Love Your Business Month

Here at Advantage Partners Lawyers, we are celebrating the loved-up month of February by encouraging you to put some love into your business. By taking a moment out and investing time now into showing some appreciation, passion and love to your business, you can benefit immensely down the road. 

Some of the ways to show your love this month is by ensuring your business and you are protected and actively aware of and able to take advantage of opportunities for success now and into the future.

Often we find people are so focused on running their business they don’t know the risks and opportunities out there.  Unfortunately, ignorance is not an acceptable excuse and ahead in the sand attitude may result in you suffering a bad breakup with your business and the love you previously had, may turn into hatred.

So two steps you can take today are:.

1.      Book a Checkup – Let’s strengthen and grow that love

You don’t know what you don’t know, so a regular check-up to see where your business is at, what potential risks or opportunities are out there for your business, and what you need to do to remove those risks or take up those opportunities are essential to growing a strong business you love and can give you back that love.

Different businesses have different needs (legally and commercially) so doing an internal review and also catching up with your business specialist lawyers and accountants to do a review, can ensure you get on the right path.

We have over the years seen some people get very nasty surprises when trying to sell their business (their labours of love) that they actually did not own various of their assets, including the highly valuable intellectual property that they had previously paid good money for. Another example was a business failing to actively be aware of and take steps to meet its legal requirements meant that it was an expensive process to get to the due diligence stage of a contract of sale and then the deal all fell through when the due diligence showed up some nasty surprises that could have been avoided. Plus after the costly loss of sale, they had to then spend money fixing up what would have been cheaper and easier to deal with originally.

Doing this check-up sooner rather than can help you be proactive that can save you money and relationships (your personal as well as business relationships). Again, if you have an expert business lawyer and accountant they should also be able to provide you with some additional business insights for new opportunities, or ways to increase your business value, as well act as a sounding board for your future plans so you can find out now what is needed to achieve them and what may accelerate your achievement of these opportunities or whether you actually need to stop or change what you are doing in the event there are additional factors that actually make this not an attractive option for your business and you.

2.      Get it done – prove your love and make it stronger

We understand that as business owners we are often so focused on juggling the everyday matters that we put off what we know we need to do, until it gets too late and we are faced with having to radically change what we are doing, invest money and time trying to fix things or if it’s too late, there is just heartbreak with sadness or anger.

We have seen people seek to enter into a new relationship – whether it’s a new shareholder into your business, a new employee or contractor coming on board, a new supplier or a customer where the business owner starts talking about expectations and how the arrangement is to work, but they never get around to finalising the agreement. The relationship may be great initially, but as you progress there are misunderstandings on expectations, someone decides to change the goalposts partway through or the relationship sours and you may not get what you have paid for or you get an unexpected nasty surprise when you find out you have to pay more or you get a new competitor.

Shareholder Agreements, Confidentiality Agreements, Intellectual Property Assignment Ownership Agreements, Contractor Agreements, Supplier Agreements, Sponsorship Agreements are just a few agreements that can avoid some of these issues, plus if you are wanting to sell down the track or get further investors in place, failure to have these may make your business less attractive or decrease the price you can get.

So what are you waiting for! Book a time now for a Discovery Call to find out more and this month you will free access to do our Legal Health Check Quiz and report to help you take those steps to a stronger business you love and loves you.