Standard Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, cannot provide legal advice, and the contents of this article may or may not apply to you. Seek your own legal counsel, preferably counsel with a law degree, before you act on any of this advice.

This is intended largely for people dealing with an intellectual property related business, but every business owner who is also employed should read it carefully. Inventors, programmers, graphic designers, should all be reading especially carefully.

Your Employer May Own Your Work

It’s very easy in the excitement of attaining employment, particularly when this is your first “real” job and the idea of negotiation is foreign, to put the ink to the paper before carefully reading your contract and digesting what it actually means. Legalese is very dull indeed, and I’m not in a position to lecture you on contracts in detail, but I would like to point out a single very important clause.

Often times when signing an employee contract for a position where you are “paid to think” or development intellectual property, there is a clause that defines the ownership of intellectual property created by you. The wording and scope vary from employer to employer. Here are just three possible scenarios in what it can say (please note what’s permitted by law and what’s not also varies by country/state):

• Your employer owns everything you create during the course of employment.
• Your employer owns everything you create while at work, using company equipment, or possibly company knowledge.
• Your employer owns everything you create related to the industry/business your employer is in.

There are many possible variations/combinations of the above and a real clause is of course written in legalese. I just want to give you an idea of what you may have signed or may need to sign. This can be really scary stuff, but if you are pro-active then you are halfway to overcoming this entrepreneurial inconvienence.

Prior Developments

Put in (possibly inaccurate) English, a prior development is something that you created before your employment. Often times your employer does not have any rights to your prior development, but how can you be sure its a prior development? Being able to date your work is very important and something you should research for your own area. One very helpful move is having a list of prior developments signed by your employer prior to beginning work. Pro-active employers have a process for this and a clause in the contract.

Developing New IP While Employed

Unless you have a lax employment contract that explicitely states you own the developments you intend to make (make sure its stated explicitly - you may be bound implicitely as an employee without knowing it), it’s wise to get a note from your employer stating that you own this development and that they have no problem with you working on it while you are employed. Do it before you write a line of code because such notes are much harder to get if your development becomes the next big thing and is worth some real money.

Non-Compete Agreements

Odds are that you are employed doing something that you are good at. If you are leverging this same skill in your business the non-compete agreement or clause in your contract may be worth taking a closer look at it. These generally are intended to prevent you from switching to a competitor or starting your own competing venture and putting everything you learned to use to compete with your employer. Generally you want to make sure your venture isn’t going to be directly stepping on the toes of your employer.

What If My Work Isn’t Worth the Effort? I’m a Small Fish!

Ultimately it’s up to you to decide whether to take or ignore this advice, and to see how it fits in with what you intend to do. Going ahead without take the necessary precautions may be tempting if you really want the job and are worried this could have a negative effect on your relationship with your boss (is this a reality or a self-created fear?). Keep in mind though that by doing so you are effectively telling yourself “this venture will never make it big”. What a terrible celing to put on your efforts before you even get started!

Are Employers Evil For Having These Restrictions?

Ultimately your employer is just trying to protect themselves. If a clause is too restrictive, it may be so simply because the company lawyer suggested it and the employer didn’t feel the need to do otherwise. This is often the case for smaller companies. However law can be a major and sometimes scary part of corporate tactics too, and that’s when ethics and dollars really begin to collide. Companies that do nothing except hold patents and launch lawsuits are an example.

To resolve an issue with a contract be sure to see your employer’s point of view. It is reasonable to expect that they would like the IP you create while they pay your bills and you use their resources to be theirs. They don’t want to be training competitors either. Work with your employer to reach an agreement beforehand that outlines your rights and your employers to your satisfaction.

Remember That Matt is Not a Lawyer

Well some Matts out there are, but I’m not. Everything in the article above I have gleaned, mangled, and misinterpreted from my own experiences, those of others I have met or read about, and from my own discussions with lawyers. Odds are I don’t even live in the same country as you, so even if my information is miraculously completely 100% true despite the lack of law degree, it probably still doesn’t apply completely to you.

