Paid, Protected & Profitable: The Small Business Owner's Practical Guide and Workbook to Contracts, Protecting Your Work (and IP), and Getting Paid Wh (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9781913206840)

You have built more than you realize.

Your clients. Your contracts. Your content. Your brand. Your website. The ideas, systems, and digital assets holding it all together. It is worth real money - and most small business owners are too busy serving clients to stop and protect it. That gap quietly costs you time, money, control, and opportunity.

PAID, PROTECTED & PROFITABLE is the plain-English guide and workbook that closes it.

Written by a business and intellectual property attorney with 30 years of experience and more than $6 billion in transactions, this book teaches and then puts you to work - in the voice of a trusted advisor beside you, not a textbook talking down to you.

You will learn why copying a privacy policy from another website can break the law twice. Why the freelancer who designed your logo may still own it. Why the content you post and the ideas you pitch can be lifted right out from under you. Why a handshake deal is worth about what it sounds like. Then you will fix it.

INSIDE, YOU WILL:

• Take inventory of the devices, accounts, domains, and digital assets your small business runs on;
• Run a practical business and intellectual property audit and finally see what you own;
• Understand copyright, trademarks, patents, and trade secrets in plain English;
• Put the right client contracts, consulting agreements, independent contractor agreements, NDAs, and website policies in place before you need them;
• Spot ownership, work-for-hire, and confidentiality risks before they cost you; and
• Price your work with confidence and stop leaving money on the table.

THIS BOOK IS FOR YOU IF YOU ARE:

A consultant, coach, freelancer, developer, designer, creative, course creator, author, agency owner, or solopreneur. Anyone self-employed - running a startup, or a side hustle that got serious - whether you are just starting a business or protecting assets you have had for years.

WRITTEN FOR THE FOUNDERS WHO WERE NEVER HANDED THE PLAYBOOK.

Sharon wrote this with women entrepreneurs and founders from historically underserved communities close in mind - the people who build extraordinary businesses and get told, too often and too late, what they should have done. But these fundamentals belong to every business owner. If you have ever undercharged, over-delivered, or signed something you did not fully understand, this book was written for you.

WHY IT IS DIFFERENT:

It is a guide and workbook, not a set of exercises without a teacher. Every section explains before it asks anything of you. You will find plain-English checklists, a do-it-yourself business audit, a risk assessment matrix, tracking templates, cheat sheets, and pricing exercises to help you calculate what you are worth. Every chapter ends with something you can actually do.