What Types of Business Advisors Will I Need to Be Successful in Managing My Business?
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Your key advisors, let’s start with the top three. That’s your attorney, your accountant, and also your insurance agent or broker. You should connect up with those three individuals frequently throughout the year but certainly at least once or twice per year to make sure you’re on track.
In talking with your attorney, you want to talk about key things related to your entity structure. What type of entity do you have? A corporation or a LLC, typically the most common. You want to review your key business documents with your attorney. Be at your terms and conditions for your customer relationships, vendor, or supplier relationships. And also documents related to your employment relationships. Your employee manual, employee contracts if you happen to have any.
And then also talking with your attorney about other compliance issues. If your business is especially is regulated of any sort, be it by the state, the federal government, or otherwise, talk with your attorney about what compliance issues you should address every year make sure your on top of to keep your business going on the right track without running obviously into any legal trouble.
Talking with your accountant about record keeping, reporting to the tax authorities and otherwise and maintaining your financial records in good order as well and of course making sure the tax compliance is taking care of.
And talking with your insurance agent, your insurance broker about your current coverages. What types of coverages do you have? What limits do you have for those coverages and what types of coverages do you need? What limits do you need to change to or adjust? And also talking with your insurance agent or broker about possibly looking at other options related to the coverages or the companies that you’re working with for insurance.
In addition to those top three, I also ask my business owners to focus on financial matters, including their banking relationships and also their financial planner. It’s nice to know a personal banker. Many clients tend to use big banks, but its nice to have that face to face one on one relationship with someone who is aware of your business, it’s financial needs and can support you in that regard. And obviously the average business owner does want to plan for the future and grow their business for success, not just for the business sake and for their employees but also for themselves and their families and to secure their futures. A financial planner can help you certainly with that.