Do some research on all this, consult with a lawyer, and decide how and if it applies to you.

I’ve always hated learning math and thanks to the computer science part of my degree I am now able to solve an nth degree differential equation with constant coefficients. For someone whose greatest engineering ambitions are assembling a chair from Office Depot, this is not particularly useful. But while university level math isn’t required for most of us, grade 4 taught two of the most powerful business/life concepts you could ever apply:

Addition and Multiplication

I’ll spare everyone the grisly details of how these intensive computations are actually performed because most operating systems do come with a calculator. Instead I’ll throw out a few scenarios to mull over. All of these are almost insultingly simple concepts, yet most businesses aren’t applying them nearly enough (or at all) and I doubt there is any single person or company in the world that can’t apply them more.

Math Application #1: How to Get Just About Anything Done

Sometimes a project just isn’t a priority and it’s hard to devote time to it. This is especially true for tasks that aren’t much fun or which don’t matter immediately (and have no set deadline) but are important in the long term. Good examples are financial planning, submitting information about your new product to directories, or building your business in general. Doing even 1 small thing a day will add up even if it takes a year, where as if you do 0 things each day for a year you will be at the same place you were one year ago.

I’m applying this principle to this very blog, and through it I am slowly building a “proper blog” with all the bells and whistles. Traffic has also increased 3000% since my first visitor.

Stuck on doing something? Find just one thing each day to make it go forward.

Math Application #2: How to Become a Millionaire Saving Just $4000 a Year

I’ve mentioned this before and I will keep mentioning it until I’m blue in the face. Save 10% of your income even if you aren’t rich, pay yourself first, and you are on your way to virtually guaranteed wealth. The Wealthy Barber is an entire book whose heart lies in this simple rule. The power of multiplication is applied through compound interest at a modest 10% annual return to achieve at minimum a healthy even if your income is modest at best.

Math Application #3: How to Increase Your Sales Ten-Fold Beginning Today

Fractions and percentages are a strange creature and tend to not instinctively be considered in our thought process. They are however absolutely crucial to understanding how to get rewarded for your efforts - optimization! There are many ways to attract customers to your product, and at every step of the expensive sales cycle you should be trying to convert as many people as possible. A little number play can prove amazing here.

Let’s say that you are paying $500 a month to run a modest advertising campaign. At the moment your advertisement is converting 2% of the people that view it into visitors (and some into eventual buyers). What if an ad with improved wording can bring in 4%? That’s double the sales for your $500 investment, and all it takes is willingness to experiment and track results. Do this for your advertising, for your product information, for your ordering process, and everything else in the sales cycle. Small tweaks can bring big percentage increments and suddenly increasing your sales 10 times over is just a matter of process.

Math Application #4: Increase Your Profits Without Increasing Sales

Your profit on each sale is the selling price minus your costs. Any person running a business knows this, at least in the textbook way. Knowing and living are very different though. If this equation holds, then how much more profits will gain by increasing your revenue per sale? Are you selling at your optimal price? Are you doing all you can to upsell? Remember that all revenue increases on each item are mostly profit, and if you currently have a low margin they could literally change the health of your business. The same goes for your costs. Are your unit costs too high? How can you optimize your process to increase your margin by 10%? 50%?

Let’s say you are currently selling a widget for $50, of which $30 is your cost (including materials, assembly, marketing, delivery, etc). That’s a $20 profit per sale. Now what if through a simple optimization you decrease your costs by $5? That’s a 25% increase in profits!

Find the Math in Your World and Grow Exponentially

These are all powerful ways of getting ahead and accomplishing your goals through exponential increments. However as powerful as these (and many more) applications of grade 4 math are, when you apply them together the results are even more startling. Feel free to post comments on other hidden multiplication or ways simple math has changed your life.

How often have you had a fabulous idea that you could make a pile of money from? How often have you said to yourself “man, I could definitely do a better job than this company”? How often have you turned these thoughts into thriving businesses?

