Common Mistakes When People Start New Businesses

It is seemingly just so easy to start a business. The State of Florida does a good job online, making it easy to just fill out some forms, and suddenly, you have a state recognized business. But that’s really a facade, because although you may have a legally established business, that’s not the end of what needs to be done, when you start a new business.

There are some mistakes that many business owners make, when they are starting new businesses. Many of these are simply oversights, or things that don’t come first and foremost to your mind when you are starting a business. But if they are forgotten, you could have a lot of legal problems down the road.

Corporate Documents

One major thing that people overlook, is that they don’t have comprehensive governing documents for their company, or else, they use forms that they find online that aren’t properly tailored for their business. These may be corporate bylaws, partnership agreements, or management agreements for LLCs and similar companies. The state doesn’t require them, so many people overlook them.

But they serve as your company’s “rulebook,” establishing guidelines on how your company will manage and handle every conceivable problem or situation. They give validity to the actions you may take, now or in the future, establishing that whatever you do, was done in accordance with your company’s “rules.”

Using Intellectual Property

Many businesses don’t give much thought to the sayings they use, or the phrases they market themselves with, or the music that may accompany their ads and marketing online. But all of that is intellectual property. Aside from the cost of beings sued for infringement, you don’t want to spend thousands of dollars on a marketing campaign, only to later find out that the campaign cannot be used because you are infringing on someone else’s intellectual property.

Employee Legal Issues

Companies with employees often don’t give thought to issues regarding their employees. Sure, we all know not to harass people, but does your company have an established policy about who handles harassment complaints, how employees are supposed to make complaints, what a harassment investigation looks like, or policies to protect people who make harassment complaints?

Personal Device Policies

Our everyday life outside of work includes our personal devices. So it’s natural to communicate with employees or co-owners with those devices, or to have employees do company work on their devices. Even simple things like texts or emails, can have important company information.

But if that information is on employees’ devices, how is it being used? Will you ever get that information back when employment ends?

This becomes especially important if employees are dealing with customers’ private information on their devices—do you have the IT infrastructure in place to make sure that information is safe, when it is being accessed by your employees’ private devices?

Call the West Palm Beach business lawyers at The Law Offices of Larry E. Bray today for help starting your new business or company.

Source:

forbes.com/sites/allbusiness/2020/02/01/legal-mistakes-made-by-startups/?sh=19d1a85c22a6