Love your reply lostforwords. Sorry I took little bit of time to reply, but I was thinking about it.
Agree that my "options" are 100% reactive, that was an excellent observation (I'm so lucky to have people like you to see things I don't)
To clarify our roles in the business. WH is the core of the business he has the "know how" and he deals with the clients and all of our subcontractors, he is the project manager and basically the key man.
I'm the administrative and business end of it. Practically speaking I'm the more replaceable one. He could replace me easier then I could replace him. However he trusts me and relys on me for everything regarding business administration. He doesn't even know how to properly read financial statements or negotiate a loan, so it would be very difficult for him to oversee someone else doing my part.
To some degree I already started implementing some of the ideas you are suggesting. In the past my WH was networking and promoting our business within his business circle and it worked in good economy, we got most of our business through referrals. (He pretty much stopped actively doing that in the past year)
In addition we of course use on-line marketing, you get response but it hasn't been that successful in terms of quality leads that we actually close.
So to respond to your question "Is it conceivable for you to start marketing new clients yourself more aggressively?" That's what we agreed on doing, contacting old clients asking for referrals and cold-calling and networking.
However he is not doing it - it seems to me that he expects me to do that part all by myself on the top of my regular job. Right now we can't afford to hire anyone to help with that. And since we don't have that much work he could certainly be doing some of it if he wasn't "busy" with OW.
So yes I could keep things as they are (option 1) for a while and increase my efforts in getting more business by myself.
The hardest part is that I don't feel that we are working as a team. So OK I will cold-call and get clients interested in talking with us and I will set-up an appointment for WH to see them. I don't even know when he is in town, he doesn't bother to tell me. His reliability is the issue here I think.
Sorry this reply is getting too long for anyone to read it, I guess I'm just processing the issues as I write.
Lostforwords thanks so much for helping me see different options, It really helps so much to have feedback.
M53 H54 D17 M33Y T38Y Bomb OW 09/09 OUT 10/09 BACK 11/09 OUT 01/10 WANTS TO R 04/10 BACK with OW 05/10 Wants to Reconcile 05/11 I said NO
