Small Business Big World
New episodes every Tuesday discussing the challenges, adventures and fun of being a small business owner. Each week we'll delve into various small business topics, from real-world DEI considerations to selling your business, using video to market your business, unique benefit offerings for your employees and so much more. Curated by the crew at Paper Trails.
Small Business Big World
Legal Landmines and Compliance Essentials
Navigate legal challenges that small businesses face daily with insights from our special guest, attorney Pat Brady of Bergen and Parkinson. Learn how corporate housekeeping and record-keeping, such as maintaining up-to-date bylaws and operating agreements, can protect your business from potential liability risks. Pat talks the necessity of documenting significant decisions through consent resolutions and the importance of getting signatures on certain documents.
This episode is packed with actionable insights to help you safeguard and sustain your small business in a legally compliant and professionally sound manner. Don't miss it!
This is Small Business Big World, our weekly podcast prepared by the team at Paper Trails. Owning and running a small business is hard. Each week, we'll dive into the challenges, headaches, trends, fun and excitement of running a small business. After all, small businesses are the heartbeat of America and our team is here to keep them beating. Welcome to Small Business Big World, our weekly podcast, where we talk about all the fun and miserable and exciting things about running a small business, and this is one of those miserable things about running a small business.
Speaker 1:It's kind of the top five legal landmines that small businesses face on a daily basis. So my guest, pat Brady, attorney extraordinaire here from Bergen and Parkinson, welcome back.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thanks for having me, Chris. Of course, good to be back Second time around. I know this.
Speaker 1:Welcome back. Yeah, thanks for having me, chris. Of course, good to be back second time around. I know this will be a good one too. I think we all worry about selling things and managing our employees and keeping the lights on, but we sometimes don't think about the paperwork and the legal things that small businesses do run into.
Speaker 2:So this will be a good one.
Speaker 1:So before we jump into it, don't forget like, follow, share rate, review, subscribe. We are on Instagram, facebook, spotify, tiktok, apple Podcasts, anywhere you want to. You know, if you're bored at night scrolling, we're probably there, so you know, check it out Certainly. If you have any questions about anything we talk about today or any of our episodes, feel free to email us podcast at papertrailscom and we will get you in touch or get an answer for you. So thank you. All right, let's start with number one legal landmine. See if we can't lose a limb here. What do you think? What do you think it's going to be?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I'm gonna, I'm gonna go number one corporate housekeeping and record keeping.
Speaker 1:All right, so really exciting really exciting stuff.
Speaker 2:The stuff that just no one wants to do always seems to fall by the wayside. But you know can just show up. You know, the lack of record keeping and good corporate hygiene can just show up in a multitude of different ways.
Speaker 1:So what does that mean, right? So what you're saying? We all know we have to have files and records and things like that. What do you think small business should have, should be keeping for good records and so forth in their corporate structure?
Speaker 2:Absolutely so. Of course there's always the accounting records, right, and we don't get. I mean that those are important. Those are not my. You know, within my wheelhouse I know the importance of keeping good tax records and all that stuff. But I'm more focused on things like your, your governing documents, those documents that you file with the Secretary of State making sure you keep your annual reporting requirements up. And then the the documents below that, like your bylaws, your operating agreements, that sort of stuff, making sure you've actually got them one, making sure they're up to date, they're actually reflecting the practices of the organization, how the organization's managed, how it's operated.
Speaker 2:And then the ones that you see missed most often are consent resolutions. Consent resolutions are going to be votes that you actually just take down on paper or you can have minutes as well. You really need to document the big decisions of the organization. There's a couple of reasons for that. One is liability protection. As a lot of people will know, when you have an entity, a corporation, llc, whatever you have you have liability protection as an owner. So sort of the things that happen within that box are isolated to that box and in theory they don't flow up to the owners. You can lose that liability protection when you don't observe the fact that it is its own separate, distinct box. And one of the ways you evidence that it is its own living, breathing thing is keeping good records. If you're just sort of out there helter skelter doing whatever you want, not sort of holding votes, observing what your governing documents say, you could be exposed there to some claim that you didn't observe the formalities of the corporation so you're liable.
Speaker 1:So that's keeping the corporate book right. That's the term for it. Right, exactly. And I think I've been to an attorney's office where they have literally binders on the shelf for every business that they work with. Right, does that exist anymore? Is everything digital?
Speaker 2:It does, it does yeah, and there is a start of a push to move towards digital books, but most people still keep a hard copy and within that you've got your document that gets filed with the Secretary of State, your articles, your certificate of formation, you've got your operating agreement or your bylaws, and then that's where you put your consent resolutions as well.
