Processes
Employing analyses and establishing targets are good for your business. We tend to look at absolute results. Did the business produce substantial revenue this year? Did the business profit from that revenue, and if so, then by how much? Yet absolute results only tell part of the financial story. The manager who tracks only absolute financial results hardly keeps a finger on the business’s real financial pulse. Instead, analyze the data. Compare the data to industry benchmarks. Establish targets, measure progress toward targets, and adjust to improve progress. Analyze, benchmark, target, measure, and adjust. This section shows some analyses businesses make and targets they use to improve financial outcomes.
⤠ Sometimes it’s poverty and sometimes wealth. Appreciate both. ⤟
Risk
You can manage risk by analyzing financial statements. Use financial statements to identify and reduce risks, to increase the business’s value. Do not underestimate the number and seriousness of financial risks. But recognize that every risk also carries opportunity. Your business has as much to gain from managing risk as it has to lose from not managing risk. As you read the following risks to your business’s financial future, consider both their negative consequences and positive opportunities:
investment risk of failing to gain a reasonable return on accumulated capital;
liquidity risk of not holding capital in a form convertible to cash when needed;
cash-flow risk of falling short of cash needed to pay critical suppliers despite strong earnings;
debt risk of losing the ability to timely pay interest and repay principal out of earnings;
security risk of losing control to creditors of pledged or mortgaged assets critical to operations;
credit risk of granting customers or clients and others credit that you cannot convert into needed cash;
valuation risk of paying more for assets than they are worth as markets change, causing substantial losses;
enterprise risk of pursuing the wrong opportunities or failing to pursue opportunities that later prove critical to sustaining the business; and
technology risk of investing in the wrong technology or failing to invest in the right technology and thus losing customers or clients to businesses with better technology.
Causes
Financial analysis involves distinguishing cause from effect. Financial statements show symptoms or effects of problems, not causes of problems. Consider high accounts receivable and tight cash flow. Those two data points are symptoms, not causes. High receivables and tight cash flow could be due to late-paying clients. But they could instead be due to late billing, which is a big difference. They could alternatively be due to inadequate documentation on billing, poor estimating and budgeting for clients, or poor-quality work, unsatisfied clients, or insolvent clients. To discern the difference, statements should include for each client the totals owed, billed, paid, and unpaid and due. You should also have reports on the amount in fees that you estimated up front, client payment history, the fee agreement, and estimate of coming billings from work in process and upcoming work. This detail helps you analyze the causes of your firm’s financial performance, before blaming late-paying clients.
⤠ We each have our own gifts. Use them where they count most. ⤟
Performance
Businesses have various ways to analyze their financial performance, individual producers within the firm, and individual customer or client matters. One way is to measure the total collected fees from a producer’s originations over the analyzed period. Another way is to measure average profitability (net fees produced after expenses) per customer or client matter. Another way is to calculate average turnaround-time per customer or client matter. These measures can help a business measure and identify financially productive and non-productive cycles, personnel, and matters, to make necessary adjustments in producer compensation and customer, client, or matter selection. The book Results Oriented Financial Management suggests increasing profitability with these actions:
involve producers in developing customer or client goals and plans for achieving goals, confirmed in writing;
have producers prepare budgets to complete each new project, communicated to all employees working on the project;
have producers tell customers or clients in writing the estimated project cost including billing and payment requirements;
send periodic progress bills accompanied by documentation of the project’s progress;
standardize work using forms developed by the most skilled employee for that work, with form changes only when approved;
review all matters on every 30-day billing cycle, while monitoring matters to ensure continuous prompt handling;
assign routine tasks to lowest-paid staff member competent to perform them; and
review new customer or client and matter selection using ability and willingness to pay as criteria.
Revenue
Measure revenue per producer. The profit-and-loss statement reflects a business’s total revenue over the most recent period. Divide total revenue by the number of the business’s producers to arrive at average revenue per producer. Increases in average revenue per producer means more of the business’s producers have been more productive recently, while lower revenue per producer can mean the opposite. Adjust base compensation, bonus, and owner distributions based on producer revenue against average. Changes in average revenue per producer can also help a manager evaluate:
how effective marketing efforts have been;
how financially healthy the customer or client sector has been;
how other economic trends are affecting the business;
the commitment of the business’s producers;
the professional development of the business’s producers;
the quality of the business’s equipment and systems; and
the efficiency and utilization of the business’s staff.
