When you own a business, you likely pour your time and heart into the latest product, content, course, or service you offer. After all this time and effort, you may wonder what happens if someone tries to steal it and sell it as their own? Can you contact that person and request they remove it? What if they refuse? Or, what happens if they have been selling it on their own and making money off it?
What if you are three months into a six-month service contract with your client and they change their credit card number and bail? What now? If you get charged with a DUI, you need to hire a Phoenix DUI lawyer, and the same applies to your business. If you are in a legal situation, you need a business attorney. This will help you protect your business and the investments you have made. Some other ways you can protect your business are found here.
Start with the Website
If you want to protect your business, the first thing you should do is protect the website and content on your website. Every website should have a disclaimer, terms and conditions, and privacy policy. The privacy policy is probably legally required if you are collecting email addresses or if you have a “contact me” form included on your site. The privacy policy will let people know when you are collecting information, along with what you do with it. The website disclaimer is a statement to your readers about how you are. Finally, the terms and conditions page or contract is the place where you set the rules and regulations related to using your site.
Client Contacts
While it may be tempting to email, text, or send a Facebook message to potential clients, this is a situation where digital paper or traditional pen and paper still rules. If your business is going to work with clients, you need to make sure the work agreement is in writing. This should be done via a contract.
Make sure the contract is clear about what is or is not included, the terms of the payment, the disclaimer, and what the policies of the company are. This way, if problems occur, you can always bring the contract up and make sure the agreed-upon rules are being followed.
Stay Within the Scope
A good way to protect yourself and your business is to make sure you always operate within the scope of your practice. This is something that is different for everyone depending on who you are, what you do, and what qualifications you have.
If you operate in the health or wellness space, it makes a huge difference if you are a health coach, registered dietician, or nurse. If you are trying to give out business advice, it is important that someone knows you are not a financial advisor, accountant, or lawyer.
Create a Sharing Policy
One of the fastest and easiest ways for you to get credit is to have a clear “sharing” policy on your site. It is best to include this in your terms and conditions. This is where you need to outline the steps that someone needs to take if they are interested in sharing your photos, recipe, post, or anything else. Will they have to email someone at the company? Who can they contact? Can they just share everything if they include a link back to your site and give you the credit? Can they use your photos, too? It is important that your sharing policy addresses all these questions.
Make sure that this sharing policy is set out clearly on your site so that anyone who visits will see the post and understand what your policies are. You can also use the fact you have created a sharing policy in your terms and conditions for if you need to contact someone who happened to use your content in a way that would be against your sharing policy.
If you want to protect your business, there are more than a few things a person can do. Be sure to keep the information here in mind, as it will help you get started with this process. If you are going to put time, money, and effort into building a business, you need to make sure that you keep this information in mind. Being informed, knowing what to do and how to protect your business will help ensure that you can build a business that has the best chance of success now and in the future.
