The Facts of Business Life: What Every Successful Business Owner Knows that You Don't

Chapter 5

Fact 3: Protecting Your Company’s Assets Should Be Your First Priority

Protecting assets is not usually the first thing that comes to mind when you think about your company’s priorities. In fact, if you asked a group of owners what they considered most important to their businesses, the vast majority would most likely say sales and profits. And I’m certainly not suggesting that sales and profits are not important. Rather, I’m saying that they aren’t as important to your business as assets. If your sales and/or profits decrease, you have time to regroup, figure out what went wrong, fix it, and make up the difference in the future. But if your assets evaporate, your business is destroyed. Nothing can pull a business down faster than asset destruction, and owners, with their employees’ help, have to protect those assets from being mismanaged, stolen, abused, and underappreciated. That’s why understanding this Fact of Business Life is critical to your company’s success.

It’s upsetting to lose a customer, even your biggest customer, but not catastrophic. What is catastrophic is if your product becomes obsolete, your office manager steals a major portion of your cash and “cooks” the books, or your accounts receivables decide not to pay you. To a certain degree, most owners understand the basic principle of protecting their assets. That’s why they have lawyers to make sure they and their companies are legally protected, and insurance in case their businesses are destroyed by ...