Analysis
Comparing current average revenue per producer to the business’s historical average can help managers determine the business’s direction. Increasing revenue per producer can be a good sign, while decreasing revenue per producer is often a bad sign. Analysis depends on the circumstances. The business’s revenue per producer can increase because of the departure of under-performing producers, which is generally a good thing, unless the corresponding decrease in total revenue threatens the business’s cost structure. Sometimes, total revenue is more important than higher revenue per producer. If the business has highly productive producers but too few in number to generate the revenue to cover the business’s fixed costs or to serve major customers or clients, then the business is in trouble. Conversely, if the business increases total revenue but decreases revenue per producer, then the firm may no longer be operating with the efficiency that overhead costs demand. Analyze revenue per producer in the context of your business’s historical experience and sector-wide benchmarks. See if you discern trends or patterns as to these individual producers and this firm.
[Table omitted. See print guide.]
Benchmarking
Comparing your business’s revenue per producer and other figures to sector benchmarks can help you determine your business’s performance level. Find revenue per producer and other figures for your sector using reliable online research sources. A national Survey of Law Firm Economics indicated that following a recession, average revenue per lawyer grew by 10% in small firms of two to eight lawyers but only 3% in mid-sized and large firms. Firms of all sizes saw decreases in collections or realization rates over the same period, made up by increasing hourly rates. You may have similar data in your sector and geographic area, like the data below for large firms with offices in the Philadelphia area.
[Table omitted. See print guide.]
In the past three years, Pat had hired two additional associates and made his first associate a partner in his firm. The two partners were now both members of Pat’s limited-liability company, and the company now bore both of their last names. Pat developed the confidence to grow his firm through his improving financial skills. One of the best tools he adopted was his analysis of producer revenue. Each producer could work whatever hours and bill whatever amounts they wished so long as enough revenue was coming into the firm. All four producers in his firm understood the importance of revenue. Pat and his partner in particular were making sound judgments about how they allocated their time to increase revenue. While they did not work solely for money, they shared a responsibility to one another, the firm, and their families to ensure that they each produced enough revenue to ensure their decent living. They wanted their customers to flourish and would apply every bit of their skill to see it happen. Yet they were simultaneously quite willing to see that customers remain responsible to the firm for the high value of its services.
Outstanding
Revenue per producer is just one valuable financial indicator. How soon customers or clients pay, measured by average days outstanding, is another helpful financial indicator. When customers or clients pay sooner, the business can use the money sooner, reducing cash-flow borrowing and associated interest charges. When customers or clients pay sooner, they also tend to pay more. The older an unpaid account becomes, the less likely the customer or client is to pay the full amount. To calculate average days outstanding, first calculate the firm’s average receivables by adding receivables at the beginning of the period (year, quarter, etc.) to receivables at the end of the period and then dividing by two. Then divide the firm’s total revenue over the same period by the average total receivables. The resulting turnover figure reflects how many times each year the firm collects (turns over) the average receivables. Divide this turnover figure into 365 (the number of days in the year) to get the firm’s average days outstanding. Find your sector’s average days outstanding. A high turnover rate and low average days outstanding can mean satisfied, solvent customers or clients willing to pay timely for valued goods or services. Low turnover and high days outstanding can mean the opposite. Shortening the average days outstanding increases collections. How happy and solvent are the clients of the following firm, if 70 days is the average?
[Table omitted. See print guide.]
Turnover
Average days outstanding gives an incomplete picture of how long it takes for a business to turn time into money. A related question is how quickly the business bills work in progress. It matters little if a customer or client pays quickly, when the business delayed billing the customer or client. Calculate how long your business takes to turn a billable project into a collected billing, known as the turnover period. Add the total accounts receivable at the end of the year to the total unbilled work in progress at the end of the year. This figure represents the total uncollected value of expended time. Then divide the firm’s total accrual-basis gross income (total value-added input) for the year by the 12 months in a year to get the monthly accrual-basis gross income (monthly total input). Then divide the monthly accrual-basis gross income into the total uncollected value at the end of the year. The resulting figure is the number of months that the firm takes to turn an hour of time into cash. A firm can also derive the average months to billing, simply by dividing the monthly total input figure into the year-end work-in-progress figure. Shortening billing time increases billings. Improving turnover can be critical to improving a firm’s budget. How do you think the following firm is doing with the speed and efficiency with which it turns work into revenue?
