A
lot of small business owners will neglect protecting their assets until a claim
against them arise; a useless and dangerous move, because if you transfer
assets after a claim is made, it can be viewed as fraudulent, raising other
claims and charges against you. The best time to protect your assets is now,
when there are no claims against you, hence you are not forced into hasty decisions
of making assets transfers that may turn sour on you in future. Below are a two ways you can protect your business assets.
1) Form A Limited Liability Company (LLC)
An
LLC is a business structure where you cannot be held personally accountable for
your business’s liabilities and debts. In an LLC, you need to have a separate
account for your personal assets, and only conduct business in the company
name, instead of your own.
The
LLC protects your personal assets from your business liabilities and vice versa.
If you have personal debts and the creditors seek to seize your asses, an LLC
may help keep your business assets safe.
Be
careful not to try to shield your personal assets from your personal creditors
by putting them into your LLC’s account because the creditors can claim your
LLC as an ‘alter ego’ of you and come after your business assets too.
2) Get Insurance
Insurance
is one of the most important type of protection you can have for your business.
There are so many things that can happen which can cause a lot of problems for
your business. Your employee might get injured at work and decide to sue, your
product might cause harm to a customer, a fire might break out and destroy all
your machinery. All this will set your business back a lot, it can cause loss
of productivity, thus loss of profit. Insurance can help recover some of these
losses, and the impact to your business won’t be as severe.
Final Thought
Neglecting
to protect your assets is setting your business up for problems in the future. The
array of things that can happen is so large you can never predict and avoid
every single one of them, so it is better to always be protected.