Freedom to grow your business and the security necessary to do so.

Like many people who wake up one day and decide that going into business for themselves would be the path to freedom, prosperity and fulfillment, I resigned from a good position at a good law firm and rented an office by myself almost twenty years ago. I went through the usual culture shock of trying to figure out how to pay taxes, limit my personal liability, obtain supplies, pay the bills, attract business, invoice customers, get paid and generally keep the doors open for one more month.  Once these day to day operating issues were stabilized, I went to work practicing law.  In other words, I went to work doing the business my fledgling company was formed to do.  I became very busy doing the business I had set out to do, and this was great.  However, I stopped paying sufficient attention to the details of running a business.  The freedom of working for myself had eclipsed the security I needed to keep doing so.

 

As a lawyer I was aware of the liabilities that often face a small business, but the reality is that I paid little attention to these matters beyond ensuring that there were no glaring liabilities.  I was too busy trying to practice law and provide results for my clients.  As a result, like most small businesses operators, I experienced my share of unnecessary stress, fear, uncertainty and expense.  This, in turn, disrupted my business plan, negatively impacted my income, and caused me to spend countless hours dealing with issues that were unrelated to my core business mission.  The worst part is that I simply saw this as a necessary part of doing business. 

 

I have since learned that stress, fear, uncertainty and distraction from core business objectives is not a necessary and integral part of doing business.  While uncertainty and risk can never be completely eliminated, it can be significantly reduced, allowing the business owner to focus on the mission of the business and maximizing their freedom, prosperity and fulfillment while ensuring the necessary security.

 

After going through some personal and business events which caused me to re-assess my priorities and directions, I embarked upon a systematic review of my business to ascertain the needs of the business in five key areas: legal, insurance (or risk management), financial and tax.  During this process I came to suspect that most small businesses are operating in much the same way that I used to operate.  They go to work doing the business that their company was formed to do and pay only scant attention to the threats that are a reality of doing business.  As such, they operate with a constant degree of unease that hums in the background like some distant machinery.  After some further research my suspicions were confirmed.  Business owners are acutely aware of the dangers of contractual disputes, regulatory compliance issues, the need to keep clients' personal information secure, tax compliance concerns, human resource issues and the host of risks that arise from doing business with and around other human beings.  But all too often, they only face these issues when a crisis arises and when the resolution of the issue is expensive, disruptive and massively stressful.  If any attention is given to these issues before a crisis arises it is often done in a hit-or-miss way in which the management either relies on a home grown resolution and blindly hopes that it is “good enough,” or they resort to a generic one-size-fits-all solution which they obtained from the internet, and which is unlikely to actually meet their needs.  There is a better way. As a small business owner you can experience freedom and security.

 

The stress, uncertainty and disruption can be out-sourced.  Large, successful companies have counsel at their disposal.  The issues which cause us such anxiety are routinely resolved by attorneys who are pro-actively working from within to limit the risk to which the company is exposed.  It is time to level the playing field.  Out-sourced general counsel allows smaller companies to punch above their weight class by bringing the security provided  an in-house attorney without the expense and infrastructure.

 

Maughan Law Group  LC provides out-sourced general counsel services to small / medium sized businesses. Our mission is to provide custom legal advice, counseling and guidance which is integrated with our clients’ strategic business objectives.  This allows them to do what they do best - grow their business.