Dotty Scott explains how to organize your legal and operational documents. Keep corporate agreements and SOPs in a binder, record your attorney's contact info, list your doctor and emergency contacts, and designate a second-in-command who can access your files if something happens to you.
You wanted to make sure you have the proper papers in place. Were you referring to just having, like, the standard operating procedure book that you're talking about where you're just writing everything down, or were you referring to something a little bit more legal? And what would that be?
Both. If you have a partner, you want to have your corporate understanding, a copy of that. In there and/or at least the name of the attorney who drew them up and might have copies. Just put the contact names. This happened last night, I got a call, Joe Attorney, and they will know to go to this binder and get the attorney's name. Much like in my— for personal purposes, The top 5 people you want to have in your phone would be the doctor, the attorney, maybe your children. The next 3 are your call, but definitely have at least those 2. And again, your brain is not going to remember. We don't remember anybody's phone number anymore. I can tell you my phone number growing up, but I couldn't call Dotty if I wanted to. I— 3067. That's as far as I get. And we've been friends for almost 20 years. So just write down the numbers. If you're a little shy of giving away the papers, fine. Let the attorney— that's what he drew them up for. He would be the segue between things.
Okay.
So it's a list of phone numbers of your primary people. And if you're bigger than— and you're not working out of your home anymore, Definitely your landlord, or if you own the building, good for you, but you still need somebody who can let people in and out if they don't have the house keys, so to speak. So whoever your second lieutenant is in your office, they need to be a very responsible person and be able to be reached because they're going to be busy.
