The office address is 1106 Meridian St, Suite 251, Anderson, IN 46016 (follow that link for a map.)
Telephone: 765-641-7906
Fax: 765-374-3811
The best time to reach me by telephone is (usually) after 4:00 pm.
My traditional web page is here.
You may also want to take a look at my Yahoo Local listing here.
Want to know more? I have more information on web page at page for more background. Also I have a Naymz page here:
If you do want to hire, please use my client questionnaire.
From Rush Nigut's Rush on Business blog:
The Franchise King has a great list of 20 small business blogs that have the right stuff. These blogs possess some of the best content on the Web when it comes to small business. Be sure to check them out!
Thanks to Inter Alia Blog for tipping me off about the Executive Women's Networking Blog. I guess it has been a while since I posted about business blogs. While not geared towards me, I think it will be helpful to some of my females readers. Give it a look.
I ran across The Legal Infrastructure of Business on Monday. I find its title interesting. It is a concept that I have tried to get across to my clients and potential clients. I have not had time to do much more than skim but I like what I see so far - even if it is written by a University of Chicago professors.
Are you a student with a business idea? Then StudentBusinesses.com sounds like a site you need to check out. Here a description of the site:
What we have here is a site for student entrepreneurs to meet professional help and for the businesses and professionals meet entrepreneurs.The public launch - taking place on November 1, 2008 - comes at a time when university students are facing a rapidly changing hiring landscape, and more and more are turning to alternative career paths such as entrepreneurship. CEO Travis May says the following: “While most graduates of leading universities in recent years have gravitated towards jobs on Wall Street and in management consulting, the current climate has caused many students to reconsider their path. StudentBusinesses.com gives students the opportunity to explore an entrepreneurial career instead.”
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The website also helps investors, law firms, and other service providers identify top startups. Steven Welch, a partner at DreamIt Ventures, used the StudentBusinesses.com beta version to find members for the first class of its incubator program. Welch says: “StudentBusinesses.com is an excellent tool for aspiring entrepreneurs. It provides a mechanism to network with top-caliber people of diverse backgrounds, along with valuable resources to help guide entrepreneurs through the rough waters of starting a business. It will help many aspiring entrepreneurs, now more than ever.”
Welcome Ohio Practical Business Law Blog.
What can one do but admire a lawyer who manages to combine the Chicago Cubs and the business judgment rule into one post (Cubs Cursed by the "Business Judgment Rule"?)? Something there for Cub fans, lawyers, and business owners.
Likewise, I found Doing "Due Diligence" both useful and well-written. These paragraphs should be read by every businessman selling or buying a business:
Without "due diligence", a buyer may discover too late that the facilities require enormous capital expenditures to compensate for deferred maintenance. Perhaps the largest customer is very unhappy and in the process of moving its business to another company. The accounts receivable may be well past due and even uncollectible.
In larger transactions, "due diligence" can take months, be extremely costly and involve professionals of many kinds (including attorneys and CPAs). When smaller privately held companies are involved, the process is less complicated, but should not be ignored entirely. For a helpful rundown of what "due diligence" is all about and the process, visit this FAQ.
Every company being acquired and every industry is different so different things will be important in any particular "due diligence" process. However, for a nice overview of the sorts of tgenerally applicable things you should ask about when doing "due diligence", visit "What Does 'Due Diligence' Mean When Buying a Business?" There are also many many good due diligence checklists available on the web. Some of the most important things you should be interested in finding out should include:
- Security Interests and liens on the assets being purchased
- Unresolved pending or threatened litigation
- Financial health of the company, including collectibility of accounts receivable
- Identification of the key assets essential to the continued operation of ongoing business being purchased
- Current employee benefits and policies
- Quality of relationships with customers, vendors, and suppliers
- Condition of equipment and facilities
- Agreements among owners relevant to the purchase
- Saleability of inventory
Not me but Small Biz Survival. The blog even gives a guided tour. Which I think is brilliant and something I might add to this blog. Good practical advice. Check it out.
