How To Prepare Your Business for 2012 – Emerging Business Seminar Debrief

Another standing room only crowd at the S&W Emerging Business Seminar on How To Prepare Your Business for 2012 today.

Key takeaways:

Strategies to protect and enhance the value of your business as we (hopefully) emerge from the “Great Recession” in 2012:

(1) Protect your personal and corporate assets through proper corporate (re-)structuring
(2) Put a shareholders / operating agreement in place
(3) Raise capital…legally and under how pending “crowdfunding” legislation could redefine how emerging companies raise capital
(4) Assess and protect your intellectual property rights and plan for the historic changes coming to U.S. patent law
(5) Ensure independent contractors are not employees
(6) Manage your employees (as 84% of them will be looking for a new job in 2012)
(7) Plan for potential changes in the federal income tax landscape
(8) Use commercial contract best practices
(9) Plan for an eventual liquidity event
(10) New Year’s resolution for every business – “Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work.  And the only way to do great work is to love what you do.  If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle.” (- Steve Jobs)