Small Biz Survival

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POV: Which path to take?

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Rand at SEOmoz is exploring a business decision of large proportion, and he’s letting us in on his thinking process. It’s fascinating to share his Point of View.

Right now, SEOmoz is in a very unique position. We’ve found ourselves torn between two worlds, navigating uncertain waters without the benefit of long experience. Our central quandary is – what direction do we take? Our options:

A) Continue to serve clients, provide SEO and web marketing consultation and generate relatively robust profits as a firm. We’re poised to grow to 8 full-time employees in the next month (from the 3 that we had last October) and from that vantage, we’ll be in a position to bring in between $700K and $1.25 million in revenue over the next 12 months. Even with significant overhead and expenses, it makes for a well paid team and a decent budget for growth.

B) Ween ourselves off clients and develop our own content play in the Web 2.0 landscape. As fun as it is to see the traffic, visibility and revenues of our clients launch skyward as we work with them, temptation begs the question… “why not do it for yourself?” Indeed, I can’t think of a meeting with a venture capitalist or experienced entrepreneur in which the question hasn’t been raised – “If you’re so good at this, why serve the interests of others?” I think I know how stock brokers must feel.

…
It’s a question of timing, fear and uncertainty.

He goes all through his current thinking, exploring positives and unanswered questions, ranging all the way through venture capital issues. An interesting read for other small business people.

About Becky McCray

Becky started Small Biz Survival in 2006 to share rural business and community building stories and ideas with other small town business people. She and her husband have a small cattle ranch and are lifelong entrepreneurs. Becky is an international speaker on small business and rural topics.

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