Fox Business with Jerry Mills
A Calm, Assertive presence in a crisis, can it be taught?
Marking Your Territory
Protecting intellectual property rights can safeguard your company from copycats. by ELAINE POFELDT – January 2010 Aspirin. Cellophane. Thermos. These were once trademarked names. But because the owners of the trademarks were not careful to control their proper use, they became part of the public domain. Competing companies were then able to use them in marketing materials, reaping the rewards of the work the original owners put into creating them. The lesson? When you have an idea— whether it’s a great brand name or a hot new product—the first thing you should do is consider protecting it. Before you start, you should understand the ways you can safeguard your idea and realize that it will cost money, time and effort. “Protecting intellectual property is not a one-time event,” says Alexander Poltorak, founder and CEO of General Patent Corp., a management firm in Suffern, NY, and author of Essentials of Licensing Intellectual Property. “It’s part of an overall business strategy.” There’s no one-size-fits-all rule as to which types of businesses need to be aggressive about IP protection, but experts recommend considering your IP value before making a decision. If, say, you’ve invested millions of dollars and several years of work in developing a new technology, you’ll want to be very zealous. Your first step should be figuring out what protection you need. There are four large groups of IP rights: trademarks, patents, trade secrets and copyrights. According to Paul Craane, a partner with the intellectual property law firm Marshall, Gerstein & Borun in Chicago, “Sometimes, people confuse what each of these rights covers. You’ll hear people say ‘I’ll trademark my...
For Rent: Chief Financial Officer
Firms Outsource a Top Job as Cheaper Than Hiring Their Own Executive By RAYMUND FLANDEZ This past year, Al Lovata, chief executive of Be Our Guest Inc., cut expenses for his party-equipment rental business by laying off staff and reducing workers’ salaries. He credits an “outsourced” chief financial officer with helping him prepare for the worst of the economic downturn. The Boston-based company had sales growth in the double digits for the past few years, when revenue fell flat last fall. Now, thanks to the part-time CFO’s guidance, the company is stable with revenue down 20% to 30%, but profitability higher than in the previous months, he says. If we hadn’t had this service, “we would still be struggling,” Mr. Lovata says. Brian Weitzel Mike Loria of Re.Source Partners Asset Management, in Detroit, consults his CFO, Sheri Pawlik of B2B CFO. Some small-business owners in need of accounting help to balance their books and guide them out of a financial black hole are renting CFOs rather than hiring them. The strategy comes at a time when the deep recession has forced small companies to look for money-saving alternatives that can yield good returns yet avoid substantial overhead costs. “They’re looking for ways to streamline and be efficient as they can,” says Glenn Dunlap, a co-founder of Milestone Advisors LLC, a small-business consulting firm in Indianapolis that provides CFO services. The average annual salary for a full-time CFO in a small- to medium-size businesses ranges from $94,250 to $175,750, according to a 2009 Salary Guide by Robert Half International Inc., a Menlo Park, Calif., staffing services firm that serves the...B2B CFO® are media experts on, and can speak to the media on:
- - Company Financials
- - Small Business Finance
- - Lending
- - Profit/Loss Statements
- - Exit Strategy