Forget the 90% of Businesses Fail Statistic - Most Never Even Get Started!

I bet you have come up with some pretty darn good reasons for why those terrific ideas in your head have remained there. Inspired by Steve’s comment to my Top 5 Reasons to be an Entrepreneur article, this post is for everyone unsatisfied with the daily monotony of their job, wishing to run your own business, but unable to make the leap.

Let’s explore the major reasons people don’t start their own business, or to put it more bluntly, here are the reasons people think they can’t start a business:

1) “I don’t have the time because I have a fulltime job, school, family”

Lack of time is a very common excuse but rarely valid. Most of us don’t really use all of our day effectively, so by trimming down on the time spent lying around bored and numb, it’s very possible to squeeze in an extra couple hours a day. If working all day wears you out, try waking up earlier. It’s all about time management, and a book like the excellent Getting Things Done is a great starting point to learn how easy it is to become much more effective at making things happen.

2) “I can’t afford the RISK at this stage of my life”

Starting a business can involve a lot of risk if you choose to immediately run a capital intensive business fulltime. But it doesn’t have to be done this way! Not every business is suited for every lifestyle and level of involvement, but there are many opportunities that are right for you. It’s typical to equate starting a business with mortgaging the house to obtain $200 000 in funding and having your poorly planned venture (despite the nicely formatted business plan) decide whether you get knocked into bankruptcy. The reality is that if you are willing to start small and build methodically you can begin on a shoestring budget. This also affords you time to learn so that the mistakes you make don’t cost you the farm.

3) “I don’t know anything about business”

I love bringing up my very first real foray into business. It was going to be a computer repairs and sales business, and with no business knowledge or plan it was sure to be an astounding success. I sold one 40GB hard drive and hit revenues of $80. Turns out there’s a little more to this business thing than I thought.

Business is not an obvious or easy subject despite rumours to the contrary. On the other hand it’s not rocket science and is mercifully free of differential equations. After my first failure I picked up a book and started reading. All I had to do to find the time was watch a little bit less TV.

4) “Maybe one day, but for now it’s just a dream”

This is my favorite and should really be labelled “fear of change” or “fear of the unknown”. You think you have the ability and if you examine the situation really close you see you also have the resources, but you are just too paralyzed by the idea of straying off the beaten path. ”All my friends are working normal corporate jobs, why should I be any different?”

Our society is built to breed workers and consumers, not visionaries. Anytime you wish to achieve something truly remarkable and different then you will have to face the discomfort of doing something that is frowned upon by your (former) peers who are really just masking their own discomfort of seeing someone trying something different and wishing to achieve more. Sheep need to constantly validate their decisions to ignore their dreams and live mediocre unsatisfying lives. Before listening to their pleas to return to the flock, take a long hard look at where the path they are on is leading you to.

Resources

At some point I am going to post a resource page with all the books and articles I have read online which I have found to be useful. In the meantime here are a few “must reads”. Amazon pays me a small referal fee if you make purchases through the links below, so by ordering any of these books you are not only receiving a tremendous amount of knowledge for almost nothing, but you are also helping keep this blog running:

Getting Everything You Can Out of All You’ve Got - A great read and terrific explanation of tried and tested fundamentals for developing a client base. Learn how much money you are leaving on the table by not implementing these strategies.

Getting Things Done - I absolutely love this book and for good reason. It has literally provided me with more hours in my day and showed me how to get everything that I need to done.

The Wealthy Barber - Don’t bother earning money if you don’t know what you are going to do with it. This book explains very clearly how to quickly and practically plan your finances. It’s written specifically for Canada, but most of the concepts discussed translate painlessly across borders.

Any of these books have the potential to change entire aspects of your life (they have certainly had this effect on me) and provide just as much (or more) knowledge than a $500 university course. They can all be read 20 minutes at a time, and whether you are starting a business today or think you may wish to do so in a year or five, these are the first keys to starting a successful venture.