All About Magazine - Issue 16

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ALL ABOUT MAGAZINE | FEATURE 21
All About Business - Start-ups
Protecting Intellectual Property - One of the areas that is overlooked the
most for business start-ups is protecting intellectual property.
So often business owners are pre-occupied with
getting their business going that they forget to
protect what is theirs. Not doing so can mean that
any other individual or business could copy the idea
and profit from it without having to pay you any
money.
Contracts - Are important for the protection of
the business. In the beginning, before a business
becomes a business, a lot of agreements are made
verbally and with a handshake. This means that if
nothing is in writing difficulties may arise at a later
time.
Make sure that you are familiar with all of the basic
business contracts so that you can use them to bind
any agreements/partnerships legally. Practicing this
from the very beginning can pay huge dividends
further down the road.
Insurance - An essential part of running a business is
managing the risks it faces, minimising them where
possible and carefully arranging insurance policies
where the financial loss could have a serious effect.
Some insurances are compulsory, such as employer’s
liability and motor, some are essential such as public
liability, and some are simply good business, such as
fire and theft and insuring your business’s profit if you
were unable to trade after a major incident.