Running a business requires many years of hard work and dedication. If you’re not careful, you can lose a lifetime of hard work. More often than not, small businesses fail in the first couple years. It is usually from a substantial acute loss rather than a slow decline. Covering your bases in a digital age has never been more important.
Give yourself and your business the best possible chance of holding onto all that you’ve built by using the following tips for asset protection.
Change Your Business Entity
Operating as a sole proprietor can leave you legally liable for everything that your business owns. As a business owner, you should protect personal assets by forming an LLC. Simply put, this simple and affordable step will ensure that you are never required to pay more than the value of your firm if someone takes you to court.
Implement Physical Security
What happens at your business when you’re gone? Regardless of whether you operate at home or at a separate facility, you are vulnerable to burglary and vandalism. Sometimes simple measures can dramatically reduce the physical vulnerability of your business. Get started by investing in an alarm system that has 24-hour business monitoring. If your business is completely mobile, you might consider cyber security as an affordable on the go solution.
Get Insured
You never know what is going to happen, or when a disaster might strike, so it is imperative that you not put off getting business insurance. What kind of insurance you get and how much coverage you have will depend on the size and type of business that you have, but at the very least, you need worker’s compensation insurance and liability. If you have a physical location, you should also consider insuring your location and anything inside. You don’t want to deal with a disaster or lawsuit and lose your business because you put off getting insurance. Your insurance needs to be tailored to your location for the best results. For example, Colorado Springs general liability insurance generally has added property and vehicle coverages.
Restrict Your Team
If your business has employees, you need to make sure that they don’t share your trade secrets with your competitors. Make sure that all your employees sign non-disclosure and do-not-compete agreements to prevent them from becoming a liability if they ever decide to change jobs.
Secure Your Network
You might think that the size or your business makes you immune from hackers. It doesn’t. Lapses in data security can jeopardize the existence of your business and cause you to become legally liable for losing confidential information. Invest in the hardware, software and third-party services needed to ensure that no one can access or destroy your data.
Now that you’ve learned some basic tips for protecting the assets of your growing business, you need to put them to use. Don’t procrastinate. After all, you never know when an event will occur that will take away everything you’ve worked so hard to accomplish.
References:
Can You Change a Sole Proprietorship to an LLC? | LegalZoom
Office Security is Going Mobile | ADT Pulse
How NDAs Work and Why They're Important | Investopedia
12 Steps to Small Business Security | Network World