Regardless of the type of business you run, you are going to experience some ups and downs. One-minute things will be going well, and you are making a profit. The next, things go wrong. A customer hurts themselves and sues you or one of your competitors’ accuses you of stealing a new product concept. When that sort of thing happens, most business owners hedge their bets and contact a business attorney.
That is an understandable reaction. But, before you call up a personal injury lawyer or contact someone to deal with your copyright issue, pause for a minute. Doing so gives you a chance to do the following.
Be clear about what your aims are
Before you pick up the phone or sit down to write an email, take the time to think about what you are hoping to achieve. Doing this will focus your attention and help you to make it clear to whoever you call what it is that you want from them.
Write down what happened
Take a few minutes to write out what happened. This will help you to clearly explain everything. A good approach is to create a simple timeline.
Some people find the best way to do this is to write things down in a journal format. But, in most cases, using a tool like this one to create a traditional timeline is the better approach.
Pull together all relevant information
The sooner you write down what has happened the better. You are less likely to forget something important. As things move forward, keep the timeline or journal you have created up to date. This will help you to keep things moving. You will be able to spot when certain tasks are taking too long and follow them up.
Make copies of any important documents
As you write down what happened, take the time to print off any relevant information. Or make digital copies and organize them into folders. If any of the information is not yet in a digital format, scan it.
Watch this video to learn how to use Optical Character Recognition. It takes a few more minutes to scan everything that way. But using OCR means that you will be able to use search to easily find the bit of information you need. Find out how to do it here.
Write down some questions
Finally, write out a list of questions you need answering. This will help you to think about what has happened in more depth. At which point you may even pick up on something important that you had previously missed.
Doing the above will be time-consuming. But you should look at it as an investment. In the long term, having everything you need to sort the matter out to hand will save you a lot of time and frustration.
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