Business Owners: Time for a Checkup?
By: Steven R. R. Anderson
Going to the doctor isn’t necessarily anyone’s idea of a good time. There’s the waiting. The paperwork. The frighteningly accurate scale. If you’re lucky, no one will stick you with needles or make you put on one of those open-in-the-back hospital gowns (no promises, though). One thing you won’t avoid, of course, is a bill. All that fun doesn’t come cheap.
So why do we do it? Because preventative care is important. Armed with the information gathered from a standard yearly checkup, you and your doctor can strategize to make small adjustments now – to diet, to exercise, to medication – that pay large dividends in improved health and quality of life down the road.
When it comes to health, few of us can afford not to think about the long term. Sure, everything may seem just fine at the moment. But, all too often, a problem that’s become big enough to be obvious has also become too big to fix. That’s why proactive, preventative care is critical: it stops problems from becoming PROBLEMS.
Investing in preventative care, then, is responsible not just because it saves you money in the long run, but because it can – quite literally – save your life.
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We often talk about businesses like they’re living things. Your company might be “growing” and “healthy”. It may be “maturing” or a “member of the community”. A business has its own identity – my wife works for a branding and design company and has, more than once, described what she does as “therapy for businesses” (she’s great at it, by the way). And every business owner I’ve ever worked with has wanted to avoid using that ultimate descriptor: “dead”.
Preventative care is just as important for your business’s health as it is for yours. Your company may be exposed to underlying legal risks (problems) that you can’t see…yet. But by the time you’re being sued or foreclosed on (PROBLEMS), it may be too late to fix them.
The good news? Preventative care works just as well for your company’s health as it does for your personal health. A legal checkup can uncover the unseen risks waiting for just the wrong moment to make themselves known. Then, armed with information and expertise, your attorney can help you make the small adjustments now that pay off in a big way later. Properly drafted documents and expertly negotiated agreements can be tailored to meet your company’s specific needs, protecting it from risk and keeping it strong and healthy for years to come.
Just like getting a yearly checkup, quality legal work is a sound investment that will save money in the long run and safeguard your company’s future. You might just save your company’s life.
Plus, no needles.