Basic Concepts - An Outline

Over the coming weeks, I will elaborate on all of the following issues. I hope you find them illuminating and helpful.

1. You are a Business: Every professional is a unique and independent business.

This is true whether one works for a firm or hangs out her own shingle. Buyers by a professional and his or her team, not the firm, though the firm must help or the professional will leave.

2. Find Your Passion: As explained in Good to Great, one must become the best in the world at that about which one is passionate and use that to drive his or her economic engine.

What are you truly passionate about? It is only in these areas that you can become a true expert.

3. What is YOUR Focused Business? Identify your service or services and create your professional services business.

You must be the expert. Buyers pay the most in "bet-the-company" situations. In those situations they want the best. To get the best they will pay more. If you are the best, buyers will seek you out and pay you more. It can be a long road to get there, but worth the trip.

4. Become an Expert: Once you have identified the services you will deliver through your business, you must develop a "culture of discipline" to become the very best.

Read everything. Listen to the current experts. Take their ideas to the next level. See the future. Get published. Speak often.

5. Marketing: Building your expertise and more precisely the perception of expertise. Tell the "world."

6. Sell Strategically: Identify your targets with specificity. Research them. Who are they and who else influences the decision to hire you. Find them. Hunt them down. Create a "Win" for each and you will create a big win for you.

7. Execute and Exploit: Perform flawlessly. Use the client at a reference. Secure a testimonial. Write and article together and get it published.

The recession is apparently nearing its end, at least at some point in time. Those who have become experts and focused their efforts will end up on top.

At UHY Advisors FLVS, we are working diligently on this. It is a never ending endeavor. Our strategy now focuses on the areas in which we are truly top in our fields and we are building on that. The first six months of 2009 saw new business at around 150% of that brought in during the same period in 2008. That during a strong recession.

We are coming out of this rolling with a full head of steam. You can too.