But who did I know that might have need an accountant? What could I do to help?
As I was pondering the question, my phone’s video messaging app started buzzing indicated that I had a video call. I picked it up and it was one of my app writing collaborators, Mark.
‘Happy Holidays Peter!’
‘Hey, Happy Holidays to you Mark. What’s up?’
‘Been thinking about our arrangement and I think there’s more business to be had if we were able to present a larger presence to potential customers.’
I thought about it for a moment and agreed, ‘yeah, makes sense. A larger organization would hint that the group had talents that could be applied to most situations.’
Mark nodded his head, ‘yeah, that’s my thinking.’
‘Have you talked with the others?’ I asked.
‘Not yet. I wanted to bounce the idea off you first.’
‘How many writers were you thinking of?’ I asked.
‘Well, there are nine of us already, but I think we need to pickup some skills sets in the financial and accounting area.’
‘As in people who know how accounting skills are applied in different settings?’
‘Precisely. Someone who has practical accounting and bookkeeping experience.’
‘Would we be competing against off-the-shelf software?’ I asked.
‘No, there’s no market in doing that. But I think that perhaps we can suggest to some of the more popular accounting software companies that we would be interested in customizing their accounting software for their upper end clients; those who purchase enterprise suites. I think that end user market would also be willing to pay for custom tweaking of the basic software package to meet their specific needs.’
‘Let me give it a think and get back to you on that. Just off the top of my head, I think that this might be a good idea.’
‘By the way, you interested in being our defacto leader?
‘Me? Why me?’
‘Because everyone looks up to you.’
‘Bullshit. Who told you that?’
‘I’m not kidding Peter.’
‘Mark, look, the person who we should be thinking of should be someone who can think globally and not just about the code that they write.’
‘Yeah, I agree. So what’s your point?’
‘Well, my point is that I’m not sure that I’m that person.’
Mark laughed. ‘Yes you are.’
‘No I’m not.’
‘Yes you are. Aren’t you the one whose always suggesting ways to market our services better? Aren’t you the guy who talks about billing for work performed and collecting on past due invoices? And didn’t you come up with the idea to collaborate and cross-referral to others to broaden our presence in the market?”
‘Yeah, well, those things kind of were no-brainers. I mean, anyone could have come up with those ideas.’
‘But we didn’t and you did, and you made us believers.’
I laughed, ‘ok, I guess I did. But I don’t want to force anyone into a deal that wasn’t there to begin with.’
‘No sweat. We should ask everyone what they think.’
‘Ok, how do you want to do this?’ I asked.
And Mark began inviting the others into the video meeting. And surprisingly everyone else was available and jumped in. I guess everyone was in the midst of shutting down and getting ready for the holidays.
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