Speaker 1:And with that, so are there things these days that we still need to have a wet signature on. They need to be originals. Great question, Because for me, I know the name of my business is Paper Trails, but I don't have a file cabinet anywhere in this office. It's a great question.
Speaker 2:And so there are two things that require wet signatures still. Those are things that are going to be recorded in the registry of deeds. So you're talking deeds, mortgages, that sort of thing. Those have to be wet signature. And the second is anything going to the Secretary of State. The Secretary of State in Maine still requires wet signatures. Maine is an outlier in that regard.
Speaker 1:Most Secretary of States are moving towards accepting digital signatures. Once you get it back, scan it, save it, you're good right?
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly, you should keep the original deeds, but the Secretary of State documents. Yeah, you can generally get rid of them.
Speaker 1:So anything that's recorded in the registry, one or one signature physically somewhere, Yep, and then hang on to that one Somewhere right, yep, and yeah, go ahead, and I was going to say that's what we have attorneys like you for right. Most attorneys if you, if you have an agent of record, you're usually keeping that quote-unquote book right. Yep exactly, so that's certainly a helpful thing.
Speaker 2:Yep and the lack of record-keeping. There's the liability piece and it shows up in financing transactions. Banks are going to want to see those documents to see that you're actually keeping those, maintaining those, and you don't really want to be on the eve of closing scramble and running around trying to piece it all together, exit transactions. You know you don't want to be that seller, that a buyer comes in and asks to see your corporate records and you have nothing to show them. They're going to say you know, what were you doing all these years? How many skeletons are out there, you know. So it can show up in a multitude of different ways. Okay.
Speaker 1:Well, good record keeping, housekeeping and the corporate book, that's important. That's number one, Absolutely Number two. Where are we going?
Speaker 2:number two yeah, contracts, I think contracts, or maybe more particularly the lack thereof. It always shocks me how contracts are always. It seems like such an afterthought in so many instances, and the biggest reason, the biggest pitfall of not having a contract is obviously trying to prove what the deal is when things go south. You know, did the parties agree on this? What were the fine points of the agreement? That's one of the big issues. The other big issue is that if you don't have a contract one, there's a question of do you have an enforceable deal?
Speaker 2:That's one issue that you run into, but the second is you're left with whatever the law is going to apply to your deal. So, for example, say there's a dispute within this deal that you apparently reached, you're going to go to litigation, you're going to go to court to settle that, whereas if you had a contract, you could have agreed in that contract to first mediate things, keep it out of the court system and if mediation wasn't successful, go to arbitration. You don't get that. If you don't have a contract, you don't have any of that. You basically lose control of a lot of different things. You're subject to whatever warranties the sort of general body of law applies to your contracts. So you're really just you're just sort of left out in the wind when you don't have one.
Speaker 1:So I know, as a small business owner, I am presented with an agreement or contract. Often, for whatever service I'm going into, right, I'm going to get something and I do with my clients, right? I mean, we have our standard agreement that we work with clients and, for the first time in a very long time, one of our new clients is sending our agreement to their attorney before you know, and I know our attorney drafted that and I know it protects me and of course they're going to look to see what protects them, of course.
Speaker 2:Yep.
Speaker 1:You know what, how often should business owners be sending those day-to-day contracts off to be looked at, right, I mean sure, cause we always say gosh, it's going to cost me 500 bucks to send this to, you know, to Pat, and he's going to look at it and he's going to right, yeah, that's a really hard question and it really comes down to what the risk exposure is on the contract.
Speaker 2:I think If it's a contract to buy $100 worth of widgets, if things go terribly wrong, you know it's probably you think of the worst case that were to happen under that contract. If you sign it, if the worst case is something you can sleep at night with, then probably fine. But if it's anything more than that, it's going to keep you up at night.
Speaker 1:If things go south it's definitely probably having a second set of eyes, it's a major vendor or a major expenditure to your business.
Speaker 2:those types of things Exactly and the thing that you can talk with your attorney about is sort of almost having them educate you on what to look for. You always want to be certainly the business terms right. I mean the business owner is going to be in charge of that prices, quantities, time of performance, schedule, all that sort of stuff. But they can help you understand what things like indemnities, what things like warranties look like and what they are, and so you can sort of start to spot check things. And if it looks, you know, I mean you know you use your judgment and your comfort level, but you can start as you get, as you work with them, more you'll start to pick up on. You know that doesn't look quite right. I don't feel comfortable with that. I'll send that one along versus. You know I'm comfortable, I recognize what that is.
