“Becoming a leader is synonymous with becoming yourself. It is precisely that simple, and it is also that difficult.” – Warren G Bennis.

Effective leadership can take many forms.

Many of us associate strong leadership with giants like Nelson Mandela and Barack Obama, CEOs, politicians, thought leaders or people who make important scientific breakthroughs. But great leaders are also people who have the capacity to create ripples of positive change – and they can be found anywhere. These people make conscious choices – whether in their personal or business lives – to do the right thing when making small and seemingly insignificant decisions every day.

Leadership everyday

Leaders don’t think less of themselves, they think of themselves less.

Rather than remaining silent, for example, everyday leaders choose to speak up to support a female colleague whose opinions or projects might be overlooked by management in team meetings; rather than stand by and watch a potentially dangerous incident unfold (which could escalate to endanger others), leaders step up to diffuse the situation; rather than look on in passive silence, leaders take action and run to the aid of someone being attacked or abused in the street; rather than follow the social ridicule of another, leaders break the cycle and stop situations where others are suffering public humiliation.

Choosing to do the right thing is the hard thing. It is also the hallmark of someone with integrity and the potential to become a respected and powerful leader in their personal and professional lives.

How to be an industry leader

Leaders in their professional fields are often described as ‘key persons of influence.’

These people have an intimate understanding of their strengths and weaknesses and are unafraid to take calculated business risks when the right opportunities present themselves.

In his best-selling book, “Become A Key Person of Influence (KPI)”, Daniel Priestley writes:

Whether you are chasing a promotion in your current role or looking to establish yourself or your business with a strong personal brand over the next 12-months, effective leadership skills are about being flexible, adaptable, bucking the norm and being able to influence those around you.

With persistence, passion for your industry and a clear strategy, becoming a key person of influence is something that you can achieve this year. According to Priestley:

Want the book? It’s yours – FREE!

To help you achieve your professional and business goals this year, in collaboration with Dent Global, we’re giving away Daniel Priestley’s book “Become A Key Person Of Influence” for FREE.

Receive your free hard copy by clicking here and filling out your details.

About Dent Global:

Dent Global is an international world-leading business accelerator for small, entrepreneurial, service-based businesses, with offices in the UK, USA, Singapore and Australia.

Founded in 2010, Dent is powering the entrepreneur revolution in Australia. Dent specialises in accelerator programs and events, facilitated through their partnerships with celebrated entrepreneurs and leaders who mentor the participants. Dent has helped more than 2000 companies of all shapes and sizes grow and achieve their goals through their accelerator programs: Threshold, Key Person of influence, Campaign Driven Enterprise and 24 Assets. They have also launched three best-selling books on business, won major awards and raised more than $500,000 to charities around the globe.

With Australia’s small business sector buoyant and healthy, Dent Global’s message is fine-tuned for the current climate where there’s no better time to be an entrepreneur than now.

Hashtags have proven to be very valuable tools for businesses, with Facebook, Twitter and Instagram posts that include hashtags returning twice the engagement rate of those without one. While hashtags are too short to be afforded copyright protection (they hardly constitute ‘literary works’, now, do they?) and don’t qualify for patent protection because they are not an invention, it is possible to register a hashtag as a trade mark for your business.

#MakeItYourOwn: Hashtags As Intellectual Property (IP)

Trade marks help with brand recognition and differentiating your business from your competitors.

To qualify for trade mark protection, a hashtag must be something most consumers consider to be synonymous with your business (a brand identifier) and not merely a social media tool. In other words, if most people in the general public associate a hashtag with your product or service, it likely qualifies for trade mark registration. Think #sayitwithpepsi, which was registered as a trade mark by PEPSICO last year, or Twisties’ #lifesprettystraight hashtag.

In most cases, the “#” symbol itself is not considered the registerable part of the trade mark, rather, what follows the hashtag (for example, the unique word or phrase) that is checked against the requirements for trade mark protection.

What Is A Trade Mark And How Do I Get One?

Put simply, a trade mark is a unique descriptor – a logo, word, phrase, sound, smell, shape, picture, movement, aspect of packaging, letter, number, or a combination of these – that helps consumers distinguish between your goods and services and those of other businesses.

Unlike copyright protection, a trade mark does not automatically protect your intellectual property. Trade marks need to be registered with the relevant government authority, IP Australia.

Successfully registering your hashtag as a trade mark gives you exclusive rights to that trade mark for 10 years. If another business infringes those rights by using your hashtag without your permission, you can sue them for damages.

