An Olympics Lesson for Business Owners

The Winter Olympics started this week. Every four years, we watch athletes compete at the highest level in the world. What we don’t see is everything that happened before they ever stepped onto the ice or snow.

Years of training. Coaching. Planning. Preparation.

No one wakes up one morning and decides to compete in the Olympics. Running a business works the same way, but I see far too many owners treat the legal side of their company as an afterthought. Contracts get copied from the internet. Handshake deals turn into misunderstandings. Brand names are used for years without any trademark protection. Liability issues aren’t addressed until something goes wrong.

By the time a lawyer gets involved, the business is often already on its heels.

Most legal problems aren’t unavoidable. They come from a lack of preparation on the front end. A contract that wasn’t clear. An agreement that was never put in writing. A business name that wasn’t protected before someone else started using it. That’s the difference between planning and reacting.

Olympic athletes don’t wait until competition day to figure out their equipment or strategy. Business owners shouldn’t wait until a dispute, lawsuit, or demand letter shows up to review their legal foundation.

That doesn’t mean over-lawyering your business or creating paperwork for the sake of it. It means making sure the basics are handled:

• Contracts that actually reflect how you do business

• Clear expectations with clients, customers, and partners

• Protection for the name and brand you’ve worked to build

• An understanding of where your risk is — before it becomes a problem

  
  

A little time spent on legal preparation now can save a lot of time, stress, and money later.

If you’re running a business and haven’t looked at these issues in a while, the start of the year — and the start of the Olympics — is a good reminder to do it before you’re forced to.