Brand Identity and Relevant Technologies for Small Businesses and Startups: Guest Bloggers Lisa Taylor Powers and Danny Cota Weigh In

In our role as corporate formation counsel or general counsel, the ladies of Smith Shapourian Mignano LLP find that they are asked a lot of non-legal questions by their clients (i.e., where/how to set up a commercial bank account, buy insurance, procure a 401K plan, etc.).  Since we strive to be a one-stop-shop for our clients, we make it our business to know our clients'  business concerns, and to meet people in the San Francisco Bay Area community who understand how to address them.

So, it is with great pleasure that we periodically feature guest bloggers who shed some light on  non-legal but equally important business concerns.  This week, we are delighted to feature friends of our firm, Lisa Taylor Powers of The Hive Marketing and Danny Cota of Redshift Consulting, Inc. 

Lisa Taylor Powers is the Founder of The Hive Marketing, a Bay Area Marketing Firm.  Her speciality is to take a holistic viewpoint of a brand/business to provide solutions to help them grow, and her mission is to provide opportunities for her clients to reach their target audiences and grow.  With 11 years of marketing experience under her belt, she's worked with small start-ups and large well-known brands to build brand identity and grow their businesses. 

Danny Cota is an Information Technology ("IT") Consultant at Redshift Consulting, Inc., an IT Services firm primarily serving small businesses and non-profits in the Bay Area.  It offers a 24x7 Service Desk that businesses can call anytime to get in touch with an engineer who will start remotely troubleshooting computer issues.  Redshift Consulting, Inc. also offers onsite support and ad hoc project services.

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Brand Identity for Your Business
By: Lisa Taylor Powers of The Hive Marketing

When forming a new business, you've thought about the type of businesses (LLC, Partnership, Sole Entrepreneur) who your market will be, and likely your tone and message.  One thing that is supremely important is your brand.  

What is a brand?  It's the intangible asset that you create that represents the vision, culture, mission and product or service that you've created. Really, it should encompass the following:

• Value Proposition - Description of what makes you and your company truly unique.
• Brand Beliefs & Values - The ideas and thoughts of your company that will attract your customer.
• Ideal Audience Profile - Your target market’s documented demographics and behaviors.
• Brand Guidelines - Documentation you can provide to future providers regarding your brand.

Defining these characteristics will really help you to ensure you're addressing a need in the market, and sell your product or service.  Based on these considerations, you can then create a logo, business cards, and other graphic and physical representations of your business. 

Your brand is your calling card, what makes you stand out amidst the competition.  Creating a memorable brand ensures success for the future as it will stick with your customers.

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Top 5 “Old School” Technologies Still Relevant in 2016
By: Danny Cota of Redshift Consulting, Inc.

#5 - VIRTUALIZATION HISTORY: Believe it or not, virtualization technology originated back in 1964.

STILL RELEVANT BECAUSE: This technology allows an organization to maximize its “Cap Ex” investment in server/workstation-class computer spend by enabling them to run multiple Virtual Machines ("VM") that perform disparate computing functions on a single instance of hardware.  Done correctly, virtualization can offer an organization high uptime, high availability, simplified maintenance and lower total cost of ownership ("TCO") over the life of the hardware.

#4 – WIFI HISTORY: Not quite as “old school” as virtualization technology, the IEEE 801.11 standard has been around since 1997.  (Going on 20 years.)

STILL RELEVANT BECAUSE: A great work space these days MUST offer WiFi as this technology provides flexibility and ease of network access within a given work area.  Also, without WiFi the personal computing devices that are ubiquitous and that we take for granted these days would still just be the “geeky” toys that they started out as instead of the key tools of business that they are today.

#3 – FIREWALL HISTORY: The exact origin of network firewall technology is a bit murky but circa 1988 a paper regarding firewall technology was published by Digital Equipment Corporation ("DEC ").

STILL RELEVANT BECAUSE: Your firewall constitutes the “thin blue line” between your private network and the vast public network that we call “the Internet.”  While your firewall should by no means be your only security device, it should certainly be the first device that you consider when designing/deploying your network.

#2 – BACKUP HISTORY: “Data Backup” has been around just about as long as the written word but in the modern sense that we use it today, “data backup” had its origin circa 1928 when the first magnetic tape was patented.

STILL RELEVANT BECAUSE: If you don’t already know WHY you need a data backup solution, then there’s not much that we can do to educate you on this topic.  If you do know you need it, then you should also know that backup solutions have progressed to “the Cloud” these days...Options abound!

#1 – EMAIL HISTORY: While electronic messaging of text has been around since 1962, email as we know and love it today originated in the early 1980’s.

STILL RELEVANT BECAUSE: Despite the fact that we now live in a world of texts, tweets, posts and various other forms of character-based communications to nearly everyone on the planet, email is still basically "mission critical" for organizations small and large.  Marketers continue to predict the “death of email” but if email is dead, then we can only hope to have such an “afterlife.”

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This blog does not constitute solicitation or provision of legal advice, and does not establish an attorney-client relationship. This blog should not be used as a substitute for obtaining legal advice from an attorney licensed or authorized to practice in your jurisdiction. You should always consult a suitably qualified attorney regarding any specific legal problem or matter in a timely manner, as statutes of limitations may bar your claim.