I wrote the De-Risk Your Biz Series during the second half of 2023. I note the date for reference since I know some of the information in the Series will become outdated. But the concepts, the frameworks – those should hold up for a while.
Licensing Another area to think about for de-risking your small business is licensing. Ask yourself, other than paying taxes, how else might your company need to interact with the government (whether local, state or federal)? Regulation. In other words, what standard does the government impose
IP Registration In some cases, you obtain ownership over your IP as soon as it comes out of your head and you put it into the world in some sort of fixed format. But you still need to formally register your IP with the appropriate
I spent the formative years of my upbringing near the coast of South Carolina, in an area known as the “Lowcountry”. It’s a natural landscape of low-lying swamps, creeks, rivers, and islands – with the ocean nearby. Oak trees, some of which are centuries old,
Intellectual Property Primer: The Four Buckets Another key area to de-risk in your business upfront is intellectual property (IP). This is often a confusing concept for many company owners, so I’ll attempt to demystify it here. First, what is intellectual property? Simply put, it starts
Three-Headed Monster: Your Finance Team First you might ask: what is a lawyer doing talking to me about finance? The answer is that the point of this blog series is to identify key areas of business risk and de-risk them. Not having the proper financial
Minimum Documentation Required: LLCs & Corporations What is the minimum documentation requirement for each of these entities in order to give the business owner legal protection for their business and have the appropriate paperwork on file? LLCs: The Napkin Contract For LLCs, the requirements are
Every company is the same. Or, at least, every company can be described by one definition: Every company is: a combination of people -and- machines -and- money -and- time, making a product -or- service -or- both, sold to a customer, for a price. Whenever I
PRODUCTS You own products. When you make them, they become your property. You can sell them to others… even while you sleep. Intellectual property generates royalties, like real estate generates rent. Selling products generates profit margin, when done properly. Make (or buy) low, sell high.
Company Set-Up The so-called corporate documents legally required for a company range from simple boilerplate templates – which can be sourced from places like Legalzoom or Clerky – to more nuanced documents that need to be custom drafted by a business lawyer. Company Founders &