Business Owner Explains How To Overcome Major Challenges

Tony McDonald shares the rewards and challenges of managing two businesses. Tony is the founder and managing partner of Clarus Technology Solutions, LLC. He uses years of experience as a technology executive and his network of skilled practitioners to help clients with IT strategy, enterprise architecture, program and project management, business relationship management and training and mentoring employees. Sage Creek, LLC. was started by Timothy Dietrich several years ago to deliver tax, accounting and business advisory services to individuals and small businesses. Dietrich and McDonald are partners in Sage Creek.     What has been the biggest challenge you have had in your business? The original idea at Clarus was for me to run the first phase of projects and then bring in a team as we moved into phases that required more people. That part has not worked out. I've decided, for better or worse, to essentially outsource the sales of new work. I've traded potential revenue for steady work. This has fit with my lifestyle requirements for now, but I have not been building the company I originally envisioned, not yet anyway. Ironically, while acquiring existing business offices, Sage Creek still experiences the same classic problems found in a start-up company. Attracting and training skilled employees has, by and far, been the largest challenge. It's a service area with a meticulous level of detail, required to provide client service, yet the existing workforce is typically not used to this degree of quality control.   What have you implemented to overcome that challenge? The challenge at Clarus caused me to become a sole practitioner rather than a manager so I took the change in direction. Managing the growth and start-up issues around the core business is my main focus at Sage Creek. The traditional model is a CPA hanging out their shingle, giving good individual attention to clients. Our belief is we can continue the individual attention, but add systems and staff to support our client facing people, and let them focus on client needs while driving down our cost to deliver services and improving our turnaround time.   What are the results after you implemented your solution? I'm happy with Clarus. In two years, I've been working steadily and helping our clients. Most of the work has been project-based. We helped an industrial company set up enterprise architecture as a central discipline and helped them evaluate their global application portfolio. We evaluated all projects at a local hospital and ended up driving their critical projects to completion. I've just joined a hospitality firm that is looking to optimize their workforce management systems and processes. At Sage Creek, we've completed the first two office start ups and are well on our way to establishing two more. We will implement new systems this year to improve our turnaround time during tax season. We can better help our clients, provide meaningful work for our team members and build a successful company, all at the same time.     Michelle Guilbeau is a writer, reviewer, teacher and business owner. She also has experience in school administration, literacy coaching and is proud founder of CraftKitsForKids.com and MichelleGuilbeau.com Michelle enjoys sharing her knowledge of cities, food, travel, education and parenting issues with her readers. Her work can be found on Examiner.com.   document.write('\x3Cscript type="text/javascript" src="https://smallbusinesspulse.radio.com/%27%20%2B%20%28%27https%3A%27%20%3D%3D%20document.location.protocol%20?%27https%3A%2F%2F%27_%3A_%27http%3A%2F%2F%27%29___%27feed_mikle_com%2Fjs%2Frssmikle_js">\x3C/script>');(function() {var params = {rssmikle_url: "https://cbspulse.com/feed/",rssmikle_frame_width: "625",rssmikle_frame_height: "535",frame_height_by_article: "0",rssmikle_target: "_top",rssmikle_font: "Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif",rssmikle_font_size: "12",rssmikle_border: "off",responsive: "off",rssmikle_css_url: "",text_align: "left",text_align2: "left",corner: "off",scrollbar: "off",autoscroll: "on",scrolldirection: "up",scrollstep: "5",mcspeed: "20",sort: "New",rssmikle_title: "on",rssmikle_title_sentence: "More From CBS Small Business Pulse",rssmikle_title_link: "https://cbspulse.com/feed/",rssmikle_title_bgcolor: "#56A8E2",rssmikle_title_color: "#FFFFFF",rssmikle_title_bgimage: "",rssmikle_item_bgcolor: "#FFFFFF",rssmikle_item_bgimage: "",rssmikle_item_title_length: "100",rssmikle_item_title_color: "#56A8E2",rssmikle_item_border_bottom: "on",rssmikle_item_description: "on",item_link: "on",rssmikle_item_description_length: "250",rssmikle_item_description_color: "#666666",rssmikle_item_date: "gl1",rssmikle_timezone: "Etc/GMT",datetime_format: "%b %e, %Y %l:%M %p",item_description_style: "text+tn",item_thumbnail: "full",item_thumbnail_selection: "auto",article_num: "30",rssmikle_item_podcast: "off",keyword_inc: "",keyword_exc: ""};feedwind_show_widget_iframe(params);})();