[Table omitted. See print guide.]
Realization
How much customers or clients pay in contrast to billings, known as the realization rate can be another helpful financial indicator. Calculate the realization rate by dividing the total revenue from billings for the period by the total billings for the same period. Compare your business’s figure to your sector’s average. Realization rates above 90% may be good, while rates below that figure may be poor. Receivables as a percentage of total revenue is another valuable indicator. Calculate receivables as a percentage of revenue by dividing total receivables by total revenue for the same period. Percentages of 15% to 20% may be reasonable. Falling realization rates combined with increasing receivables percentages can mean financially insolvent or dissatisfied clients. How happy and prosperous are the clients of the following firm?
[Table omitted. See print guide.]
Erin had recently held quarterly meetings with her firm’s two older partners at which the three of them reviewed realization rates. She felt that the meetings were important. The company now had four partners plus five associates. Yet the firm still depended on monthly billings of mostly hourly work. The firm charged some fixed fees and was on annual fixed retainers with a few clients, but most clients still preferred to pay monthly bills without a formal budget. That billing pattern made realization rates especially important. Erin and her older partners needed to judge client solvency and satisfaction. They had not yet been burned by a client’s bankruptcy. Their quarterly review had contributed to that success. Erin was watching bills on 10-day, 20-day, and 30-day cycles. She followed up on unpaid bills, first through the company’s secretary, then the bookkeeper, then the producer responsible for the billing, and finally making calls herself. Yet Erin credited the firm’s success avoiding client insolvencies to the partners’ study of realization rates, when they looked at deeper issues than just getting bills paid.
Expenses
Financial performance depends not only on producing adequate revenue but also on controlling expenses. Expense categories can include things like wages, rent, insurance, real property, equipment, technology, and interest. Your business’s profit-and-loss statement should reflect each major expense category, enabling you to monitor and analyze categories. As with other measures, the key activities are to track changes in expenses. Develop a reliable history of your business’s usual monthly, quarterly, and annual expenses. Use that history to promptly identify any unusual expense increases or decreases. Promptly investigate those changes to ensure that your business maintains necessary personnel, products, facilities, and services at reasonable cost. Managing the expense side is just as important as managing revenue.
⤠ Devote wealth to the highest things. ⤟
Comparison
Comparing your business’s expenses to the sector’s standards can help you determine the appropriate expense levels in each category. You may think you need a certain manager, office, piece of equipment, or convenience. But look closer at whether your expenses in that category are already out of line with the sector. Here, for example, are expense averages as a percentage of total revenue in one administrative sector: 62% for producer compensation; 19% for support staff; 8% for rent; 5% for technology and equipment; 2% for insurance; and 1% for information resources.
Pat needed a guide for an important decision. Despite that his company had grown first to four producers and then to five, Pat had kept the firm in the same office suite where he had first started as a sole proprietor. He had simply taken over more of the suite space. Yet the suite could not accommodate the company’s addition of a fifth producer. They had initially had the new associate work from home and other locations, borrowing an office when necessary, but that arrangement was not working. Either they found new offices, or they would be losing a producer and be stuck at four producers without prospect for growth. Pat’s partner was all for buying an office. Pat was not so sure. But then, he found some data on lease expenses as a percentage of total revenue. The monthly debt service on the new office would be right around five percent of total revenue, which Pat felt was toward the bottom end of the range of reasonable office expenses. The seller accepted their first bid on the office, with Pat and his partner buying personally and leasing to their company. Within a couple of months, the new location felt like home, a wise choice.
Profit
A business’s profit, meaning the excess of revenue over expenses, is another significant indicator. Profit determines a business’s ability to fund owner distributions, year-end bonuses, and annual wage increases. Profit also enables a business to retain earnings to retire debt, build cash reserves, or establish a capital fund. Yet profit alone is not necessarily the best indicator. Rather, the ratio of expenses to revenue can be a more-helpful indicator of a business’s financial performance. Simply because one has cash left over, even substantial cash, after paying all expenses does not mean strong performance. The business’s profit may even have grown year to year. Yet if the ratio of expenses to total revenue has increased, and the profit margin has accordingly fallen, then the business may have missed an important opportunity to profit more than it did. Determine the expense ratio by dividing total expenses by revenue for the same period. Multiply by 100 to turn the ratio into a percentage. Monitor and analyze expense ratio for your business. Make sure the expense ratio does not increase faster than revenues increase.
