Negotiating

I am working with an IT company to put together a proposal of services to help support my church. I had interviewed several companies that are local and small enough to make it affordable to the church. My church has NO IT support and earlier this year, when their email server went down, there was no support and they were without email for over 2 weeks. It’s amazing how many people will email the pastors, rather than call. They had to announce it at every service on the weekends. I know if it was my company that would be completely unacceptable. We go down occasionally but it’s an hour or 2….anything more than that and we’re losing thousands every hour. It’s not an option. But we also have 24/7 monitoring and Service Level Agreements in place that make sure that doesn’t happen. But a small church doesn’t have that luxury.

Until now. The proposal is pretty fair in my eyes. I have a few concerns and I’m willing to put together the “list of demands” from everyone else so I can talk to the company about them and see what our options are. I have to admit that I think this is fun. This is what I do but on a much larger scale for my job. And I think that I may impress some of the people from the church because they really are not tech savvy or even business savvy. Running a business and running a church are 2 different things.

So I’ll be negotiating with the company to determine what concessions they’ll make and what we’re willing to pay. I like playing negotiator and keeping a poker face. I, obviously, cannot make decisions for the church but I do get to talk intelligently to this company about my expectations. I like being an adult sometimes.

Having interviewed and recommended this company, I have a pretty good feel for how they do business. I’m impressed. So impressed, actually, that I’m thinking of selling them my services. I think I would be a great addition to their company. They would be able to offer higher level project management and even vendor relations. I think I would be a good match to the company as it’s small and growing. It would enable me to have smaller projects (with smaller budgets) and I can be more one on one with clients. I honestly think a smaller company would be a better fit for me at this point in my career. I’m getting to be a little bit of a small fish in a big pond in my current company. Not that that is bad but I think I work better when I know I’m out performing others. It’s the competition. And I've been with my company almost 11 years.  I don't think there is much of a career path for me because it's my boss then the CIO of the company.  My boss is new, so not going anywhere and I'll never be the CIO because I don't have anengineering background.  So I'm kind of limited.

Of course, there are negatives to this. I’m not sure they can afford me. I can’t really take a reduction at this point. And insurance and such…all things I have perfectly balanced with my current job. So I would potentially lose some money, which I can’t afford. .

But I’m trying to think of a way to send my resume to the owner and sell him the concept of having me work for him. I think I have it thought out and I can just forward the resume and see what happens….but I don’t want to talk over his head but I also want to sound professional and eager. This will probably not happen; the offer of a job. But I think it’s a good start to doing something about needing change. Otherwise, I’m cashing out my 401K, moving to a MUCH cheaper place, going to school and then starting a new career.

And what career?  I have a few ideas but I think they are ideas because they seem fun but probably not profitable.  I'm getting a little of the Peter Pan syndrome.  I'd like to stop being an adult and just play with my toys.