Here is my criterion for praise: when I see something that I know is better done than what I have done. I have tried to post article that I think that are helpful to my business clients and I have tried to write law articles accessible to the general public as well as other lawyers. BizzBangBuzz blog from Anthony Cerminaro.
One post that caught my attention or caught my mood today was Overcoming Resistance to Change:
Want to start a business or make some other personal change? Something holding you back?Give him a look.
Perhaps you will recognize yourself in this list from How to Save the World. It is a top ten list of obstacles to making changes and ideas for how to overcome them:
"1. Procrastination. Fight it like the addiction it is. Separate the urgent from the Important. Have a list of the Important things and keep it in front of you. Break the Important things into manageable steps. Do one 'next step' towards your Important things every day. Learn to say 'no' to things that aren't as important. Don't try to do too many Important things at once. Don't wait for a crisis, or until it's too late. Don't beat yourself up about it, but don't deny it either.
I think some will find RICHDAD interesting reading for business owners and investors even thought it is not a law blog. But as my long time readers know, I like to make mention of business blog that give practical advice and I think RICHDAD's Finding the Right Business Partner has some practical advice:
"Finding a great partner like Ken is similar to finding a great husband or wife -- you have to kiss a lot of frogs before you find the prince or princess of your dreams. I don't know of a magic formula other than to keep kissing."Selecting a partner cautiously will save on legal fees. And like the post above, I am not using partner in its technical term but in the olloquail sense as having a business with another person or even two more. I do not know how to help potential business owners than with this advice.
Take a look at The Small Business Wiki.
What is a wiki? Think collaboration with lots and lots of people. Wikipedia starts its description of wikis with this:
A wiki is software that allows users to create, edit, and link web pages easily. Wikis are often used to create collaborative websites and to power community websites. They are being installed by businesses to provide affordable and effective Intranets and for Knowledge Management. Ward Cunningham, developer of the first wiki, WikiWikiWeb, originally described it as "the simplest online database that could possibly work".[1] One of the best known wikis is Wikipedia.[2]What has this to do with business? If this wiki develops as others have (think Wikipedia), this may be a good resource for businesses - especially small businesses.
Since I often touch on intellectual property topics (trademarks, trade secrets, copyrights), IPWatchdog.com gives even more information:The purpose of this blog is to make visible the links between business and law. It uses current events and stories and to help you learn from other’s mistakes and raise awareness of the legal environment of business — how it can help you and how it can hurt you. The goal is to bridge the gap between these two disciplines to help you unleash the power of Legal Leverage®.This blog is based on the book The Business Guide to Legal Literacy: What Every Manager Needs to Know About the Law (Jossey-Bass, 2006). As the Wired GC wryly noted, “It’s cheaper than a lawsuit” and is available through your favorite bookseller, including Amazon.
IPWatchdog.com is dedicated to providing a free, reliable and easily understandable resource on intellectual property law and related topics. We promise to demystify intellectual property and explain to you what it is, why you would want to consider obtaining intellectual property rights and how to go about obtaining worthwhile intellectual property protection. We also explain various pitfalls to avoid, as well as what you can do to help yourself.
The founder of IPWachdog.com is Gene Quinn, who is a patent attorney, law professor and author. He launched IPWatchdog.com in October of 1999, and since that time the site has been a trusted resource on intellectual property for over 1 million unique visitors who have come here for information and news.
Thanks to IowaBiz.com for this collection. I must admit that I found the following links from IowaBiz.com. Here is a good rule for searching online: if the site is good, then the site it links to ought to be just as good. IowaBiz.com is good and so are the sites it links to.
I notice that Rush Nigut of Rush On Business is a contributor to the IowaBiz, and I think highly of his blog. Lots of good stuff on IowaBiZ and the following blogs, too much to easily or even properly summarize. Check these sites out if you have a small business. From what I see, these can be very useful to any small business owner.
