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January 2007
Good morning.
My friend Betsy Harper of Sales and Marketing
Search advised her clients this month
to protect
their "precious assets" — their employees.
That
makes sense, since Sales and Marketing Search is a
recruiting
firm. Betsy doesn't want to just place talent,
she wants
to be sure that her clients know how to retain these
folks.
Betsy's New Year's advice gave me cause to
think about
my own clients' assets and wonder how they were
protecting
them… the subject of this month's
newsletter!
And, given that January is the month for resolutions,
why not
resolve to begin the year on the right foot with some
high
quality, peer-to-peer networking and entrepreneurial
learning?
Join me and my fellow SBANE colleagues
tomorrow
morning for breakfast and a lesson from an expert in
"Thought
Leadership: Separating Yourself from the
Pack."
Cordially,
Marijo McCarthy, Esq.
President, Widett and McCarthy, P.C.
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Protecting Your Assets: An Achievable New Year's Resolution! |
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When a business owner contemplates the
company assets,
it is often a somewhat limited view of the
landscape. We
all quite naturally think first of monetary
assets…
whether it is cash in the bank, accounts receivable,
equity in
the business, etc.
But, if we take a step back and look at the tangibles
and
intangibles that helped produce those
monetary assets,
we would recognize the "raw" assets — the
people who helped produce the product or
service
that we sell and the physical assets which
provide the
infrastructure in which and with which our people
produce.
Let's break our company's assets down into
bite-sized
pieces and ask ourselves a few key questions about
each
segment.
- First and foremost, we have our employees to
protect,
compensate and nurture.
- Do our employees have adequate benefit
packages,
fair and valued in the marketplace?
- Do our employees receive fair
compensation,
relative to the size of the business, the industry and
the
marketplace, and reasonable vacation policies?
- Do we "nurture" our employees (don't roll
your
eyes over this one… it is sometimes more
important than
top pay) with training, development, fair supervision,
promotions when available, and feedback on a regular
basis?
Reach out to the professional resources who
can help
you review your employee benefit and compensation
packages,
particularly if you haven't done this in a while. Be
sure you
are still competitive with the market and, if you
are not,
the New Year is a good time to review the process
for
achieving that competitiveness. After all, without
our
human talent, where would most of us be at the end
of the
day?
- Second we have our physical assets, office or
manufacturing equipment, to protect.
- Are you keeping current with the equipment
needed to
produce your product or service most efficiently?
Old,
slow technology can sometimes hold you back, and
it's
important to periodically review the physical assets in
your
office or plant. Protection is often best achieved by
an
upgrade.
- If your equipment is current, have you shared
the
existence of those new assets with your insurance
advisor?
An insurance advisor is more than just someone
who
sells you a policy… an insurance advisor
actually
"advises" us on protection we hadn't even thought of
or
perhaps knew existed. An insurance advisor is
part of the
professional team (just like your accountant and your
attorney), and should be consulted whenever you
upgrade
physical assets or assume new or different risks as
your
company grows.
- Third we have our physical structure,
office or
plant, to protect.
Of course, we all protect our office or plant with
property and
liability insurance, and the same kind of advice with
respect to
meeting with your insurance advisor fits here.
However,
the asset is more than just the four walls of the
structure… it's the lease as well (that's
right, that
long-winded document you filed away years ago and
haven't
looked at since!):
- Most leases tell us when they begin and end,
but
suppose you had enough foresight in the beginning to
ask for
one or more options to renew that lease? Maybe
you were
able to negotiate a fixed rate for the option or some
percentage of fair market value, which gives you just
a bit of
incentive to stay put right now instead of
moving.
- Protect that option by exercising your rights
according
to the lease. Otherwise, you could lose the right
and find
yourself out on the street at just the wrong time in
the real
estate market. Most leases will require that you
give the
landlord a certain number of months written notice if
you
intend to stay on. Letting that date slide by
leaves your
business vulnerable to a landlord who then has the
ability to
declare your right to stay null and void!
So here we are, barely into 2007, and we already
have a list of
things to accomplish. Protecting our assets is
something we
want to do and something we need to do. We
just need a
"to do" list (which you now have) and a
well-intentioned "nag"
to motivate (consider yourself nagged)!
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About Us |
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Widett and McCarthy helps small business owners start,
grow, acquire and sell their businesses.
We serve as "in-house counsel"… on-call when needed,
but not part of the company overhead. Our best clients
understand that the relationship between lawyer and client is a
two-way street, built on information sharing and problem
solving.
For more information regarding how
we can help you, click here.
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Widett and McCarthy, P.C.
1075 Washington Street
West Newton, MA 02465
Telephone: 617.964.5559
Facsimile: 617.964.5529
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Us | Visit Our Website
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