The million dollar question is when. Not if you should bring in some outside counsel. Truth is if you are growing, at some point you will need help. When? Well, that is the hard part so we wrote this to help. It is so easy in our respective trades to say "Takes money to make money" or "It is what it is" and the truth is this kind of nonsense belongs with the other things at the bootom of the porta potty. When you began it was either just you or you and a very small crew. Easy. Manageable. Super fun. As the name begins to spread and you pick up more work, connect with other contractors....the phone rings more and suddenly you are doing paperwork at 9PM. "Why bother with marketing,? We cannot keep up with what we have!" This is by far the dumbest idea that most of us have / had. This is exactly when you begin to really think about something new that honestly that should have been thought in the very beginning. Building your brand. What defines your company? Why are you different? Why shoudl anyone hire you? Well becuase you are the best obviously, right?
Ego and passion aside let's get real for a minute. It is far more advantageous to begin to think about 3-5 years out, company logo, mascot, how will the truck / tool situation look...etc. Thing is nobody tells us this early enough. Even the ones that are successful at doing this. What very, very few know to do is to plan the eventual end or years down the road and reverse engineer for what you want your company to be. It is far less expensive to make changes with only a few customers and perhaps only a few team members. Something as small and usually not thought about - changing the logo on the shirts for 3 or 4 crew members is cheaper than doing the same with 30 or 40.
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