Trade mark protection is, however, subject to some qualifications. You must continue to use your trade mark (if you cease using it for three years you risk having it taken from the register), and it must continue to be regarded as a trade mark. This means that if your hashtag becomes a common name to describe goods or services, it is possible for someone else to seek to have your trade mark cancelled through the courts.

What Value Can A Hashtag Provide Your Business?

As a powerful content indexing tool, hashtags are incredibly valuable particularly given their potential to go viral.

Hashtags are recognised by brands as a low-cost marketing technique that, when used correctly, can be a fast, highly-effective and lucrative way to #jointheconversation and drastically increase audience engagement and sales. When used in conjunction with social media influencer marketing, the potential for growth is enormous.

Some of the most popular campaigns in recent memory have even gained traction with mainstream media outlets, leading to even more market exposure (think about the #MyCalvins campaign).

Increasingly businesses are seeking to not only stake their claim on their plot of digital real estate but also to protect themselves against other businesses who seek to cash in on their popularity. For example, where a competing enterprise piggybacks on the success of your social media stream by using a hashtag you created to promote their marketing agenda.

As the digital landscape becomes more and more crowded, businesses are looking to add value to their social media marketing strategy in more novel and distinctive ways. It seems that trade marking hashtags is a growing trend that is likely to gain much more momentum in the future as it becomes an integral part of brand strategy.

So, how will you differentiate your business from the rest of the digital crowd in 2017?

Further Information

For more guidance on the status of hashtags under trade mark provisions in Australia visit:

• IP Australia – What do hashtags mean for trade marks

To make an application to register your hashtag for trade mark protection visit:

• IP Australia – Hot to apply for a trade mark

They say that sex sells but in today’s market, it is data that can really land you the big bucks. Whether you are simply collecting email addresses to build a database of loyal customers or on-selling the information you accumulate, data plays a huge role in the lifecycle of nearly all startups.

The sheer volume of data collected from consumers on a day-to-day basis has exploded over recent decades. It is unsurprising, then, that privacy concerns have grown almost as fast.

As a startup owner, what should you be doing about it? We’ve put together a back-to-basics guide to assessing your business’s data use.

1. Define The Data

Like many aspects of your business, taking a big first step sometimes requires a few steps step backwards. Take a moment to consider the bigger picture.

At which points along your startup’s customer experience chain might you find yourself in possession of customer data?

Most businesses these days will find themselves doing one or more of the following:

• Requiring a name and an email address for customers to access a website
• Collecting credit card details for purchases; or
• Collecting home addresses for deliveries.

Examples like this may seem obvious but the more complicated your business model, the more unusual your data collection may be. You may find that you are retrieving and storing a customer’s location, accessing other data stored on their phone, such as photos and notes, or even tracking what they buy at the grocery store each week.

It is important to work out exactly what data you might find in your hands – or indeed, what data you would like to find in your hands – before you can work out how best to handle it.

2. Make The Big Decisions

Once you know what customer data you are likely to need, it is time to decide how you are going to handle it.

You might, for example, find that you want to use the data to create a dynamic and customised consumer experience. This could involve making a decision about whether the data stays with your business or is passed on to third parties.

Alternatively (or additionally), you may wish to use the data to secure a loyal fan base and market new products and services. In this case, you may consider:

• Do you want to be able to directly contact your customers?
• What sorts of things would you like to contact them about? Just your own goods and services, or those of other businesses or causes too?
• How would you like to contact them? Call, text, and/or email?

Perhaps you are particularly savvy and looking to sell the information you collect for the purposes of targeted third party advertising.

It is important to remember that the issue is not only to decide how you plan to use this data but also how you plan to store it. How will you secure it? Will you anonymize it? Will you be making multiple copies of the data? Will owners of the data be able to erase it from your system? If so, how?

Of course, these are only a few suggestions to get you thinking. The only limitation on how you might use customer data for your business is your imagination … or is it?

3. Work Out The Details

Here comes the bad news: now that you have decided how you would like to use and store the data you collect, it is time to work out whether you are allowed to or whether legal restrictions apply.

This is a two-step process.

STEP ONE

The first step is to work out if any laws prevent you from handling customer data in the way you would like.

Two key pieces of legislation will likely apply to you and your business: the Privacy Act 1988 and the Spam Act 2003. Now, there is no need to spend days trawling through these laws but it is important to do some research to find out what you can and cannot do with the data you collect.

Spam Act: To give you a general idea, the Spam Act prevents businesses from sending unsolicited commercial electronic messages – do not assume that you can get around it!