Speaker 1:What about in more transactional businesses, Like you're a retailer or a restaurant or I mean? Certainly we deal with money, right, we move money around. So it's important that we have a contract, yep, but you know there's basic law that says if I buy something from you, there's a quote unquote contract right Right. Yep, explain that. What's that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. So I mean you can. A contract can take many forms. A contract can be a handshake deal. I mean, you know, there's this law school example of when you go to the counter and order a sandwich. You've just entered into a contract with the restaurant. You've agreed to pay this amount of money in exchange for a sandwich. That's contract, right there. There's rules as to when things have to be in writing. It's called the statute of frauds. It's like real estate transactions have to be in writing. Over a certain dollar amount have to be in writing. Time of performance, these sorts of things have to be in writing. But generally, yeah, and you can enter into a contract unknowingly too. There's case law out there that says that you send an email with a signature, your signature line can constitute your signature to an agreement. So the point is, yeah, you can enter into contracts in a variety of different ways and they don't have to be your conventional, you know, written doc.
Speaker 1:Well, maybe now these days, with all the crazy people suing everybody, maybe we want to have a contract for selling that hamburger, right? If you get sick, we're not liable. If you, you know you can't put a bad Google review on us. You can't do. You know all those things right. Because customer service is becoming more and more crazy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and to circle back to the first one, you know if you are going to do a contract it sounds so simple, but make sure you actually get an executed copy of it. And this shows up all the time in sale transactions, where a buyer will come in and ask to see all your contracts and you either A can't produce the contract. You know one exists but you can't produce the contract. You know one exists but you can't produce it because either it was just like saved an email and lost, or you just never saved it. Or if you can find a copy, it's it's only like partially executed. You know like you signed it and you sent it back for signature but you never got the signed copy back. So it's not glamorous, but it's important to stay. You know, stay on those sorts of things and make sure you actually get the signed copy back. So it's not glamorous, but it's important to stay. You know, stay on those sorts of things and make sure you actually get the signed contract back and good record keeping.
Speaker 1:Exactly Back to number one Yep, exactly. All right, let's go to number three. What's number three?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and this is more of a kind of amorphous concept, but it's the importance of kind of, when things start to go south, make sure you get your position out early and put people on notice that you take objection to what is going on.
Speaker 1:In writing.
Speaker 2:In writing. Yes, oh yes, absolutely. And it doesn't need to be fancy, it can be an email and there's an art to it. You don't want to be really aggressive, you want to sort of keep it. You don't want to be really aggressive, you want to sort of keep it, you don't want to get real personal about it. But if you think that somebody's in a transaction where they're doing something that you think is contrary to the terms that you agreed on, or something to that effect you see a lot in construction right when someone's schedule's slipping or something like that you know as an owner in that case you want to put them on notice early that you're aware of this and they need to get it back on track. Or else you're going to take some action. And the reason you want to do that is twofold. One is there's this concept of waiver in law where if you don't object to something, you can be deemed to have waived any objection to that.
Speaker 1:And your rights to remedy potentially.
Speaker 2:Right. Exactly. A lot of times you'll see this come up in notices. If you don't contract, you'll see this quite often. You have to provide notice, and I use the construction example again If something occurs schedule slips or something like that, you have to provide notice that it slipped within 10 days, say. If you don't provide that notice, you may have waived your right to object to that schedule slippage. So that's one is you don't want to waive your rights to be able to do that. The second is there's elements of equity and fairness that sort of underlie the law. You don't want to end up in a scenario where you're in court saying, yeah, you know what this happened and that happened, and the other party is saying you never told me. That doesn't play well with a judge or jury by any stretch of the imagination.
Speaker 1:Well, and in certain situations there are time restrictions in the law on some of those things. I mean, I know another. You know you give the construction example in our business, right? If I have a client that bounces their payroll, they owe me, I've paid their employees, I've paid their taxes. Now I'm on the hook for all that. You know we issue a demand letter pretty quick, right. 99.9% of the time it's gosh. I forgot to transfer money. Take it the next day, it's fine. You know that, doesn't it's earlier than that.
Speaker 2:Sure yeah, Because I want to get paid too.
Speaker 1:It's saying this is a violation of our agreement in this context, and we will use our agreement if we have to our personal guarantee, our corporate guarantee, all those kind of things to collect on you. It's not going to be cheap for you either. So, you know, I think that's a it's a really important thing to make sure that you're having those conversations.
