Becoming an entrepreneur is a dream for many, whether young or old! I started my first ‘entrepreneurial endeavor’ in the 3rd grade, when I sold these super mechanical pencils to my classmates. Oftentimes, new entrepreneurs are so focused on becoming successful and making it in their entrepreneurial endeavor that that can have blinders on and can make mistakes. There are so many pitfalls, gotchas and little things to be aware of that newer entrepreneurs might not have on their radar.

This is why no school that helps you learn to become financially independent, learn business skills and that helps you realize your idea is complete without also teaching how to protect yourself in this world of business. Of course, there are many elements in need of protection here. Not only are your assets in need of careful care and maintenance, but your very ideas that have value, your reputation, and your mental health in this hyper-competitive space.

In this post, we’ll try to discuss all of those elements in a point-by-point basis, helping you to become the best all-round entrepreneur you can be, no matter what. It’s our hope that with this kind of effort, you can not only avoid pitfalls, but learn from them without having to actually suffer in that way. With that in mind, let’s consider how to achieve this:

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Have Legal Help On Hand

It’s important to make sure you can ask legal counsel for help when you need it. In business it’s so important to dot your i’s and cross your t’s. Whether you get legal help in actually formalizing your business, setting up an operating agreement, hiring your first employees, or with any of the many legal questions you may have, it’s important to get professional help. Or, you might need to deal with more complex issues, like figuring out how to protect stolen intellectual property or press copyright claims, or in some cases, more specialized examples such as an excellent fraud defense attorney can help you defend yourself in situations that have little justification but come your way regardless. Entrepreneurialism is quite a freeing process to follow, but it’s also unpredictable, and intensively competitive. For this reason, sometimes it takes more than your creative ingenuity, but legal assistance, to help you define your way forward and clear the debris that comes from competition.

Care For Your Social Media Presence

Social Media is so critical in today’s modern business, as that’s how many customers will learn about you, do research on you, and make a decision on whether or not to go with you. If your business takes off and you’re looking to cultivate your brand as a entrepreneur, it’s also important to maintain your own personal brand online. That said, reputation can be severely impacted by social media discourse in today’s day and age, and so making sure your online candor is affable, consistent, respectful, and in line with your ambitions can help. Make careful use of hashtags and try not to weigh in on every single topic. Do your best to engage with those who are following your career, but don’t expect anything of them, or complain about your losses, just make sure that you present an image of who you’re trying to be as an entrepreneur on your best day. This way, you can avoid controversies, scandals, and other issues that seem to catch out new entrepreneurs quite often. Everything you post reflects on the quality of the brand you’re trying to build, and keeping that in mind can be thoroughly helpful.

Keep Your Ideas Protected

It’s important to continually keep your ideas protected. It might be very tempting to shout it from the rooftops when you find an excellent way forward or make a breakthrough with your planning, but unfortunately, this can only leave you vulnerable to those who may be looking for novel ideas and those who are willing to teach them. Although you can’t keep your idea all to yourself and will have to selectively share it, it’s important to be vigilant and protect your secret sauce as best as you can!

Keeping your ideas protected also means filing for the correct patents when necessary before approaching investors, making sure that your proprietary ideas are actually owned by you, and verifying the legal stature of this protection and how long it will last for. It’s also important to have prospective investors, customers, or partners sign a NDA (non-disclosure agreement) which would prohibit them from sharing your secret sauce.

Carefully Inspect Partnerships

It’s important to note that when you’re coming up as an entrepreneur, and especially when you begin to make a slow but sure success of your plans, partnerships and associated opportunities can rear their heads in an apparent wish to help you.

This is where it’s important to remain careful about your forward approach, ensuring that you inspect every single deal, your legal protections, the reputation and history of those you go into business with, and what guarantees you have going forward. This can ensure that you’re not left high and dry in a deal that doesn’t give you a whole lot for a tepid initial investment or logistical effort.

It may sound paranoid to say that, but you’d be surprised how often difficult scenarios scupper entrepreneurs that haven’t performed their due diligence.

With this advice, we hope you can protect yourself as a young entrepreneur in the best possible manner!

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