Business is like owning a house. Sometimes you really acutely do need need the $250/hour structural Engineer to solve the problem.

But most of the time you need a Handy man and a to figure it out and solve it without imploding the budget.

And even when you do need the $250/hour topic expect you can often reduce the cost by doing some of your own prep or finishing work.

Not to mention if the handman had done the preventative maintenance you might not be in this predicament in the first place.

While I did gut and rebuild my detroit house including the roofing, plumbing, electrical, drywall and the rest of it mostly by myself and I have been a commerical propoerity manager if you need a propierty handman call my brother Puelo.

I prefer a suit to a work belt most days to I’m a handy man in business.

Cost: $1500/month-ish

Overview: Delegate a specific project or area of your business that needs a helping hand.

Examples:

Scope:

Business People who solve a variety of business.

A business handyman is a skilled person proficient in a variety of business development and management activities. They are typically hired by medium-sized oranizations that are stuck on a project or have more to do than they have the resources to do it. Business Handymen are versatile and can handle tasks such as digital marketing, HR, Wholesale department, project management, and other similar jobs. They are often called upon to fix or improve various aspects of the business.

Business Handymen vs. Consultant: Consultants normally look at your problem and write a PDF report still leaving you with the problem but at least you have a plan. to you. Business handyman look at your problem figure out what to do, implement the changes and do the work leaving you with a solved problem.

Business Handymen Vs. Topic Exports: topic, experts, know everything about a very narrow topic. They're phenomenal for Neisz Projects, but often lack the understanding of how the entire business structure works. Business handyman know a pretty good amount about most topics. They're certainly not lawyers or CPAs but they know enough to get the majority of the jobs done and most importantly, they know when to ask for help.

Business Handymen vs. Firms: firms have large overhead costs and specialize in a particular topic. They have deep, topical expertise and can get the problem solved for you, but it's gonna cost a lot of money and it's only in a narrow area of business. Business handyman have a little overhead cost and our generalists. They have a reasonably deep understanding of many topics and will get the problem solved for you.

Do I need a topic expert or can I hire a handyman? This is going to take some discernment on your part. You might start by asking the handyman if they have the skills to solve your problem, and then vet out there experience in that area. You also need to trust your handyman to admit when they don't know something and recommend third-party experts. I recommend outside experts on a daily basis when I don't know the answer to something Lawyers, and CPAs are my friends.

Do I need to pick between a handyman and the alternative options? No – you might hire both a business handyman and a topic expert to solve a problem for you. The topic expert is paid for a few hours to explain what needs to be done, and then you paid the business handyman to implement what the topic expert said.

Fractional work is a fancy word for working part-time.

In the professional services white collar world we charge a lot of money so we wanna be a little bit of a snob and not call ourselves part-time employees. It's just not bougie enough. But functionally speaking a fractional staff member works for you and for three or four other people doing the kind of same work.

IE: Kathryn is an HR manager working for three different businesses all part-time. She manages all of the HR activities for the businesses she works for.

The world's pretty messed up in the way that it works so many things. It also creates lots of false dichotomies around the way that we work with each other. Historically this is been your options:

Level 1 - You: When you're really a small business, you manage all of the money yourself. And you use a computer tool to file your taxes.

Level 2 - A Team you manage: When the Business grows a little bit, you then have a bookkeeper to manage all of your accounting for you and a CPA to file your taxes. You might even have a financial advisor to help you with personal retirement planning.

Level 4 - In House Team: In the old system you're only other option was to go higher a full-time in-house salaried chief financial officer for $120,000 a year.

That just doesn't make sense. That's way too big of a jump! There should be another option in here.

Level 3 - Fractional Work:

When you're a medium sized business, you have a money person who works for you and six other businesses. But they're your money person. They do as much as a full-time in-house chief financial officer would, but because your business is smaller, they can work with other people too.

Years ago, RPS contracted with my company to run some of their digital marketing. RPS is a pain management medical clinic with multiple locations, which is owned by several doctors. Now the doctors are phenomenal at pain management and they're also pretty savvy business people. But the thing that they did best, their top priority, their secret sauce was working one on one with patients to help them manage their pain and then to train other doctors to work with patients. That's what they went to school for eight years for! That's what they paid $250,000 in tuition cost for!

This does not mean that the owners are disengaged from the business, or that they've given total control over to the business manager. Much to the contrary, the best businessman Manager relationships I've been a part of is when the owners and Ceo are highly involved in the business and review what's going on.

Ask me and find out. I've worked for 2100+ businesses over the course the last 15 years in more than 300 different industries, solving problems in all 7 functional areas of business. I teach myself new things every day and I'm over various learner.

I also know when I'm in over my head and I'm not gonna be able to figure it out and don't have any egotistical hangups about admitting my limitations, and then finding a third-party topic expert to solve the problem, or to at least get us to the next step.

However, with most handyman, there's areas that I'm particularly strong at - areas that I am average at - areas that I’m below average as compared to another business handyman.

I work for 4-6 clients at a time. Often in the tech and wellness spaces industries.

I do deep implementation work not quicky consulting and PDF writing so I limit the number of project I’m working on.

There is not an industry or demographic that I exclusively work with. If you name the industry, I've probably done some work in it. I've worked for companies which made $50 a year and I've worked for companies which made more than $50 million a year.

Most of my clients I choose based on psychographics not demographics. Psychographics are soft skills like your values, mindset, and communication style.

