Women in Accounting: Are You Protecting Your Business?

Photo by Keren Levand via Unsplash.

Picture this: you’ve built a successful business from the ground up, you’re getting ready to expand your firm, and someone who’s been a member of your team since the beginning leaves to start their own business...with all of your blueprints with them.

This can go one of two ways.

If you’ve protected your brand, you can bat your eyelashes and move forward with your plans to scale your business without breaking a sweat.

If you haven’t taken the steps to legally fortress your business, then get ready for the walls to start crumbling.

For women in accounting, legally protecting your brand is essential so you can confidently grow your business. Why?

Protecting your brand does a few things for service providers:

• Allows you to build your legacy: A lot of times, our “why” is to build something that our family can benefit from for generations to come — so make sure what you’re leaving is well-protected!

• Leverage opportunities with confidence: By covering each and every detail of your business, you’re leaving no stone unturned and won’t have to look over your shoulder around each corner of the process.

• Take ownership over your brand and protect your business: At the end of the day, what you’re doing here is ensuring that your brand is yours — and no one else’s.

But, how do you do this?

Enter: Ashlee J. Fox. Ashlee is the Owner of Fox Legal Firm, a boutique law firm based out of Atlanta, Georgia that specializes in business and trademark law for entrepreneurial women.

Outside of her law firm, Ashlee J. Fox is also a certified life and business coach, lawyer, and author. Photo via ashleejfox.com

Ashlee led a webinar for The Lady CPA Network on protecting your brand, and now we’re here to cover what she reports are the key protections for your business.

What are they?

Today, we'll be talking about one of the key ways to protect your business: contracts.

Contracts: Sign on the dotted line

Especially in accounting, it’s so important to use contracts!

Why?

Because it’s essential for you and your clients to be on the same page. And with a contract, you’re ensuring that both parties know exactly what’s expected out of the services you’re rendering, payment, communication, and deadlines — even boundaries!

Now, you might think that a verbal agreement is enough. It’s not.

Ashlee says that to effectively protect your brand, you must set clear expectations in writing in an agreement. In an agreement here is doing all the work!