Business as Unusual

We're undergoing a major business refocus here at the Group, looking at our business from a historical perspective and assessing what we need to do this year to get where we want to go in the future. If you know me, and most of you don't really, you know that I've had some experience with this. I was once a stockbroker, and I did the dotcom thing - which was all by itself a PhD in business-plan writing - and the Group has been through about five incarnations, validating my impulse when I founded it to just call it the Chris Jones Group so as to save on constantly changing business cards.

We'll be doing mortgages of course, and offering seminars in first-time homebuying and in real-estate investing, which is what we do now, and we'll keep sending out the Pontificating Potty Post, our monthly newsletter, which, contrary to the industry norm, is all original material. But there are other things we ought to be doing as well, I think, and we need to decide what they are. Our little two-desk setup as it stands is very cramped; should we be buying a building? Renting somewhere? How much of our monthly expenditures should be for marketing? Last year it was close to 40% - is that too much or too little (or just right)? What about staff? Ray's still doing his thing, and Olivia produces the marketing stuff, and Steve was hired last month to help handle the incredible amount of clerical stuff that we have to do, but are we getting to where a couple more loan officers would be useful? And how would we pay them? How much would they be responsible for doing? Do we have the punch to grow the business that much?

We're thinking. And advice would be welcome.