Small Business Tips seems to be more about online marketing and branding tips. The Internet is not just the future but also the present, check it out folks.
Business Pundit - I swear I wish I had this cheeky style instead the pedantic tone I hear. Just warning you that I find it interesting to read because it combines good information with a good writing style.
Small Biz Survival which describes itself as "By and for small business people in rural areas and small towns".
Small Business CEO:
Social Networking for Business
Are you looking to dive-in to the social networking world for your business but you want to find a service that is ALL business?Then you should check out Fastpitch. I have been a member for awhile now and am continually impressed with the continuous stream of new features, functions and services they are bringing to members.
Business Daily News is pretty much what it says and covers a bit of territory that is not strictly business. However, it is a good looking WordPress site and pretty well written.By the end of THIS week, identify the one thing you could do that would have the most significant long-term impact on your business in 2008. Is it finally defining and knowing your brand? Is it creating a customer retention program? It is launching a new initiative? Whatever it is — commit to getting it done.
- Write a very simple outline of what steps needs to get done
- Create a calendar that corresponds to your outline
- Be accountable. Tell your team your boss, your customers…whoever you know will hold you accountable to getting it done.
Then, roll up your sleeves and get to work.
Do not ignore this one. You’ll be amazed at how good you feel once you get this major goal accomplished!
Since I post news about business related blogs and with my continuing interest in the legal aspects of alcoholic beverages, I thought I might as well post a link to The Bruery Blog. The person writing this blog is written by the people running a new microbrewery. Fun to read and maybe educational and/or inspirational for those wanting to open their own microbrewery.
I ran across madisonian.net on November 27. Do not be put off by it being written by law professors. Anyone alluding to Chumbawamba possesses a good sense of humor which translates into a writing that is anything but pedantic. The following example comes from Real Online Competition: The Right to Exit (and I suggest reading all of the post):
I can just imagine the howls of protest–”Lock-in is the whole Web 2.0 business model! Give ‘em stuff for free, use their UGC, and monetize the eyeballs!” But my hope is that (user sunk costs + lock-in) becomes a much less compelling business model over the coming decade. Although optimism on “innovation markets” has largely anesthetized antitrust authorities looking at these situations, we should reconsider whether encouraging big players to compete to capture a market produces more gains and innovation than rules that reduce the cost of exit from dominant players.
If you are new here, you can find where I have posted on other non-lawyer business blogs. Just look click on these links: business blogs, online resources, and/or General business information.
I decided this month to just make a monthly review of business related blogs that might not be also law related. My biases may show - I do tend to tilt towards the marketing blogs and towards any business related blog that is well written. Here goes this month's selections:
Branding & Marketing
Victor Medina's Small Business and Solo Law Practice Blog
Small Fuel Marketing
Dane Carlson's Business Opportunities Blog
FC Now - The Fast Company Blog
BizzBangBuzz - Which is much more and much more impressive than its description: "Law blog focused on small business, technology start ups, entrepreneurs and emerging growth companies"
Duct Tape Marketing Blog - marketing for the small business
Thanks to a week of nursing a strained back, neither my writing on this blog or my reading have been very prolific.
Today's business blog is Steven Carlson's Business Opportunities Weblog. While not a "how=to" blog, I think those thinking of a business or just starting a business may still find it interesting for its reviewing those who took the dare and became successful with their business.
Then there is Clientelevision. Here is the business page for this site. What you get here are some short videos. Rather interesting, actually.
I do read business related blogs. After all, I am also in business. I want to pass along what I find useful or interesting. I figure that if you find the business information helpful then you will take a look at the legal information. I also hope that the information creates a stronger business for you. With a stronger business, the more need for a lawyer.
MSNBC has a rather lively business blog, YOUR BIZ. What I like is it has a good tone - no business professor lecturing - and it is directly targeted towards small businesses. Here are the recent posts as of today:
