How to Protect Your Burgeoning Business From Growing Threats

As soon as your startup begins to scale its market, the target on its back will immediately start to grow bigger and bigger. Once you make a name for yourself in your field and start turning over a healthy amount of profit, external forces will attempt to swoop in and jeopardize all of your hard work. Unfortunately, this is par for the course in the world of business.

However, you do not necessarily have to let these dangerous third parties impact your day-to-day company operations. There are a number of things that you can do to fend off the problems that you face; you just have to play it smart.

The smartest thing that you can do in this instance? Put the advice laid out below into practice. Here are four things you must do to protect your burgeoning business from growing threats:

Safeguard your intellectual property

When your business starts to carve out an authoritative name for itself in its field, more and more third parties will attempt to piggyback off its success. To ensure that your reputation isn’t tarnished by a rival company mishandling your brand, it’s imperative that you go above and beyond to safeguard your intellectual property.

To perform this all-important task in a highly effective and efficient fashion, you must:

1. Establish employment agreements during your onboarding process — this will legally forbid your staff members from revealing any important information pertaining to your business’ success (restricted records, specific formulas, etc.)
2. Apply for patents and copyrights as soon as you possibly can — the quicker you document your ownership of a trademark, the easier you will find it to safeguard your brand going forward
3. Double down on securing your information — if you don’t want your data to fall into the hands of someone who will exploit it for their own gain, you need to restrict access to it
4. Establish nondisclosure agreements — stop your personal information from entering the public domain by signing confidentially contracts
5. Form an LLC — incorporating your business will limit your personal liability should your assets, for whatever reason, become compromised

Deal with complaints

The law of averages dictates that the more customers you serve, the more likely you will be to have to deal with complaints. This is to be expected in the world of business, which is why you shouldn’t be too hard on yourself when you do eventually receive a number of grievances.

However, this does not necessarily mean that you should open yourself up to criticism or take it lying down. Allowing a vast amount of objections and accusations to pile up on one platform could have serious consequences for your brand image, which is why you must attempt to deal with your complaints in a highly effective fashion.

Here are five things you must do to proactively deal with your complaints:

1. Clearly display your terms and conditions — the more transparent you are when it comes to your Ts & Cs, the less your consumers will have to complain about going forward
2. Actively listen to your grievances and seek to understand the consumer point of view — this will showcase the fact that you take your complaints seriously and don’t just brush them under the rug
3. Apologize in the public eye — if you received a complaint online, don’t be afraid to own up to your mistake in the comment section
4. Always seek to find a solution — as the age-old adage goes… actions speak louder than words
5. Follow up with complaining customers — this will make it clear to your consumers that you are willing to go above and beyond to optimize the level of customer service that you provide

Take out liability insurance

If you’re serious about protecting your burgeoning business, it’s absolutely imperative that you take out liability insurance. The longer you fail to cover your company with this type of insurance premium, the more likely you will be to become embroiled in costly, reputation-damaging lawsuits going forward.

With liability insurance in place, you will stand to reap the following benefits on a day-to-day basis:

1. Protection against the unexpected — accidents do take place in the working environment from time to time, but having adequate cover in place will safeguard your business in the event of an unforeseen incident
2. You will be deemed to be more trustworthy — other companies will feel much safer entering into agreements with you once they know that your liability is covered, which in turn could help you to close larger contracts
3. Increased data security — most liability insurance premiums now include electronic data liability, which will help to protect your data should you ever find yourself at the end of a cybercrime attack

Protect your business against condemnation

As your business grows in stature, you will be required to move into bigger working environments. Investing in larger land is definitely a worthwhile course of action to take, as it will help you to handle your increased amount of consumer demand. You face one danger when you decide to upgrade in this instance, that being condemnation. Should they feel that your workspace is better suited to their own wants and needs, government-authorized companies will have no qualms in taking your property from you. Using the eminent domain law, these organizations will pay you for your land and take it as their own.

More often than not, the amount of money offered by government officials during the condemnation process is lower than the Just and Reasonable value of the property. If you don’t want your business to be stung by unfair monetary offers in this sense, it’s imperative that you align yourself with a professional eminent domain attorney. With a condemnation law expert by your side, you will stand a much better chance of being paid the exact amount of cash you are rightfully owed.

Do you want your burgeoning business to enjoy a vast amount of success over a sustained period of time? If so, it’s imperative that you protect it from growing threats by putting the advice laid out above into practice.