Stop over-focussing on the money

By Fiona Boyd |

Last week I had the pleasure of going to an intimate drinks function for two friends who were celebrating entering the third decade, and who happen to be life partners as well as entrepreneurs in their respective fields.

Josie Meadows – @scoogle – runs a gorgeous shop for glasses frames – www.scoogle.com.au. The store looks unlike a shop and more like an artist’s salon. Josie will help you select the most fetching frame for your face. The frames she has sourced mainly come from Europe, and the sunglasses I bought from Scoogle earlier this year are in a beautiful translucent caramel colour with an ever so slight grey tint lens. With so many expensive big name brand bling, bling glasses being de rigeur, I applaud Josie for selling a product that is actually beautiful and made of exquisite high-tech materials by those who understand frame-making as an artisan tradition.

Now it wasn’t frames I wanted to write about in this post, though whenever I think of or talk about Josie’s partner, Col Redmond, I can’t help but also think about Scoogle and Josie’s fabulous frames. Frames aside, as I sipped back a glass of wine and chatted to Col on this night, I was delighted that he had read my post of a couple of days earlier – Who do you trust? – and was currently running himself round in circles trying to line up the right professionals for an invention of his that he’s been working on for five years and has a final prototype about to go to production.

As Col’s life’s work was nearing its final stages of gestation he was commencing the early business of trying to figure out who would and could be the people he’d need to help him commercialise his invention and take it to market. Without giving the game away, I’ve seen pictures of the last prototype of Col’s invention, and need to tell you that when this product gets to market it will revolutionise non-motorised simple short-run transport, and it’s absolutely stunning to look at. Forget form over function or vice versa, Col’s design overcomes a really significant engineering issue and the product itself is just exquisite to look at. It has both form and function.

Col has been having a lot of trouble trying to find professionals who are actually wanting to provide a really high quality service to him. Right now he needs a great patent attorney, great marketing specialist and a financial advisor who understands how to get a product to market and the various ways it can be commercialized and what the revenue implications of these might be. Whilst Col doesn’t expect the professionals he’s interviewed so far to be as totally committed to his invention as he is, after all it’s not their baby, he does expect that they will want to showcase their experience and ability to do a really good job for him.

Over-focussed on the money

However this is not the experience that Col is having. In exasperation he elaborated how, despite having good credit history and always paying bills for services rendered, the professionals he was speaking to were over-focussed on deposits, what fees they’d be getting at what point, and not, in fact, on the actual service and quality of service they would be delivering.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s good to talk about the money – but money can become a circular argument. Lawyers, accountants, patent attorneys etc, only have professional income because someone else has a business that actually makes new money, and that business then purchases specialized services from the professions. No business, no new inventions, no new money. It really is time that top quality full-service professionals remembered that it’s important the client knows, understands and has confidence in your ability to provide the service, before you start talking about and booking the fees.

Later last week I attended a Melbourne tweet up – @tweetupmellers and got talking to a sports blogger who has increased his ad revenue on his blog in excess of 1000% in recent times. How he did this is of course his secret, and it’s his riddle to solve how he can continue to grow this and capitalize on a couple of lucky breaks. But it struck me that there are many ‘new money’ players in the online content space who have found a formula that works for them, and have created new wealth very quickly.

These fortunate bloggers and niche content owners are now in the position where they need to take advice on how to grow their business from a financial point-of-view and how to protect their business from a legal point-of-view. How many fail to adequately protect their intellectual property I wonder, because the lawyers they interview are too focused on the money to be bothered to create the relationship that yields benefits to both parties?

When it comes to choosing the professionals who will serve you in your online content business going forward ask yourself whether or not they’re willing to invest in a relationship with you. Because online, like a new invention, is a space where those who breaking new ground need to know that their advisors can be bothered to get to know and understand their business and how it works. And once they’ve delivered a bit of value to you, then they can send the bill.

It’s time for the professional services to put the relationship first and the fees second.

If you’ve got an experience dealing with a lawyer or accountant or any other professional who was only interested in how much they could charge you, we’d love you to let us know about it. A problem shared is a problem halved as the saying goes!

Image: Flickr Jessica Smith

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