Speaker 2:Right, and are you and this is a question for you and just practice are you calling the client ahead of time? Cause that's the other thing I wanted to point out Are you kind of giving them the heads up or are you just sending that?
Speaker 1:Well, no, we will have tried multiple ways to communicate with them. And if they're not communicating with us, if they're not making arrangements, if they're ghosting us, if they're giving us lip service, it's not like we didn't try to talk to you first. I mean again. 99.9% of the time it's gosh I forgot to transfer money, or the deposit didn't hit, or whatever. Next day it's taken care of right. But you know there are time we have had. I've only had to do it once right.
Speaker 1:Fortunately, in my career where we've had to, you know, go into some sort of formal you know litigation against a client, because they, you know they ended up going bankrupt and fortunately they sold. We leaned the property and when they sold we got our check. It took me three years to get it but we got it.
Speaker 2:But again we had to go through that process to manage that? Yeah, and I think you can't underscore how important it is to pick up the phone when things start to go south or you take objection to something that's going on. The documentation is important. It's important to send that email or maybe a bit more formal of a letter, but it's also important to pick up the phone and, at a minimum, tell them it's coming, you don't? There's no faster way to degrade a relationship than to just blindly start firing letters and notices out.
Speaker 1:We still want to be a decent human being.
Speaker 2:Right, exactly, Right, Exactly. Hiring letters and notices. We still want to be a decent human being. Right, exactly Exactly. And you know, like I said, the kind of the documentation piece of it. It doesn't need to be fancy, it can be an email, it can be as simple as you know, like hey, we just talked on the phone. You know, just memorializing that I, you know, I noticed this is happening, let's get it. You know, get it back on track kind of thing. And if it, if it kind of continues, then you can sort of bring in the lawyer letters and that sort of thing. But once I will say that, once you have turned to the lawyer letters, things are usually it's tough to kind of reel that back.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, you've got to, you've, you've started that process and you have to kind of go down that road.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly, all right, we've gone through 123. What's?
Speaker 1:number four Exactly, all right, we've gone through one, two, three. What's number four?
Speaker 2:One, two, three, number four, I'm going to say, being measured in your response to customer complaints. I think that is somewhere where I see clients often kind of going awry and they can come in sort of two forms. One is just the complaint that comes directly to you. The other are reviews and complaints that are posted on social media and I think it's important in either of those to well, I'll say this In the private correspondence you can be a bit more aggressive and be more aggressive in your position in pointing out why you know they're basically wrong or why you're right.
Speaker 2:You usually want to avoid totally admitting you're at fault. If you are at fault, it just makes it a little bit harder to argue with away later on. But the more challenging one is Google reviews, I find. But the more challenging one is Google reviews, I find I talk to a lot of clients about. You know, call up and they've got this bad Google review, because Google reviews are the lifeblood of so many organizations out there, right, and it can be so tempting to really lay out your story on social media in response to the customer review, your story on social media in response to the customer review, and I always say it's so important to not do that, to just take as measured of an approach as possible, for a couple reasons.
Speaker 2:One, you're never going to convince that person that left a bad Google review. You're never going to win that argument, so don't even try. Two, you don't want to say anything that can basically be used against you later on. You don't want to wade into these like waters of defamation, slander or anything like that. Just stay far away from that. And three, I personally as just this is with my consumer hat on I usually view those, I take those negative reviews with a grain of salt. I agree.
Speaker 1:I think exactly right From a consumer perspective, from a customer service perspective. I always tell people respond.
Speaker 1:You have the ability to respond. You say thank you so much for your feedback. It's been a great learning opportunity for us. If we can be of further assistance to you or you want to come back into our restaurant, you're always welcome. Whatever right into our restaurant, you're always welcome, whatever right. Yeah, you know, and frankly, if people the people are reading those Google reviews, in my opinion that aren't going to frequent your establishment or use you as a service provider probably don't want them anyway. Yeah, if they're going to take those negative reviews as if there's 500 positive reviews and one negative review and someone's gonna say I don't want to deal with paper trails because they have one bad review, yep, someone's going to say I don't want to deal with paper trails because they have one bad review and it's probably because they acted like a knucklehead and we fired them.
Speaker 1:Probably that's why it might be there and I don't want that client anyway.
Speaker 2:I don't want that customer anyway. That's what I tell people, yeah, and I totally agree. And on the private communication, I find you're often helping people actually push back on complaints. There's obviously in a lot, you know, really, I mean across the board in all businesses, there's this you know, customer is always right mindset and you sometimes you lose this focus of actually standing up for yourself.