⤠ Don’t cheat anyone, especially those near you on whom you rely. ⤟
Comparison
Compare your business’s expense ratio to the average in your sector. For example, if a sector indicates an average expense ratio of 46%, businesses in that sector should be able to devote more than half of their revenue to owner distributions and producer bonuses. Some sectors would expect to allocate one third of a producer’s revenue to the producer’s salary, one third to overhead expenses, and one third to owner profits. Expense averages vary widely from sector to sector, business to business, and region to region. Lower expense ratios can mean more-efficient and thus stronger performance. Yet those same low expense ratios can also mean over billing, lower client value, and a competitive entry point for other firms. Correct conclusions require interpreting the data in the full context. How do you think the following firm is doing with its expense percentage against the above 46% benchmark?
[Table omitted. See print guide.]
Monitoring
Financial managers need both to ensure an appropriate level of expenses and ensure that the business pays those expenses timely, to maintain supplier relationships. Businesses depend on the ability to pay for necessary supplies and services. Accounts payable aging beyond 15, 30, or 45 days to as many as 60 or 90 days can lead to the business losing suppliers. Examine supplier bills to ensure that your business is paying them timely. Analyze the aging of accounts payable by taking the business’s annual expenses and divide by 365 to get a daily expense figure. Then multiply times a 30-day month. The resulting figure is the approximate total accounts payable at 30 days aging. Using 45, 60, or 90 days rather than the 30-day multiplier will give you the approximate total accounts payable at longer aging. Compare these figures to your firm’s actual outstanding accounts payable to discern just how timely your firm is paying on average. Pay accounts timely to ensure uninterrupted operations and to preserve supplier relationships. Consider whether the following business is paying its accounts reasonably timely.
[Table omitted. See print guide.]
Staff
Use lower-cost non-producer support staff wisely to increase the efficiency of high-cost producers. The book Results Oriented Financial Management suggests tracking two measures of support-staff usage. One measure involves dividing the business’s total support-staff compensation into total billable units to get a support-staff-cost per billable unit figure. Monitor that figure over time to ensure that your firm’s support staff is helping to generate billable units. If the support-staff cost per billable unit increases, then institute controls to reduce staff cost and reforms to increase billable units. Another measure involves dividing total revenues by total support-staff costs to arrive at a revenue-versus-support-staff ratio. If support-staff costs increase relative to revenue, then institute reforms to reduce the cost and increase the productivity of support staff relative to revenue.
Erin could not get one financial measure under control. The company’s two older partners were less tech-savvy than the firm’s now-three younger partners and now-six associates. Their limitations meant that they needed much more associate and secretarial support even for basic skills like electronic searches, word processing, and emails and attachments. In the company’s early years, Erin ignored the extra staff cost as a necessary accommodation for the older partners. Yet as the firm added new associates who had technology skills, the company had allowed the new lawyers to adopt the staff-reliant practices of the older partners. Erin knew the company was losing something but was unable to prove it until she researched staff-support ratios and benchmarks. When the older partners saw Erin’s figures, the three of them agreed that the younger lawyers with the technology skills must start using them. Three secretary resignations gave the firm the perfect opportunity. The firm replaced the three secretaries with only a single administrator whose work Erin insisted become a leverage point and profit center. The company was soon staff lean rather than staff heavy, and the healthy bottom line showed it.
Distributions
Owner distributions and producer bonuses are important financial questions. Total revenue minus total expenses reveals a business’s distributable income. Divide distributable income by the number of owners in the business to get distributable income per owner. Distributable income per owner varies with business size, sector, and location. Larger businesses tend to have larger distributable income per owner. Businesses in financial and administration sectors can have higher distributable income per owner than in the trades. Businesses in large metropolitan areas on the East and West Coasts can have higher distributable income per owner than in the nation’s central regions. Benchmark your business’s distributable income per owner figure and explore what you can do to improve.
⤠ Hoarded wealth rots away. Put wealth to good use. ⤟
Performance
Improving your business’s ratios and meeting other financial targets involves a range of considerations, only some of which are financial. The quality, fitness, and value of your business’s goods and services, your choice of customers and clients and their ability to afford your goods and services, the practices you employ to communicate value and charge and collect fees, and staff utilization can all influence your business’s performance on ratios and targets. Those considerations have more to do with management of your business and your customer or client development, technology use, and work processes, than strictly with your firm’s financial practices. Continue to improve your business’s non-financial performance to improve financial performance.