The law determines if a message is ‘commercial’ from the content of the message generally as well as the way the message is presented. In other words, even though you are not advertising your goods or services explicitly, the email you just sent to your list of subscribers (for example, with the aim of testing the market or gauging a prospective customer’s interest) may be considered spam if they were not aware that you would use their email address for that purpose.

These kinds of messages are considered commercial because they seek to establish a commercial relationship. You need to gain consent through other means, such as a letter, a phone call or a face-to-face conversation.

Take home point: Never send an electronic message to a group or an individual if they have not consented to receive it.

Privacy Act 1988: The Privacy Act will govern most of your data activities, particularly, the Australian Privacy Principles (APPs). Although these principles will only govern businesses of an annual turnover of over $3 million, it is best practice to make sure your venture complies regardless.

The APPs cover:

• What to include in your privacy policy (see step 4)
• What to do with data you receive that you asked for … and data you receive that you did not ask for!
• Management systems that must be in place to deal with data-related complaints
• How you can use and disclose data in Australia and overseas
• Expectations around keeping data secure

STEP TWO

Once you know the legal do’s and don’t’s, the next step is to decide whether you have the resources to comply with relevant laws.

If you do not think your business model will cope with the pressure of these restrictions, it is better to reassess now before you go any further.

It is also a good idea to think about whether your data collection is really the best way to foster a positive relationship with your customers, even if you are complying with all your legal obligations.

Take, for example, the recent media frenzy over the alleged privacy invasion by Niantic in their PokemonGO app. It was widely reported that an error in the app required users to give full access to their Google accounts in order to use the app, a permission that it seemed went far beyond the scope of what was reasonably required for the purposes of the app. Though Niantic has now indicated that no data of this kind was collected despite initial reports, the case provides a perfect instance of the potentially damaging effects of dubious data collection on your relationship with your customers.

Ultimately, the more complicated your business, the harder it will be to navigate the rules and restrictions that surround data protection and the more likely it is that you will need to get these details from a lawyer to avoid getting into hot water down the track.

4. Disclose, Disclose, Disclose

After you have sorted through the details, work out what your customers need to know in order for you to store, use or sell their data as planned, and how you are going to tell them.

Enter the Privacy Policy.

Usually tucked neatly away in the “legals” section of a website, the Privacy Policy is your opportunity to tell your customers everything you have worked out in steps 1 and 2 (above), and will be guided by the rules and restrictions you have uncovered in step 3 (above).

In more technical terms, the privacy policy it is a contract between you and your customers. They can either agree to your policy and continue to engage with the business, or they can walk away before their data is captured. The contents of a Privacy Policy will often vary widely in order to accommodate different business models and concepts.

The APPs provide some guidance in Part 1.4, noting that a Privacy Policy must contain the following:

• how you collect and hold personal information
• the kinds of personal information that you collect and hold

• the purposes for which you collect, hold, use and disclose personal information
• how an individual may access personal information about the individual that is held by you and seek the correction of such information
• how an individual may complain about a breach of the APPs, or a registered APP code (if any) that binds you, and how you will deal with such a complaint
• whether you are likely to disclose personal information to overseas recipients
• if you are likely to disclose personal information to overseas recipients—the countries in which such recipients are likely to be located if it is practicable to specify those countries in the policy.

In this context, ‘personal information’ means data about an identified individual or a person who is reasonably identifiable.

As a general rule, personal information should not be collected unless it is reasonably necessary for one or more of your business’s functions or activities. The APPs may seem overwhelming at first, but give them a go – there is no better way to learn about how to correctly handle your business’s data collection than to go straight to the source.

A word of warning: It can be tempting to find a similar business and copy their Privacy Policy for your own use.

This is a breach of copyright law, and you may find yourself jumping out of the frying-pan and into the fire if you do it. If you are struggling to put together your own policy, consult a lawyer. Alternatively, if you do not have the funds to seek professional advice and you’re not sure what to do, the best policy is often to disclose, disclose, disclose!

If nothing else, this fosters a positive relationship between you and your customers, indirectly building consumer confidence in your brand and business.

5. Do

It is easy to throw together your Privacy Policy and to sketch out the various data storage and usage procedures, and then to think your job is over. While we might wish this were the case, unfortunately, the reality is a little more complicated.

Buckle up, because here comes one of the toughest parts in handling customer data: making sure you comply with any restrictions you have discovered in the detailing stage and making sure you actually do what you promise in your Privacy Policy.

Don’t be too disheartened. Data collection can offer you infinite opportunities to better market, sell, expand, and diversify your business – just make sure you do it right!

At the end of the day, remember that data collection is as easy as define, decide, detail, disclose, do!