Speaker 2:You know there are a lot of crazy people out there who, as much as you want to sort of assume everybody has the best of intentions, there are a lot of manipulative people out there who, as much as you want to sort of assume everybody has the best of intentions, there are a lot of manipulative people out there that will just drum up stuff because that's their mode of operating. They just think they can always push people around and so it's important to push back sometimes. I mean it's always a business risk, right, you gotta weigh the the risks of doing it, but you can't get yourself, you can't let yourself get walked all over, which a lot of people are out there trying to do.
Speaker 1:It's funny we have. We have a couple of clients that I can think of that I don't want to call them bullies, but they're just very strong personalities and I have one employee who's really great at dealing with that type of person and that she can say no, I'm not going to do that, no, we are not doing that for you. You need to do this, and they respect her more for that.
Speaker 1:And where that client has walked all over other members of our team and it doesn't have to come to me, but we have boundaries now. We don't deal with people like that.
Speaker 2:So if you can't get your, you know your stuff in check, you know that's that's on you, yeah, so if you take anything from this, it's it's permission to push back a little bit to stand up for yourself, absolutely, you know and it's funny we had.
Speaker 1:I did an episode with Chris Fortin a while back and he's new. He's young, he started his business in high school. He's growing it and he's like the customer's always right. He said you're going to learn in the maturity of your business career that that's not always true. And that's OK, that's OK.
Speaker 2:That's business. That's business right.
Speaker 1:But don't get yourself in a situation, I think what your point is.
Speaker 2:Don exactly, yeah, and sometimes you just got to kind of take a loss, right. Sometimes, it's not worth fighting. It's just, you know you're in the right, but you're just going to agree to make it go away.
Speaker 1:And those are the hardest decisions to make, because you just want to fight. Yep exactly, I've been there. Yep, yep exactly, All right.
Speaker 2:Number five, last but not least, yeah this one holds a special place in my heart and that's going to be succession planning. And then I would say partnership relations get grouped into that one. And the pitfall here is on succession planning, is that it just always takes longer than you think without fail. You know you see people come. I'll see people come to me. You know they want to transition the business to the next generation. They'll come in may and they want it done by july 1 or something like that and like sure it can be done.
Speaker 2:It. It's going to be a pretty rough ride and you're going to it's not going to be done. You know well I shouldn't say it's not going to be done. You know well I shouldn't say that it's going to be done. But you're going to kind of compromise in a few different areas and there's always things that you aren't anticipating that will take longer. The biggest one is like banks. You know if there's debt on the business, you're going to have to work with the banks. It's going to take quite a while. I usually say a year at a minimum is a pretty good time. The business you're going to have to work with the banks. It's going to take quite a while. I usually say, a year at a minimum is a pretty good time, that's if you're keeping it in a family right. That's, I would say, a reasonably comfortable timeline to actually pull it all together and I can attest to that right.
Speaker 1:I mean, I bought this business from my aunt when she retired and we started in January and I was in the business already. I was already a shareholder, I had equity, I was running the business, she was retiring, I had to buy her equity out and we started in January of 2019. And I was telling Pat earlier, the attorneys were still arguing January 20th of 2020, over a year later, and finally we had to say, ok enough, we don't care where the semicolon is.
Speaker 2:Let's just sign.
Speaker 1:And you know that Pat was not in that transaction. So, you know, but it definitely takes a long time. That was totally amicable, right, like we had given the attorneys the deal sheet. So this is what we're going to pay. Here's the value, here's this assets, and it was like should have been a really easy deal. And there, and it was like should have been a really easy deal and there was no. You know, of course, everyone had to protect each other, but, uh, you know, it was not. It was it was civil.
Speaker 2:Just yeah, it just takes, take, take, take time. You know um and and, and you know you got to be thinking about that even long. You know further ahead, if you're going to sell to a third party, if that's, if that's the exit. Because for a few different reasons. One, you want to be going into that sale firing on all cylinders. You don't want, and so that means really ramping up and optimizing performance of the company. You know, two, three years before the sale, you don't want to limp into a sale transaction where a buyer is looking at financials. That you know that show that you really took your foot off the gas. They want to see this thing firing on all cylinders.
Speaker 1:Well, particularly if you're in that. You know, I just read a book. I can't remember the name of it. It made that much of an impact on me, obviously.
Speaker 2:But it was about that.
