Our guest blog post comes from Jim Rutter of Ruttler IP Law. Jim will be our guest speaker at our June 23 Equinox Focus Event “Protecting and Leveraging Your IP”. ——————————————– The first major mistake that is made with patents is disclosing an invention prior to filing a patent application. Disclosure could include offering to... View Article
Is protecting your Intellectual Property a necessity, a nice-to-have, or a waste of time? Entrepreneurs and CEOs around the world ask this question regularly – and the answer differs for each business and each circumstance as the answer is driven primarily by what can be protected, for how long, and the risks associated with not... View Article
Our guest blog post comes from Kris Gray of Integrity Financial Corporation. Kris speaks about family businesses from two perspectives: as a service provider to family business owners and as a business owner whose partner is his mother, Julie. —————————————————— Michelle asked me to write a short blog about the strong working relationship among my... View Article
Our guest blog post comes from Steve Brilling, Executive Director of the Entrepreneurship Center and Family Business Roundtable at Seattle University’s Albers School of Business and Economics. ———————- It all comes down to communication—clear, concise, honest communication, with a dash of compassion thrown in. Whether it is in a legal document or simply a written... View Article
Experience is the best learning tool. Our guest blog post comes from Bill Altland, a family business owner of Whale Tail Pharmacy in Craig, Alaska. ———————— The word that comes to my mind relating to communication issues in family businesses is the word “insidious”. It can be difficult to separate the business issues from family issues... View Article
Our guest blogger this month is Lauren Owen, family business consultant and founder of Lauren Owen LLC. She will be co-presenting our seminar “Managing Family Business Relationships” on May 19. Learn more. ——————————— The dynamics of a family business can sometimes cause what we call the “elephant in the room syndrome: unspoken topics that no... View Article
Businesses are developed and grown through their relationships with people – people as owners, managers, customers, and vendors. These people relationships, though critical for success, also create substantial risk for the business because people are emotional and often unpredictable. Most businesses protect against this risk through contracts. Why do they work? Contracts allow a company... View Article
Our guest blog post this week is from Pete DiSantis of Peter DiSantis Consulting Associates. Pete will also be our guest presenter at the April Equinox Focus Event “Beating Your Competition through Contingency Planning.” ———————– You lock your house, your office, your car. You buy insurance for your house, your office, your car… even your... View Article
When we think of disaster recovery for business, images of earthquakes, fires, and floods come to mind. Thoughts about losses of expensive equipment, inability to access important data, and getting people to work and product out the door become overwhelming. We take comfort in the fact that we have property and casualty insurance and start... View Article