? Call one up. Do you need an accountant to tell you how to handle a sales tax issue? Call one up. They’ll each tell you what their service transaction with you will cost. If they’ll only work for regular clients rather than provide piecemeal services, then find out what they require to make your LLC one of their regular clients. Build a team in the wings for when you need them, even if you haven’t yet paid the team for any professional service.
Payment
Don’t engage a professional without knowing the fee in advance or at least a solid estimate. Some professionals may require a retainer fee up front against which they will bill for transactional services. Depositing $1,000 with an attorney or $500 with an accounting service or technology installation and repair service might be your LLC’s best investment. Prompt and skilled professional service the moment you need it can mean the difference between gaining or losing a great business opportunity, or retaining or losing a great customer or client. Some professionals don’t bill for transactional services but instead make themselves readily available once you pay an annual retainer. Be sure that you need the services before you pay non-refundable retainers. For billed services, don’t hesitate to politely question a bill. The bill should reflect the service in sufficient detail for you to understand and agree. Responsible professionals like their bills paid but will correct and reduce bills in appropriate instances.
Attorneys
Attorneys make good LLC advisors. It’s their education, training, and profession to do so. An attorney can help you with your LLC’s articles of organization, operating agreement, and EIN. An attorney can also help you develop an employee handbook and customer or client service agreement. An attorney can review prospective equipment, vehicle, and facility leases, supplier agreements, and service contracts. An attorney can also advise on insurance needs and the needs for licenses, certifications, or other government authority. Attorneys can also help with dispute resolution of all kinds, whether with customers or clients, employees, landlords, suppliers, or service providers. They can, if necessary, take disputes to civil court or defend your LLC in court. Attorneys also know the reputations of others in the business community and can help you choose the better ones with whom to do business. Don’t hesitate to get a good attorney on your team. Ask prospective attorneys for references, and check them out. Check their state bar association listing for their good standing.
Accountants
Accountants also make good LLC advisors. You likely hope and expect your LLC to generate substantial income. With substantial income comes substantial accounting. Keeping your LLC’s books in order is critical not only to ensuring your LLC’s profitability but also to making required tax payments, supplier payments, employee payroll and benefits payments, and member distributions. You may be able to handle finances on your own with the right software, support, and training. But you’ll still likely have questions for an accountant. Better to ask and get an answer than to leave those questions to chance and face their risks. And if you can’t handle your LLC’s finances on your own, then you’ll need bookkeeping and accounting help of some kind. Investigate bookkeeping and accounting services, and get a good accountant on your team.
Insurance
Insurance agents also make good LLC advisors. If you have employees, you’ll benefit from having an independent insurance agent quote healthcare coverages. Your LLC can save thousands of dollars annually simply by choosing a competitive health insurance package. The same is true for commercial general liability coverage, malpractice insurance coverage, and if your LLC owns and operates vehicles, then motor-vehicle coverage. If your LLC makes and sells products, you might need product liability coverage. Sit down with an independent insurance agent to learn about the coverages from which your LLC might benefit and their cost. Independent agents typically quote coverages at no direct cost to your LLC. Their payment is through the insurance coverage placement.
Technology
Your LLC may also benefit from having a technology service provider available to it. If your LLC maintains onsite computer systems or other technology systems, then you’ll quickly learn how important it is that those systems operate continuously. A system crash in any one system can effectively shut down your LLC’s business. Common on-site technology systems include a computer server, router, wifi system, security surveillance cameras, door-entry system, and telephone system. But your LLC may also have electronic displays, electronic controls, other electronic equipment, and the software and cabling to support them. A technology consultant may also be able to help with software issues, whether with licenses, security, cloud connections, contracts, and billing disputes. Consider adding technology professionals to your LLC’s team.
Designers
Your LLC may also benefit from having website design, logo and signage design, and other graphic design or creative services. Customers and clients identify businesses through their branding. Retaining a skilled graphic designer to create and coordinate that branding can add substantial value to your LLC’s marketing program. Website design can also be critical to success if your LLC depends at all on online advertising or sales. Websites designed for cell-phone access for ordering goods and scheduling services can be especially important for consumer goods and services. If your LLC publishes, online or in print, substantial educational materials as a marketing opportunity, then your LLC may benefit from content writers and managers who can write and post frequent blogs, e-newsletters, and social media posts. Don’t overlook the value of adding designers to your LLC’s team.
Advertising
Your LLC may also benefit from retaining an advertising professional. Your LLC can offer great products or services. But if your LLC doesn’t reach the consumers of those products and services, then your LLC won’t have the sales it deserves and requires. You may be able to handle your own advertising, whether through social media ads and campaigns, radio, television, or billboard advertising, sponsorships, seminars, or other traditional or nontraditional ad campaigns. But you can also waste considerable time, effort, and money advertising in the wrong way. A professional’s targeted advertising may achieve what your LLC needs and not necessarily at a greater advertising cost. An advertising professional could even reduce your LLC’s advertising budget by focusing the ad campaign. Consider adding an advertising professional to your team.
Mentors
Those are a few of the professionals whose services could help your LLC achieve its business goals. But service professionals aren’t the only advisors who might be able to help you form and operate your LLC profitably. Mentors can also help. Mentors may be retired business operators or retired professionals, or may include graduate or professional school professors and even senior alumni from your college or graduate program. Mentors may have substantial experience seeing how businesses win and lose, giving them substantial experience they can share with you. But mentors don’t have to be business owners or service professionals. They can also be family members and friends whose wisdom comes from other sources. Sometimes, an LLC manager doesn’t need business advice but instead life advice, the sort of wisdom that puts business in its proper perspective. Formal business mentor programs may also be available to you through a state or local business administration agency or nonprofit, or a local college or vocational school. But informal mentors are good, too.
Associations
You may also find substantial and valuable advice available to you through a business, trade, or professional association. Business, trade, and professional associations lobby for better laws. They also regulate their members by developing standards and codes. But associations serving specific fields also often offer practice programs or institutes to help their members with their business, trade, or profession. Those practice programs or institutes may offer business templates and forms, business handbooks and guides, insurance and product discount programs, customer or client referral programs, and even free technical advice. Contact your business, trade, or professional association to see what services it offers that may better equip you for managing your LLC.
Key Points
Your LLC can benefit from having skilled advisors available.
Network until you have identified available service professionals.
Retain service professionals only on clear cost and payment terms.
Consider retaining attorneys, accountants, and insurance agents.
Your LLC may need technology, design, and advertising services.
The association serving your LLC’s field may also offer resources.