When another business approaches you about buying your business the first step is to only talk in vague and general terms until you consult your attorney. Your attorney will tell you what you can disclose and when and what the risks are in disclosing the wrong kind of information or disclosing information at the wrong stage.

The biggest mistakes that business owners make in acquisitions fall into two obvious categories; those made by sellers and those made by buyers. For a seller, the biggest mistake that they make is disclosing too much information too early at the wrong stages without proper advice within a negotiation strategy and without having a confidentiality agreement in place.

The biggest mistake that business owners make with respect to their contract is failing to sign in the proper way. If you have a business contract and you just sign your name then you didn’t obligate your business, you obligated yourself. You went to all of this trouble to set up a business, use it!

There are five ways to reduce your odds of getting sued. The first is to exercise care in your relationship with the other party. Make sure that you know what your responsibilities are and make sure that they know what their responsibilities are.

When you think you’re interested in buying another business the proper place to start is being able to articulate why you want to buy that business and how that business is going to fit strategically with your business; strategically and financially. Once you’ve got that figured out and you can articulate that and you may be using your CPA with the financial side of things, make sure you involve your attorney early.

Legally organizing your business really is about having some credibility, having some branding and marketing panache to go with your business. Forming a legal business means that you’ve gone to the state and you’ve formally set up some sort of an entity that has a name and establishing your name in that way protects your name from use by competitors.

A regular corporation is also known as a C-Corporation. The difference between a C-Corporation and an S-Corporation fall mainly into three categories; the first is taxation.

If you have employees then you have contracts with your employees. The law creates that by default. If you have a written contract then your employees know how much they’re being paid, what their hours are, what the vacation policy is, what the sick policy is and what benefits they have.

When business owners can’t get along and need to go their separate ways it’s very similar to divorcing a spouse with all the attendant things that go on; anger, feelings of betrayal, pettiness, bickering over the china, it’s all very unpleasant.

If you’re doing business with customers and clients you have contracts, just the nature of that relationship creates a contract. What you really want to know is whether or not that relationship needs to be in writing.

This question is the question that I get most often at parties or in line at Starbucks. I’ve got a business or I just started out on my own, should I incorporate?

Both an LLC and a corporation give you a liability shield to protect your personal assets against business liabilities.  But an LLC is much more flexible so that you can tailor the structure of your organization to your particular needs, your owners and your investors.  An LLC doesn’t need shareholder meetings, doesn’t need a board of directors or board of directors meetings.  You can choose how it’s taxed.  An LLC can be taxed as a C-Corporation or an S-Corporation or a partnership.

Whether or not you need a non-disclosure agreement in your business depends on whether or not you have information in your business that would have value as an asset.  Information that has separate value as an asset could include customer lists, could include trade secrets including specially processes that you’ve created that nobody else is aware of, could include unpatented inventions that you use in your business.

If your clients are not paying on time the first step to make sure that you have taken is to have a proper accounts receivable program in place. A proper accounts receivable program starts with a clear invoice that is timely mailed to your customer.

A vendor is typically someone with whom you have a long-term repeat relationship that you use to acquire certain things that you need to operate your business.