We hope you have made your New Year resolutions and are determined to do the best and be the best version of yourself in 2022. Regardless of what 2021 was like for you, your family, and your business, there is a new year to look ahead to. We, too, had ups and downs this past year, but everything that happened only helped grow our business. So here is a rundown of our business over the last 12 months.
January – March 2021
The UK entered a post-Brexit world, and with that came a whole heap of new challenges. The world had become a different place to operate a business, with Covid still very much at our heels. Looking back at the beginning of 2021, we delivered many blogs covering these topics. If you want to see what the highlights were from January till March, take a look at these blogs.
Returning to the Work Place after COVID – Legal and Compliance Issues
How will trademarks and intellectual property be affected by Brexit?
Also, IR35 was very much a hot topic because these important changes were originally due to come into effect on 1 April 2020 but were delayed due to the coronavirus crisis by a year. We saw lots of businesses scrabbling around, not only trying to make sense of the rules, but also whether they would affect them as a business and what changes would need to be made to ensure compliance. We wrote a couple of blogs around this topic to try to help everyone understand their obligations. Here are some of them:
IR35 – Clearing up the confusion and answering the important questions
The Importance of Assessing Worker Status – Employed v Self Employed
April – June 2021
As a company, we had seen an increase in people going it alone due to the uncertainty of the employed roles and redundancies sweeping the nation. We were able to help many sole traders and startups get their legal documents firmly in place and help them understand the legal obligations of starting up on their own. Something that seemed very alien to a lot of people who had always had the security blanket of being an employee.
We wrote a blog on GDPR to help businesses understand their data protection obligations. We also wanted to help businesses tackle redundancy, along with a blog about legal documents and why it’s important to get the right ones in place which are specific to your business.
GDPR – Why it is Important to Keep your Data Protection Under Review
Is Redundancy Affecting Your Business?
Legal Documents – Why is it Important For Your Business To Have the Right ones in Place?
Behind the scenes, we were making plans for our own growth. We had been operating as freelancers, but after some advice from our accountant, Kieran Stocker of Swift Accounting and Bookkeeping Services, the plan was to go limited in Q3 of 2021.
We had also been frantically trying to draft a number of policies and documents which we thought would work well as templates for businesses to download and go. You’ll have heard us time and time again drill down about how we hate contract templates. There is never a substitute for a tailored legal document, and nothing will protect your business more than a bespoke contract or terms & conditions. However, we cherry-picked a number of business policies, documents and consent forms that do work as templates. So, we got to work on these ready to launch before the end of the year.
July – September 2021
We thought that we would have a few slower months over the summer holidays because people’s attention would be on their families rather than their business. Oh, how wrong were we! The summer months kicked off and we saw our biggest month ever in terms of profit in September. Fantastic news for us but also rather frustrating because we hadn’t been able to set the wheels in motion and draft the templates we had planned.
Some of the blogs we wrote:
Associates Vs Employees – Protecting an Expanding Business
– in this blog, we talked about how a business copes during expansion and the pros and cons of taking on an employee over an associate to help with the extra workload.
We also wrote a blog about Master Service Agreements and when they are right for your business. Have a read here.
During the course of 2021, we had seen a rise in creative freelancers and had worked with a number of businesses in this sector. We, therefore, wrote a blog to help anyone working in the creative industry: Creative Freelancers, Business owners, and the legal side of things.
Becoming limited company
Our plans to become a limited company were in full swing, and on 1 October 2021, we incorporated with Companies House and became K&K Legal Consulting Ltd.
Helping charities
One of our goals for 2021 was to explore the charity sector and ways in which we could help this much needed area. We assisted a number of charities with legal documents and advice, and one, in particular, was very close to our hearts. The plan for 2022 is to help more charities and also select a few which we support moving forward.
October – December
We were able to create the business policies/document templates and launched these into the world in November. We are working hard to add to these. If you’re interested in policies and documents for your business, then take a look here. We have H&S, Work from Home, GDPR Toolkit, Quotation, First Aid, and a few more. As mentioned, we plan to add to the range during 2022.
We talked about many different topics in this period, from procrastination and goal setting to setting boundaries and how to rewire your brain for success. Take a look at some of them here.
Procrastination: What Causes It, How it Affects Your Business and Ways to Overcome It
Setting Boundaries and Managing Expectations in Business
Business Slowdown – Things to Focus on when Business is Slow
Final thoughts
In 2022 we are looking forward to assisting many more businesses with their legal requirements. Here is a list of the services we offer and how we can help your business be legally compliant and future proofed.
- Small Business Legal Contracts
- Business Terms & Conditions
- E-Commerce Terms of Sale
- Business Sub-Contractor Agreements
- Business Non-Disclosure Agreements
- Joint Venture Agreements
- Shareholders Agreements
- Trademarks
If you need any of these business documents in 2022, please do not hesitate to contact us.
We wish you a healthy and prosperous 2022.