I'm based in Detroit Michigan and work with my team and my clients mostly remotely. I've been known to travel for intensive multi-day working sessions with clients after few weeks.

Me, you, your staff, contractors and my team.

The primary difference between myself and a business consultant is that I do the work, and a business consultant just tells you what to do.

Me: Much of the work I do myself. I'm a productivity, nutcase and know how to move a metric ton of work over the finish line.

Your Staff: Daily, I'm meeting with the staff of my clients in a project management role to help them implement the challenges that need to happen

Contractors: Occasionally, I find third-party contractors, who either have a reduced cost, or an increased skill set to solve the problem on our behalf. It's my job to find vet and manage them.

My Team: I've got an entire Rolodex of people I know do good work and I trust to get the problem solved. None of them are my staff. Some of them are subcontractors, and some of them are just outside vendors.

I'll be the first to admit that I'm not the right man for every team or every job.

There's also 30 million virtual staff members out there that would be glad to work for you.

Here’s what make me unique

I'm candid and I don't hold back punches. I call shit - “shit” when I see it. I'm direct, honest and straight to the point. There's no beating around the bush. There's no ambiguity.

I do all of this from a sense of caring and love and support, and will certainly be talking about your emotions. But if you want to be coddled and babied and treated like a celebrity, call somebody else.

I've often been compared to a personal trainer, or a drill, sergeant, or a bulldog.

I am very kind in that. I advocate for your best interests, and I want to see you win. But I'm not necessarily nice and polite.

Business is a lot of work. There's a metric ton of work to get done. And I know how to get things across the finish line. I've spent thousands of dollars hundreds of hours and most importantly accumulated many many failures in my career learning how to maximize the amount of work I can get done both independently and as a team leader.

So often I hear from my clients that they don't lack good ideas, nor do they lack clarity on what to do next. Rather, they just lack the ability to get things implemented and crossed off the to do list.

I've built businesses from scratch, I held the largest amount of clients. When I was a consultant, I bought a house, gutted it, and renovated it from scratch, and I know how to prioritize.

After 2100 clients in 300 industries over the course of 15 years doing work in all seven functional areas of business I know how all of the pieces work together. I know how different industries do it and I know how the entire system runs. That means I know how all the pieces go together and I'm working from the entire picture. Not just my individual Department.

I'm the general contractor constructing the building I'm not the plumbing crew. They know how to install a 4 inch cast iron expansion joint in a steam line while they sleep and I'd have to Google it.

“I’m sure we can figure it out.”

I've trained my brain through 20 years of meditation, three different residential programs at Buddha temples, and thousands of pages of journaling to find the solution and not get stuck on the problem. I'm going to get it done. I'm going to make the win. And I'm not going to get stuck in some depressive expisode going off the radar for days at a time.

Cost: $1500/month-ish

Overview: Delegate a specific project or area of your business that needs a helping hand.

Examples:

Scope:

Cost: $3500/month-ish

Overview: Focus on what you do best which is your product and services and delegate the business stuff to me which is what I do best.

Examples:

Details:

Scope:

A business manager is a human that manages all of the business stuff about the business. Think paperwork and money management, and compliance and spreadsheets, marketing you know the “business stuff” they teach us in business school.

Essentially everything that is not your core product or service is run by the business manager.

IE: Marcus founded a pottery business that sells handcrafted plateware to high-end restaurants. Marcus doesn't like managing all the business stuff so he hired Spencer to do all of the business stuff while Marcus focuses on the creativity of building pottery and training the ceramicists to make the plateware. Marcus still owns the business and he reviews all of the business choices with Spencer having the final say.

Fractional work is a fancy word for working part-time.

In the professional services white collar world we charge a lot of money so we wanna be a little bit of a snob and not call ourselves part-time employees. It's just not bougie enough. But functionally speaking a fractional staff member works for you and for three or four other people doing the kind of same work.

IE: Kathryn is an HR manager working for three different businesses all part-time. She manages all of the HR activities for the businesses she works for.

The world's pretty messed up in the way that it works so many things. It also creates lots of false dichotomies around the way that we work with each other. Historically this is been your options:

Level 1 - You: When you're really a small business, you manage all of the money yourself. And you use a computer tool to file your taxes.

Level 2 - A Team you manage: When the Business grows a little bit, you then have a bookkeeper to manage all of your accounting for you and a CPA to file your taxes. You might even have a financial advisor to help you with personal retirement planning.

Level 4 - In House Team: In the old system you're only other option was to go higher a full-time in-house salaried chief financial officer for $120,000 a year.

That just doesn't make sense. That's way too big of a jump! There should be another option in here.

Level 3 - Fractional Work:

When you're a medium sized business, you have a money person who works for you and six other businesses. But they're your money person. They do as much as a full-time in-house chief financial officer would, but because your business is smaller, they can work with other people too.

Years ago, RPS contracted with my company to run some of their digital marketing. RPS is a pain management medical clinic with multiple locations, which is owned by several doctors. Now the doctors are phenomenal at pain management and they're also pretty savvy business people. But the thing that they did best, their top priority, their secret sauce was working one on one with patients to help them manage their pain and then to train other doctors to work with patients. That's what they went to school for eight years for! That's what they paid $250,000 in tuition cost for!

This does not mean that the owners are disengaged from the business, or that they've given total control over to the business manager. Much to the contrary, the best businessman Manager relationships I've been a part of is when the owners and Ceo are highly involved in the business and review what's going on.