Speaker 1:It was like literally optimizing your business, getting it ready for a buyer. That you know one. Financials need to be healthy, operations need to be healthy, the corporate book needs to be healthy. You know. Make sure you have your stuff together before you, because the valuation is going to go down and it's going to be harder to find a buyer if you don't have that stuff put together.
Speaker 2:Right, exactly, so you know. So it takes time to ramp that up, get that all in order. And two, I mean not every sale goes through. You know you don't want to be, and they take a while too, especially if there's financing involved. You know they could. Six months is a from signing an LOI, you know, all the way to closing. I mean six months is actually a relatively. I mean that's an average, I would say, time frame. It can be. It can certainly take longer and they don't all go through. So you don't want to plan on retiring at 65. Halfway through 65, the deal falls through and now you're kind of back to square one. You got to kind of plan for that and it can take a while.
Speaker 1:What about the partner relations piece? What headaches are there?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think the pitfall there is and you hear it all the time but it's simply you. You know when, in your honeymoon phase, make sure you get your agreement in writing between you two and it's the use, a robust agreement. Um, it's in that period of time when you're starting out it's exciting, everything's going great. You're going to look at this agreement, this 20-page operating agreement, the operating agreement in LLC is the agreement that sort of is how you're going to run the company between you and your partners.
Speaker 2:It's going to seem like it goes into these details that are are not applicable Levels of authority. You're going to look at it and say we'll just always agree. What do we need these levels of authority for? It's going to talk about, potentially, what happens if one partner wants to sell out. What happens there, what happens if somebody dies Not terribly fun details. But you will be shocked at how people act, how different people act when there's no money in the bank account and when there's a lot of money in the bank account or when there's a lot of money on the table.
Speaker 2:There's simply no way to predict how someone you think you know so well is going to act in those scenarios, and an agreement is always. It's simply the baseline. You can always agree to change it later on. If it says one thing and the party's in agreement 10, 15, 20 years down the road to do something different, that's fine, just agree.
Speaker 1:Just write new agreements.
Speaker 2:Exactly, but at a minimum at least you have a baseline so that if you can't reach agreement, you have something to fall back on. And the risk of not getting it is to kind of go back to that first contract piece or second piece is that if you don't have anything in writing, then the law whatever the law is on that topic is simply going to apply, and again you just lose control of that process. Do you want, if somebody, if your partner, passes away? Do you want to be in business with their spouse? That's probably, you know, maybe you do, but you probably want to be a little bit more thoughtful about that, you know. Do you want the opportunity to buy that partner out? Yeah, probably, but if you don't have, that writing.
Speaker 1:I mean it's basic stuff, I mean just like that, right, I mean, hey, the assumption is if something happens to one of us, sure you are the first buyer, you. The assumption is if something happens to one of us, sure you are the first buyer. You have the right of first refusal to buy the spouse or the survivors out right, Right, yep.
Speaker 2:And the law doesn't give you that right.
Speaker 1:Right because the estate would still own the equity. It's not, you know. Then you've got to fight with the estate.
Speaker 2:Who knows what that could look like right Kids end up with it. Right, exactly, exactly.
Speaker 2:Sounds like a headache. Yeah yeah, been there and kind of along that line dealing sort of making clean partnership exits as well, making sure if the relationship does, you know, say you follow all the rules and the part you just decide to go your separate ways or one person decides to exit the company, make sure you actually document it. And that's probably worth consulting an attorney to make sure you're documenting it well. What you really don't want is to end up in a scenario five, 10 years down the road where you're in a sale transaction and, lo and behold, you find out that that guy or girl is actually still an owner.
Speaker 2:That's not a good scenario.
Speaker 1:Get the stock certificates back.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly, exactly.
Speaker 1:Awesome, all right. Well, these are really good legal landmines to avoid. So if folks have stepped on these landmines and lost a limb, how do they get in touch with you to fix them?
Speaker 2:Yeah, definitely, Probably the website's the easiest. Bergenparkinsoncom. My email is pbrady at bergenparkinsoncom. Awesome, Great, great great.
Speaker 1:Well, thank you very much for listening. I hope this was a good one. I hope that you have not stepped on any legal landmines lately and you are intact, so that's wonderful. But thanks, pat, thanks everybody for listening and we'll see you all next week. Thanks for having me, chris. Thanks for listening to this week's episode of A Small Business. Thank you purposes only and should not be considered legal or financial advice. By inviting this guest to our podcast, paper Curls does not imply endorsement of or opposition to any specific individual, organization, product or service.
