Category: Business Planning

I just returned from a trip of a lifetime. I spent the month of September living and working from one of my favorite cities – Paris!

Ever since I spent the fall semester abroad in London during my junior year of college, I’ve always wanted to live abroad for a moment as an adult. When I started my firm almost five years ago, I was intentional about creating a location-independent, online-based firm.

And whether it’s a month in another country or a week in a city several hours from home, here’s what I learned during my time away and what’s taking me and the firm to new heights in 2023.

Rest

Rest is critical and not something I’m great at. I know I’m not alone.

Hustle culture is still a thing, and we all know that starting and operating a small business can be a grind. It takes sacrifice and usually that means sacrificing your personal time.

I was off the entire first week of September, and I didn’t realize how physically and mentally exhausted I was. Truthfully, I could have used another week off. But the week was restorative in ways that I could not have anticipated.

Of course, you’re never really off when you have a business because it’s always on your mind. But you can set appropriate boundaries and prioritize rest. I returned having made that commitment to myself.

New Location, New Ideas

Sometimes all it takes is a new location to get a new perspective and to unlock your creativity.

This is the time of year when many of us are thinking about next year, reaching for new goals, and making improvements both personally and in our businesses. I got so many ideas and answers to challenges after getting some rest and having to get acclimated to a new environment.

So, while I will not move to a new city every other month (at least not now), I will be more intentional in working from different locations, whether that’s a week in another city 3-4 hours away once a quarter or just a day working from a co-working space that requires me to drive on a different highway.

Scaling . . . Back

I went to Paris knowing I would take a week off and get back to a regular work schedule the last three weeks. I also knew I wanted to enjoy my new environment and not just on the weekend.

So, I committed to sticking to a 40-hour work week and sometimes a bit less. I was more productive, in less time. I was getting things done, checking items off my to-do list, and getting rest. Amazing.

Moving forward, part of my business growth strategy is to say “no” more and narrow down to the essential services. I know that means more profit and making space for growth in other areas – finally getting to execute the ideas I’ve had to take the firm to the next level. I found the old cliché, “less is more”, is true.

Making Room for Things That Feed Your Spirit DAILY

I love a routine. And since my small Paris apartment wasn’t the best place to exercise, I went for a run or walk every morning in my neighborhood park.

I love beautiful parks, nature, landscapes, and my neighborhood park, aka Jardin des Tuileries, was top-tier. I also love exploring – it brings me joy. Exploring my new city daily after work brought me joy daily.

Museums I had not visited on previous short trips, street art, different food, and beautiful parks – I enjoyed it all. The same way prayer, meditation, showering, brushing my teeth, etc. are all part of the daily routine. I returned home committed to making time for activities that feed my spirit daily.

Time away in a beautiful city was just what my mind, body, and spirit needed to close out the year with a bang.

In a prior blog, I discussed the importance and benefits of keeping good records as a business owner. Now, at the top of the year, I’ll go more in depth on how to create a routine around recordkeeping, which records to retain and how long, as well as the best tools to use.

First, record retention refers to the safeguarding of important records that document decisions, policies, financial activities, and internal controls[1]. It’s a key function for every business. That means you will need a system or routine for most of the records your business generates and tools to help you do it.

Related Post: Get caught up on recordkeeping at MC Law. Read our prior blog, The Importance and Benefits of Good Records.

What records do you absolutely need to retain and where do you keep them?

Certainly, the specific type of records that you will safeguard will depend on your business and those records. For example, if you sell products, you should keep records of your inventory and sales. For the most part, the records you need to retain will likely fall into one of the following categories.

Business Formation Documents

Articles of Incorporation/Certificate of Formation, Bylaws or Operating Agreement, EIN, annual meeting minutes, any licenses or permits, EIN, and all amendments to those documents should be saved in one place – preferably in a corporate record book.

Client Records

Orders, invoices, record of payments, project plans, completed project deliverables, drafts, correspondence, meeting notes,  should be stored in a customer relationship management (CRM) system. But if you are not quite ready to invest in a CRM, at the very least, store your client records in Dropbox®, Google Drive, Microsoft One Drive®, or some other cloud file hosting platform. If you are ready to invest, know that there is software that matches your business type and size.

Contracts & Agreements

Make sure to keep a copy of all leases, contractor agreements, and contracts with vendors in a place where it’s easily accessible. Signing agreements with e-signatures is pretty common now, which means you will probably be emailed a copy of the final signed document. A good habit would be to keep your electronic contracts in a dedicated folder within your Outlook or Google, AND download a PDF version and save to the cloud and/or external drive.

