I am looking for some help/input on an issue I'm trying to figure out.

My law firm has done fairly well in the last year. It's not quite 2 years old and I'm making enough to support myself and 1 paralegal, although to be completely open, I'm getting child support money and alimony at the moment. I'm not sure that should be a factor but it means I don't feel completely independent. Yet.

So, the business is doing well, but it feels disorganized. I *really* do not function well with disorganization. I feel like we are losing a lot of time/money because we don't have good systems in place. I'm not an accountant and that is an area of constant frustration. But I also feel like we just lose a lot of time tracking down information.

All this frustration led me to seek out a business development person. I like her and I've seen her do good work in other places. So I'm comfortable with her as a person. Her hourly rate is $50, which I think is probably fair although I have nothing to compare that to.

I met with her before my vacation and we talked for about an hour about how to make things better. She had some original ideas although many of them were things I'd already thought of but haven't had time to implement. And that right there is the heart of the problem. I only work probably 40 hours a week but I have three kids who need me. I can't spend all weekend coming up with new systems or marketing ideas. I have lots of ideas but I want help implementing them. And i think I need help - I haven't had any major catastrophes yet, but I've come close once or twice and I don't want that to happen again.

So, that's a lot of reasons to do it. The downside is that the cost estimate is about $10,000. She broke it down by tasks and they look legit. She also won't bill me for hours she doesn't actually work.

I don't know - I want to work with her but that seems like an insane amount of money for stuff that I can essentially do myself. But I'm not sure I ever will because I don't have the time.

Can you choose the top 2 tasks that you really need a system in place for and start with those, rather than the 10K get it all done price?

That is a good idea. I should ask her if I'm committing to the whole thing or if we can work in pieces. She does estimate 2 months to "audit" the business and then 4 months to implement her ideas.

eta: sometimes being an adult is so boring. I'd so rather take that money and buy a vacation to Argentina, but I really am willing to invest in the future of the law firm.

If she is setting up a lot of systems for you then I think that $10,000 sounds pretty fair. One of the things I've had to learn as a business owner is that there are plenty of tasks that I could be doing, but that I need to be paying someone else to do. The more that I'm caught up in the day to day operational tasks, the less time I'm spending bringing in more clients and more projects for the company. When I can concentrate on those things, and on keeping the current clients and projects running smoothly, then I'm better able to make sure I've got a good amount of money coming into the business.

Also, I have clients pay me all the times for stuff they could do themselves. But their time is worth more to them than my hourly rate. In hard business terms, what do you value your time at per hour? What do you charge clients per hour, and what is your actual hourly rate after unbillable hours, expenses and so on? Don't tell us,we don't need to know, but say it silently to yourself. Compare that to her hourly rate. Look at the time she estimates to do it. Could you do it in less time? If not $10,000 might not be an insane amount to do everything under two conditions:

1) The ding is one you can afford.

2) If you get all $10,000 in work done, the odds are the benefits yielded will be at least twice that.

You should prioritize tasks in any case but:

A) if the answer to either 1 or 2 is no just negotiate a lower amount for only the most important work

B) If the answer to both 1 and 2 is yes, then still negotiate to get the most important tasks done. With the option to do the rest if she performs well on the priority ones, and if the benefits of her completing the priority ones prove worth the expenditure.

Drew, that is exactly the lesson I've been working on getting. I'm a good lawyer. I'm not so great at those other things and I don't really want to be.

eta: and Typo, that's a really good way to think about it.

Well, and if that's $10K over six months, do you have to pay it all at once, or part by part? Is it easier to think of it as a $1200 a month or something? And if she can implement a couple things quickly, would those things being implemented de-stress you? Is being de-stressed for 40 hours a week worth $1200 a month?

Are there any parts of it that can be doing by online services, such as Shoeboxed for receipts and FreshBooks for invoicing?

$10,000 will pay for itself in how many months? That's what I would say.

Will it add to your quality of life? No-brainer. Especially if it pays for itself within 6 months.

Of course, the irony here is that I won't know if it's worth it until she does the audit because I don't currently have systems in place to monitor that stuff.