Protecting Your Small Business 101

Do you own your own small business? First, we want to say congrats, that is a huge achievement! With any business however, there are precautions to take to have your best foot forward. Here is how to go about protecting your small business 101.

If you have just started your own business, you will want to have some sort of insurance for it. You don't need every insurance coverage under the sun, but you will want to look into a few for sure. In some instances, you may not be able to even fully open until you have some insurance coverage depending on the business.

Get insured

Some insurance coverages that are most common for small businesses

• General Liability

  • Protects your business from claims that it caused bodily injury or property damage to someone else.

• Professional Liability Insurance

  • When mistakes are made in the professional services the business provides, that is when this coverage comes into play. If your business were to be sued by a customer that was affected by one of your mistakes, professional liability could help cover the costs.

• Business Income Coverage

  • Say if your business were unable to operate because of property damage from things like storms, fires, or theft, Business income coverage could help make up for your lost income.

• Commercial Property Insurance

  • Helps protect your building and your equipment used for your business.

• Workers Compensation Insurance

  • If an employee were to get an injury or illness while on the job, they could receive benefits from this coverage. Like helping pay medical bills for example.

• Commercial Auto Insurance

  • If you or an employee were to get hurt or cause property damage, while in a company vehicle, this insurance would provide coverage for that.

• Data Breach Insurance

  • This coverage helps your business respond to a breach of your personal information.

• Commercial Umbrella Insurance

  • This insurance will cover the remaining costs after you've used your other insurance policies you have for your business. It works similarly to personal umbrella insurance.

• Business Owner's Policy

  • This is one of the most popular insurance coverages. This is because it is a combination of general liability insurance, commercial property insurance, and business income insurance.

There are more policies, but those are the main few.

Prioritize cybersecurity

Nowadays, there are constantly scams and suspicious things going on online. Be sure to avoid these scams and breaches by doing a few this.

• Train employees to be able to identify what a scam looks like. This will prevent employees from making the mistake of clicking on scam links and leaking business data.

• Create strong passwords for your business profiles. This will help protect your account from hackers.

• Use multiple different passwords for your business accounts. If you use the same password for every single account, the second a scammer finds out the password for one, they have the password for all of your accounts.

• Develop a plan to protect your customers personal information. Locking up their information is a must. you can do this by physically locking up documents in a safe place or storing personal information on thumb drive and physically locking them away as well. Try to limit the number of employees that have access to the sensitive information.

Some other tips to protects your business are

• Hire an attorney

• Incorporate your business

  • This separates you from your business. Without this, if someone sued you, they could go after your home, car, and assets.

• Use legal contracts properly drafted by a lawyer

  • Having clear communication in your contracts is key.

• Keep good records

  • What was done, when it happened, who it happened to, who did it. These are things to keep track of in case a lawsuit arises.

• Be ethical, honest and moral!

This list could go on for days, but these are a few tips you can use to help protect your small business!

Looking to insure your business? We would be happy to help! You can give us a call at anyone of our offices or even stop by if you would like. You can reach us Monday - Friday, 8:30am - 4:30pm.

Our office numbers are:

La Cygne              (913) 757-4551

Mound City         (913) 795-2200

Garnett                (785) 448-3841