Business Financials

Bank statements are easily accessible online, so no need to print and store, but you should keep your account opening documents, loan documents, checks, and that folder of materials the bank will give you at account opening – in a filing system. Invest in a filing cabinet if you’re in a business that generates a lot of paper and an accordion-style folder or portable filing box if you have minimal paper to store.

Taxes

Keep your returns and all supporting documents organized by year. Set up a simple filing system for any receipts (hard copies) and store any documents sent electronically in the cloud or on an external hard drive. Eventually, you may consider springing for a scanner to store all of your paper documents to the cloud and external hard drive. Bookkeeping software is a must and will make tax time easier. Manually tracking using spreadsheets can get out of hand quickly if you are not meticulous.

How do you do it?

Once you identify the records you absolutely need to safeguard, you can do it by creating a routine that you will stick to. To put it simply, just do it.

Best case scenario, put the record in its proper place in real time. If you just received your copy of the final signed contract, move it to the right folder in your inbox and save the PDF to the cloud and/or your CRM.

Or pick one day a week (or at least twice a month), and block off time for to you take care of the administrative tasks that are easy to put off. One of those tasks should be ensuring that you (or someone on your team) have filed away all important documents generated that week. If once a week is too much, it’s recommended that you do this at least twice a month so that the “paperwork” doesn’t pile up.

Finally, automate wherever you can. When selecting software or tools, whether free or paid, take a look at the software integrations to determine the programs that work together to capture the information you need and make your life easier.

  For more tips on creating a record-keeping routine, and a sample record retention schedule, the SBA has an excellent guide complete with tests and discussion points to help you along the way.

At MC Law, we encourage small business owners to position themselves to avoid problems later. Check out our Business Planning page to learn how we help you have a peace of mind about the operation of your business and our Intellectual Property page for more information on how we help you protect and maximize your business assets. Or feel free to reach out to us for a consultation.

We’re nearing the end of 2021, and the light at the end of the pandemic tunnel is getting brighter. One trend from this time that we won’t soon forget is the “The Great Resignation”. The reasons why employees are deciding to leave the workforce at a rate higher than usual are plenty.

For many, stay-at-home orders, long hours working from home plus homeschooling, and the general sense of uncertainty, was just the nudge they needed to take their side business seriously or to dip their toe into entrepreneurship for the first time.

If you were an employee for decades, you may have no concept of what intellectual property (IP) is and what it means for you. As an entrepreneur, understanding what IP you have and how to protect it is the key to generating revenue and building a sustainable business. What’s more, there are real consequences to doing nothing including:

1. Harder to fight copycats

It’s 2021, and it’s essentially mandatory that you have an online presence. People still visit websites to see who you are, what you’re about, and what services you offer. And social media is an easy and generally less expensive way to market your business.

The flip side of being public and developing a following is the ease in which some pretend-entrepreneurs simply watch and steal the names, slogans, and entire programs of creative entrepreneurs. Strong and secured brands put lazy copycats off.

Plus, if you have to take action, you have a stronger claim and can collect more damages.

2. Reputational Damage

Some copycats, copy word-for-word and pass it off as their own. Others copy just enough that a causal observer may believe you are the source of the “new” content.  They’re happy to ride another entrepreneurs’ coat tails.

If that copycat engages in unsavory business practices (which is likely since they steal IP) and earns a bad rap, that in turn could tarnish the goodwill you’ve built for your brand.

3. Trickier Proving You Did It First

It takes time to build a strong brand, but popularity online and relying on the fact that you have used a name, slogan, or logo for a long time may not be enough.

How do you prove that you created the IP first? Being proactive and seeking registrations for your trademarks and copyrights is generally less expensive than engaging an attorney to send a demand letter or litigate after the damage is done.

4. Lost Opportunity

If you are successful in your entrepreneurship endeavors and become profitable you will have options. You can build a business that becomes a legacy for your family, put it up for sale for a nice profit, or license your work for a fee to name a few.

Generally, interested buyers will do their due diligence around the ownership of the intellectual property because it is one of the business assets up for sale. And where or if it’s not clear what the business owns, a potential buyer may lower their offer.

If you are considering licensing your work, you want to proactively protect it and establish standards of use first.

Want to know more? Learn more about intellectual property in my new book, Striking Business Gold, written with Sasha Lalite, CEO of Meta Viable Solutions. In the book, you’ll find 17 chapters of practical legal and operational tips and strategies to help you grow your business.

One of those chapters is all about intellectual property and covers the fundamentals with clear definitions, contains examples to help you understand what you need to protect what you’ve created, warns against waiting to protect your work, and offers tips for entrepreneurs to avoid being accused of infringement. You can get your copy here.

And if you know you shouldn’t wait another day to protect your IP, schedule a consultation with us here.