January 7, 2013

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4. Create Human Resources policies early on.

We were essentially clueless when we hired our first employee four months into starting up.

We thought we were creating a laid-back culture by avoiding a set number of vacation days or other policies for our staff. But the truth is, defined vacation days give employees a guiding framework that can reduce the stress of trying to decide what is too much or too little vacation time. When we finally met with an HR consultant, we realized that our lack of policies could leave our company vulnerable to legal gray areas.

5. Invest in a good small business lawyer.

Our clients hire us to be industry experts, so why shouldn’t we seek outside help in areas that are outside of our core competencies as well?

We started our social media business with a $3,000 personal investment, and all of it went toward having a lawyer draft up our business contracts. My only regret is that we didn’t spend more to have the lawyer review everything at the start of the business. Make sure you’re protected for both worst and best case scenarios.

Connect with Allie on Twitter.

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Photo: Massimo Dutti

Allie Siarto is the co-founder of Loudpixel, a social media monitoring and analytics firm. She also runs a project called Entretrip, co-traveling for location independent entrepreneurs.

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