Quick Bites

 Interconnectedness means businesses need to be smart about network security and lawsuit prevention. All businesses use quick pitches, but if you are looking for investors be even more prepared. Some good news, even if it is just a little, is the sweet finish in this batch of Quick Bites.

5 Ways to Protect Your Company From Employee Devices By: Cynthia Bunting, Business News Daily

Employers and employees need to be thoughtful about managing the company’s risks from employee use of personal devices that access the business network.

"Employees are also responsible for keeping company information secure. One option is to require employees requesting to access the network via a personal device to sign an Acceptable Use Agreement. The agreement may include conditions, such as installing a device certificate or the remote-wipe software mentioned above. It may also state that devices can be seized if necessary for a legal matter. At the end of the day, it ensures that maintaining security when using personal devices is a shared responsibility between both the user and IT."

Social Media Policy: How to Get Started By Ivan Walsh, Small Business Trends

Does your business have a social media policy? It should, and if it doesn’t, this article is a decent place to start thinking about how to create an effective policy. Call your lawyer (or me) to discuss what needs to go into that policy—you might be surprised.

“Why do so many people feel that social media policies are a bad thing? The main reason policies don’t work (or get a bad reputation) is that they make it more difficult for employees to do their work. Maybe that’s not completely true, but for many employees, these policies feel like an intrusion and one more rule to follow. How can you get around this?”

Great Startups Can Hook an Investor in 60 Seconds By Martin Zwilling, Gust.com

A business looking for investors needs a compelling elevator pitch (and a great lawyer.)

"Highlight people strengths. “Bet on the jockey, not the horse” is a familiar saying among investors. Tell them the high points about you and your team’s background and achievements."

Colorado Region Economy Improves Slightly in Third Quarter 2011 From the Beige Book of the Federal Reserve

Because building optimism among human-owned businesses helps us all.

"The Tenth District economy improved slightly in late August and September. Retailers and auto dealers reported stronger sales and anticipated further gains in the months ahead. Sales were weaker at restaurants and hotels, leading to pessimism in these industries as the holiday season approaches. Manufacturing activity rose at durable goods factories, and the high-tech services industry experienced strong growth, while transportation activity was flat. Residential and commercial real estate and construction contacts continued to report weak conditions. Bank deposits continued to increase, while loan demand and loan quality deteriorated slightly. Crop conditions varied across the District, but farm income expectations remained strong. The energy sector expanded further with production increasing for oil, natural gas and coal. As input prices continued to increase, more contacts expected to raise prices in the coming months. But wage pressures eased from already low levels."

Quick Bites



Quick Bites is a new feature for No Funny Lawyers. Short and sweet, maybe not all to your taste, but relevant to my concerns for human-owned business and the communities that support them. This first sampling concerns business succession (so often overlooked), free education and Facebook marketing support for small business, and a question of whether society needs a new form of business that blends for-profit and charitable models.

Apple Was Prepared: What About You? By Jamillah Warner, Small Business Trends

The loss of Steve Jobs impacted the world, but the business of Apple was ready. How would your business survive losing you? Will your family depend more or less on the value of your business when you are gone?

If you intend for your business to survive long after you are gone, then you need to address a few core things today. In the small business community we don’t run large corporations; we run small companies, and when the owner dies he or she often leaves behind a grieving a family that must also figure out what to do with the business, its debts and everything else that goes with death.

Facebook 'Likes' Small Business By Sarah Needleman, Wall Street Journal Small Business

Human-owned businesses are using social media (like I use this blog, Facebook and Twitter). My typical message is be aware of the significant legal traps in it, but be more aware that you can waste a lot of time--if you don’t have a plan. This could be part of the plan.

The initiative is being launched in partnership with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and National Federation of Independent Business, a small-business group. It is intended to educate small businesses on how to promote themselves on the social-networking site, like buying display ads targeted to specific markets, but also through cost-free measures to engage more with customers.

 A Quest for Hybrid Companies That Profit, but Can Tap Charity By Stephanie Strom, New York Times
 
California just approved a new form of business similar to one rejected in Colorado. As this article points out, there is little to stop current for-profit companies from taking steps toward social good, but there are limits on non-profits looking to add earned income to their budgets.

A new type of company intended to put social goals ahead of making profits is taking root around the country, as more states adopt laws to bridge the divide between nonprofits and businesses.

Searching for Excitement. Columbus Day, 2011.

Excitement and Columbus Day? Protests and arrests have been the only excitement associated with this legal holiday of late, and those come on the Saturday beforehand because nobody outside of the federal government gets this day off. Virtually no private employers, and increasingly fewer state and local governments, recognize it. Political correctness and economic reality combined to sink Columbus’s day, with economics being the rockier reef.

In an economy that’s a ship dead in the water, traditional ethnic pride isn’t worth the cost of a paid holiday for our workers, government or private. I get ethnic pride; my grandfather, Antonio Evangelista born in Italy, is only one of my three foreign-born grandparents. I get tradition. I am a Texas Aggie, a graduate of a university where tradition has been known to trump common sense. Tradition is also the foundation of our federal legal holidays and this blog’s posts on them.

The Presidential Proclamation for this year’s legal holiday uses the voyage of 1492 as metaphor for our national character:

The excitement Christopher Columbus and his crewmembers experienced that October morning is felt every day by today's pioneers: entrepreneurs and inventors, researchers and engineers. On the anniversary of Christopher Columbus's voyage, we celebrate the pursuit of discovery as an essential element of the American character. Embracing this heritage and inspiring young people to set their own sails, our Nation will reach the shores of an ever brighter tomorrow.

The most important discovery that will make our tomorrow brighter isn’t going to occur in some laboratory or R&D unit. It has to occur in Congress and statehouses across the county when our elected representatives, like Columbus’ crew, discover that the ship doesn’t move forward without cooperation. We don’t get far when the right side and the left side of the boat are more concerned about beating each other than in what lies ahead. But enough about that, how about this legal holiday?


In Colorado, Columbus Day has a place of honor in the list of legal holidays because while the New World was “discovered” 1900 miles to our southeast, the legal holiday commemorating it happened here. Colorado was the first state to make Columbus Day a legal holiday in 1907; the feds didn’t follow suit until 1971.

As business is this blog’s focus, we should recall that Columbus’s voyage was actually a business venture that took advantage of increasing competition and imperialistic attitudes among European nations. If this Italian had not opened the door to Europe’s colonization of the Americas, it is inevitable that another European would have. Exploitation, slavery and disease would have followed just the same. We can’t change how cultures collided 500 years ago, but we don’t have to accept continuing collisions.

Jasmine Pickner, world champion hoop dancer from the Crow Creek Sioux, celebrating another legal holiday: Independence Day

Americans of Italian descent (my family and me included) should be able to celebrate their rich heritage. We can and should be able to celebrate Native American cultures as well. St. Patrick’s Day, Cinco de Mayo, and Juneteenth are all popular celebrations outside of the focal ethnic groups. These days are occasions to celebrate our varied backgrounds. They happen, quite naturally, without need for a legal holiday and without reason for protest.

If we can afford a mid-October legal holiday, then perhaps it should be re-conceived as a celebration that honors the peoples, not the conquest, of the Americas. An Americas day, plural not possessive, can honor the original peoples of the hemisphere as it reminds us, its current peoples, that we share more than a land mass, we share a future. That future will be exciting, too, once we get back to the business of exploring, of looking forward and fixing problems, not fighting over responsibility for past troubles.