Get it in Writing!

That was one of the take-home messages from Eric Helmy’s presentation this last Tuesday. Eric, the founding partner at Northwest Business Law Clinic, tackled a huge and varied subject with humor and clarity.

He started off with an overview of what he was going to touch on during the hour and a half presentation: legal entities, licenses and permits, intellectual property, employees vs. independent contractors, contracts, and, whew! where to go and what to look for when you need to find legal help. Sounds like a lot to cover in an hour and a half? Well, it was, and we ended up running almost half an hour over, but only because there were so many more questions and so much more left to say. Eric encouraged everyone to stay after or contact him later with questions, and also promised to update his website with some more information about the topics he’d discussed. His main hope was to get people to be aware of potential legal issues before they actually became legal problems, with all the accompanying hassle and costs.

We had a smaller class than usual with 12 participants, but it let us sit around a table conference-style, and Eric encouraged the audience to chime in with questions and comments. There was a lot of positive feedback:

“Outstanding”

“Mr. Helmy did a great job presenting so much useful information”

Looks like we’ve got another seminar well worth repeating in the future.

Seminars to Come…

We’re still going ahead with next week’s legal issues seminar presented by Eric Helmy of the Northwest Business Law Clinic. So far we’ve got 10 people signed up. We get so many questions about legal matters that we can only tell clients that as non-lawyers, we’re truly not qualified to answer. But now’s their chance to hear from the guy with the real expertise, happening Tuesday, October 27th from 6-7:30pm.

Coming up the week after, in November (it’s already almost November?!) we have Benjamin Tomkins talking about social network marketing. Benjamin is a journalist and media consultant with 15 years of experience engaging audiences in print and online, and he’ll be covering different social media tools and applications, and how to measure and use online marketing campaigns. He’ll be with us on Monday November 2nd from 6-8pm.

Finally we’ve got a special seminar specifically for our clients working on business plan follow-up with Yolanda Karp, a business consultant. She’ll be working with a small group of our Foundations class participants on Thursday November 19th to fine-tune and solidify the business plans they’ve been developing during their 6-week long Foundations program.

Seminars Galore in October

Coming up tomorrow (Wed Oct 14th) from 6-8pm, we have Gigi’s seminar on “How to Give a Great Presentation”. And, of course, we’re all looking forward not only to a very great presentation, but a spectacular, compelling, and no doubt fantastic one at that.

Next week, we’ve got two seminars focused on two very practical topics for small businesses: insurance and legal matters.

On Tuesday October 20th from 6:00-7:00pm , Michael Henry from Country Financial Insurance will help address insurance issues for small business owners. He’ll be looking at the types of insurance your business might need, when it would need it, explanation of the terms, whether it’s viable for you to provide benefits to your employees, and pitfalls to avoid.

The following Tuesday, on the 27th from 6-7:30pm, Eric Helmy from Northwest Business Law Clinic will discuss how the law impacts all areas of your business. You will learn about the most common legal business problems, and how to avoid them, and he’ll also tell you where to find legal assistance.