Development
Reaching and developing a customer base or clientele able to pay for your business’s goods and services is key to improving financial performance. Customer or client development is complex, involving a range of non-financial subjects beyond the scope of this finance book. Solely from the perspective of reaching customers or clients able and willing to pay your fees, consider these helpful tips:
maintain a reputation for being serious about getting paid;
discuss fees candidly at the first consultation;
evaluate prospect creditworthiness;
decline prospects who show they cannot or will not pay;
seek more paying customers or clients, not simply more;
avoid fee-shopping customers or clients whom no fee satisfies;
reduce every fee agreement to clear writing;
distinguish fees from disbursed costs;
do not deceptively minimize actual fees and costs;
resist taking on loss-leader prospects undermining your pricing;
do not prospect among close family or friends.
Payment
Businesses reward their producers based on gross billings and gross collections. Whoever bills and collects the most wins. The book Results Oriented Financial Management cautions that a better measure of producer financial performance is the percentage of collected billings against the available billings target. Meeting and exceeding individual targets is more important than billing or collecting more than other producers. Each producer must do the producer’s own part. A leading producer who bills and collects more than others but misses targets hurts the entire team. Serving the available paying customers or clients is the key, not generating substantial uncollected billings or substantial collections short of available billings. Consider these cautionary signals that prospective customers or clients may give, from which you might think more carefully whether the customers or clients will pay:
the prospect says money is no object given the matter at stake;
the prospect has had several prior suppliers before you;
the prospect complains about prior supplier services;
the prospect has not paid prior suppliers;
the prospect will not sign the fee agreement;
the prospect will pay only part of the fee or advance;
the prospect has exaggerated expectations;
the prospect sees you just before a long-standing deadline;
the prospect left behind critical papers you have not seen; or
the prospect made you uneasy even before your retention.
Pat was a good judge of character. He knew people and their predilections. Unfortunately, the two newest of the four associates now working at Pat’s company seemed not to share Pat’s insight into character. The two newest associates had several times burned the company taking on unqualified prospects, some of whom had discharged the associates halfway through. Other prospects had misrepresented their circumstances to the newest associates, who had also each faced complaints. Pat helped the associates address the complaints, which were frivolous but nonetheless embarrassing. Pat was ready to blame the associates until he realized their relative lack of people skills. So instead, he and his partner began sitting in on prospect intakes to help the new associates gain the discernment and confidence to make better judgments. Don’t take everything and everyone, Pat counseled the new associates.
Receivables
A business’s sale of goods to customers or services to clients produces obligations to pay. Unless the customer or client prepays, those obligations to pay become the business’s accounts receivable, whether or not the business has billed for the completed work. See an account receivable as an extension of credit to the customer or client. Treat accounts receivable as a business would extend credit. Extending credit can enable the sale of goods and services. Yet large uncollectible accounts receivable are a leading cause of business financial failures. Just because you can sell on credit doesn’t mean you should do so. Make wise judgments about whether, when, and to whom to extend credit. Here are some guides for that decision, adapted from the American Management Association’s Essentials of Finance and Accounting for Nonfinancial Managers:
extend credit as a strategic sales tool to increase revenue;
do not extend credit simply as a way of doing business;
require clients to pay in advance or at the time of service if able;
do not apologize for declining to extend credit;
be cheerful about extending credit when it makes strategic sense;
extend credit to increase sales without increasing expenses;
do not extend credit to prospects who buy few goods or services;
do not extend credit for loss-leader or low-margin services;
expect accounts receivable to increase with new marketing initiatives;
expect accounts receivable to increase with revenue increases;
do not expect accounts receivable to decline with revenue declines; and
constantly look for ways to reduce accounts receivable.