Further Information

For more information and resources to help you understand what rules and restrictions may apply to your business:

• Australian Privacy Principles
• Guide to developing an APP Privacy Policy
• ACMA: Ensuring you don’t spam
• ACMA: Overview of the Spam Act 200 for business 

When was the last time you considered the potential legal and privacy implications of customer data retention for your startup? Let us know in the comments!

There are multiple factors that impact the success or failure of a startup.

In Australia, entrepreneurs are being put out of business by more than just underdeveloped planning and poor sales. The grim reality is that over 95% of new startups are destined to fail. Many of these are sunk by preventable legal pitfalls that new business owners did not foresee or did nothing to protect themselves against. When you have solid foundations in place to protect yourself and your business against unnecessary risk, you can devote your energy full time towards making your startup dream a success.

Below are some strategies to deal with avoidable legal issues in business early and effectively.

Have A Clear Ownership Structure

The common legal structures for businesses include sole trader, company, partnership and trust.

Choosing the right legal structure for your business from the outset is important as some structures provide protection against personal liability for debts and legal disputes. It also impacts your tax obligations and expenses and makes it easier to sell your business in the future, if you wish.

A Shareholders’ Agreement

Even if your partners are your parents or your best mates, a shareholders’ agreement is an important and necessary document that clearly sets out the rights and responsibilities of each shareholder in your company.

Without such an agreement in place, in the case of a legal dispute, it will be up to a court to decide the outcome.

There is no ‘one size fits all’ shareholders’ agreement. Each agreement must be drafted according to your unique set of circumstances and the outcome the shareholders wish to achieve in relation to shareholder funding or contributions, director appointments, how the company should be managed, dividends and financing, transfers of shares or an exit strategy.

Depending on how much of the company certain shareholders own, for example, the agreement may also stipulate that minority shareholders cannot be forced out of decision-making by majority shareholders.

You can start by downloading a basic shareholders’ agreement template and supplement basic clauses according to your needs by speaking with a legal professional.

A Commercial Lease You Understand

Commercial leases can be complex documents which spell out the rights and responsibilities of both landlord and tenant.

If you don’t understand the lease document, you could end up being liable for costs you didn’t anticipate such as utilities, repairs, taxes and the cost of documentation regarding the lease.

You may also have difficulty renewing the lease. Fighting a lease dispute can be expensive and losing such a dispute could mean that your company loses its space.

Make sure you fully understand the legal implications of your commercial lease agreement before signing.

Have Proper Warehouse Safety Equipment

If your business has warehouse space for storage, it is critical to have proper equipment and procedures in place that comply with Work Health and Safety legislation to protect your staff from preventable injuries.

Loads falling onto forklift operators and other workers account for a high percentage of Australian workplace injuries and fatalities. Forklift safety cages and large goods cages, for example, protect operators and everyone else working in the immediate area from physical injuries and protect your startup from potential workers compensation claims.

Mandatory Sexual Harassment & Bullying Education

No doubt you agree that this behaviour has no place in your workplace, but do your employees understand exactly what is defined as sexual harassment or bullying?

As a business owner, if you don’t dedicate the time and resources to train your employees in appropriate workplace conduct, you could leave yourself open to large fines for breaching workplace health and safety legislation. The resulting financial drain on your startup could quickly put you out of business.

Understand relevant legislation surrounding workplace health and safety, bullying and sexual harassment and have each employee complete the necessary compliance training.

Maintain Detailed Record Keeping

A commitment to detailed record keeping is necessary for many reasons including invoicing and accounts receivable, tax compliance and payroll.

If your company is not large enough to hire a full-time accountant or business manager, record keeping is a task that you can adequately perform yourself by using accounting and online bookkeeping software like Xero. If you don’t have time to maintain your own records, it is worthwhile contacting an accounting firm in your area.

Yes, outsourcing this work is an ongoing overhead expense, however, failure to keep accurate records can lead to serious problems for your business, the consequences of which can doom your startup before it starts.

Compliance With The Privacy Act

Depending on the nature of your business, you may be collecting data about current customers and potential customers.

As a business owner, it is critical that you comply with your obligations under the Australian Privacy Principles to avoid breaching the Privacy Act in the way that you collect, store, use and disclose private information about your customers.

Mishandling or misusing private information can lead to serious fines and penalties.

Conclusion

These are some of the main legal risks faced by Australian startup owners.

Understanding your rights and obligations, and building your business on a rock-solid platform, places you in a strong position to avoid any unforeseen obstacles that may impede your startup success.

What unanticipated difficulties have you encountered on your startup journey? Let us know in the comments below!