Collection
Your business is likely to have at least some accounts receivable. The most important step that you can take to address those accounts is to implement an accounts-receivable policy. Make your policy specific as to the steps to take as an account ages 30, 60, and 90 days and beyond. Make the policy simple for staff to administer. For example, when contacting a customer or client about an unpaid invoice, staff should confirm whether the client received and understood the invoice and had any problem with the service, before asking when the business should expect payment. To increase the reliability of your budget’s revenue projections, include in your accounts-receivable policy criteria for when you will write down or write off a receivable. Follow these additional practices and tips:
inform all staff of the collection policy and procedure;
enlist all staff in collection efforts;
review aging accounts receivable weekly;
treat time as of the essence as to those aging accounts;
determine whether to continue within 15 days past due;
send a personal letter no later than 30 days past due;
have an office manager contact no later than 45 days;
develop and follow scripts for collection contacts;
encourage delinquent customers or clients to seek financing;
memorialize all billing-related statements and agreements;
contact immediately if the customer or client breaks an agreement;
compromise when legitimate disputes arise;
otherwise, discount bills only for immediate payment;
comply with the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act.
Productivity
Increasing your productivity is another example of how to improve performance on targets. Accurately and consistently tracking your time is a key activity for measuring and improving productivity, whether you bill hourly or on a contingency or fixed-fee basis. When billing hourly, accurate and consistent timekeeping is obviously critical. Yet also recording non-chargeable time can help you discern efficiencies and inefficiencies in your practice, particularly when you describe non-chargeable time in meaningful categories like pro bono, invoicing, client development, networking, market research, management meetings, and professional development. Reid Trautz and Dan Pinnington in The Busy Lawyer’s Guide to Success also offer these tips to increase the time-on-task that you capture and bill to clients:
enter time directly in an electronic system to avoid errors;
enter your own time rather than delegating time entry;
enter time contemporaneously rather than later;
enter all time, even if you plan to reduce it later;
review and correct your time at the end of each day;
standardize and code your time entries for analysis;
record additional detail beyond standard codes;
include recorded detail on the client bills;
record non-billable administrative time to manage it;
review and analyze time-and-billing reports.
Responsibility
Your challenge in managing your business may not be with your own financial responsibility but instead the financial responsibility of other owners of the business. The degree of commitment various owners show toward finances can divide businesses. Responsible owners act quickly, decisively, and with full commitment to the business’s financial challenges. Irresponsible owners procrastinate and may be the cause of the challenges. Holding one another accountable for financial success is often the owners’ greatest ongoing challenge. The book Results Oriented Financial Management suggests taking the following actions:
articulate and apply owner admission criteria;
establish financial goals and standards;
implement methods to enforce financial standards;
evaluate owner performance against financial standards;
compensate according to financial performance;
train and mentor new owners in financial responsibility;
plan owner retirements;
provide owner coaching and counseling; and
provide out-placement services for departing owners.
Erin and her two older partners had concluded that one of the younger partners had not been acting responsibly toward the company and was not likely to do so in the future. Erin, by contrast, had recently clarified her position as an equity partner, by helping to finance new office furniture and equipment with a cash contribution and personal guarantee of a short-term loan. The three equity partners decided to seek the younger partner’s departure. They had mentored, coached, and counseled the younger partner without effect, only making obvious and even exacerbating what had previously been latent performance, commitment, and integrity issues. The three equity partners were just beginning to consider the specifics of a departure process when the younger partner announced that she was leaving the company to direct a nonprofit. The younger partner even apologized to Erin at a going-away party that the company held, saying that she had just never really liked the field and had acted unprofessionally as a consequence. Sometimes things work out in the end, while other times they need prodding.
Checklist
Reflect, research, investigate, and act until you are able to confirm each of the following statements summarizing the advice and counsel in this section:
My business follows sound financial processes in which it collects and analyzes data, contrasts the data to industry benchmarks, develops financial targets, measures progress, and adjusts to improve progress.
My business tracks, analyzes, and benchmarks revenue per producer, using the analysis to guide and develop its producers.
My business tracks, analyzes, and benchmarks billing average days outstanding, turnover period, realization rates, and effective billing rates, using the analysis to improve billing collections.
My business closely monitors accounts payable, employing an effective system of progressive contacts to reduce uncollectible billings.
My business benchmarks expenses and analyzes expense percentages and staff costs to increase profits by controlling and reducing expenses.
My business treats profit as due and appropriate reward for effective service, while treating all personnel equitably and in a manner that increases workplace commitment and morale.
My business encourages customer or client development among populations that need and value the business’s goods and services, and where the business will collect fair fees for those services.
All members of my business but especially equity owners regularly demonstrate substantial commitment to the business’s financial performance.