Quarterly Compass 7/1/2026
Welcome back to “The Quarterly Compass,” the email newsletter of True North Legal Group. This resource is designed for entrepreneurs, small business owners, executives, and business-minded professionals in Northern Michigan.
Every quarter, we’ll head in four directions. First, the “East” section (directly below) will be dedicated to legal updates from TNLG that may be relevant to your venture. Then head “South,” where we’ll highlight a local business or entrepreneur doing great things in Northern Michigan. Out “West,” you’ll find information about future events or developments that may soon impact you, your business, or your employees. Finally, True “North” will include a short, actionable insight for personal or business growth.
No matter your bearing, we hope you’ll find “The Quarterly Compass” to be a helpful resource along the way.
Your Website May Be the Next Lawsuit
The fastest growing legal risk most Northern Michigan business owners don't see coming
Most owners think of their website as marketing. Increasingly, plaintiffs’ attorneys think of it as a cause of action.
Under Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act, businesses that serve the public must be accessible to people with disabilities. For decades, that meant ramps, parking spaces, and door widths. Today, courts and the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) apply the same principle to websites. If a customer who relies on a screen reader can't navigate your site, book your service, or complete a checkout, that can be treated as a denial of access — the same as a step at the front door.
What's changed is the volume. By industry counts, plaintiffs filed more than 3,100 website accessibility lawsuits in federal court in 2025 — roughly a 27% increase over the prior year — and the pace has carried into 2026. There is no small-business exemption. A majority of the businesses sued had under $25 million in annual revenue. Many of these matters never start in a courtroom at all; they begin with a demand letter seeking $10,000 to $25,000 to settle quietly.
There is no single federal regulation that spells out exactly what a private business's website must do. But in practice, courts and the DOJ consistently measure accessibility against the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 Level AA — the same standard the DOJ adopted in its 2024 rule for state and local government websites. That is the benchmark to know.
Why this matters: This is a risk that doesn't depend on a complaint from one of your customers or any actual injury. A business can be targeted simply because its site falls short of a technical standard — often by plaintiffs who never intended to buy anything.
A simple check for 2026: Could a customer who can't use a mouse, or who relies on a screen reader, complete the most important action on your website — booking, ordering, or contacting you — from start to finish? If you're not sure, that uncertainty is the exposure.
What smart owners are doing now: They're having their sites evaluated against WCAG 2.1 AA, fixing the high-impact issues first — images without text descriptions, low color contrast, and forms or menus that don't work with a keyboard — and asking their web developer to treat accessibility as a standing requirement rather than a one-time project.
Fresh Trippin: NoMI Built, One Happy Customer at a Time
Earlier this year, I had the pleasure to get to know Jessica Guenther, a long-time Northern Michigan resident working to build her cleaning services business. I had known about Fresh Trippin since its nomination as Traverse Connect “New Business of the Year” in 2025. Since that nomination, Fresh Trippin has continued to build a trusted name in cleaning across the Grand Traverse region — serving short-term rental hosts, property managers, real estate professionals, local businesses, and homeowners from Traverse City through Leelanau County and into Benzie.
In a region where so much of the economy runs on hospitality and vacation rentals, the work behind a spotless property rarely gets noticed. For Jessica's team, that's exactly the point.
Learn more about Jessica and her growing business in the following Q&A:
Q: What inspired you to build your life and business in Northern Michigan?
The endless opportunity in our region. We live in a very unique part of the country where people vacation year-round, with so much to do outdoors for those who enjoy it.
Q: What characteristics of our community have helped you launch and grow?
It's a referral-based, word-of-mouth community. We live in a big small town where many people rely on referrals rather than just Googling a business that offers a service. We spend very little on marketing — networking and referrals have proven far more effective for us.
Q: What excites you about the next twelve months of your business?
Continuing to grow — and to me, growth isn't just the number of accounts or the amount of revenue. It's continually refining our processes and procedures, investing more time, money, and effort into staff training, and always finding ways to improve. We've also expanded heavily into the Benzie area, and we're looking forward to securing our second location.
Looking for a spotless short-term rental, home, or business? Learn more about Jessica and her team at freshtrippin.com.
A Privacy Law Worth Watching
Michigan remains one of a shrinking number of states without a comprehensive consumer data privacy law — but that may not hold for long.
Senate Bill 359, the proposed Personal Data Privacy Act, was introduced in June 2025 and has been reported favorably out of committee; it now sits before the full Senate. If it advances, it would give Michigan residents rights that are already familiar in many other states — to know what personal data a business collects about them, to access or delete it, and to opt out of its sale — while requiring covered businesses to provide clear privacy notices and obtain consent for certain uses of data.
As drafted, the heaviest obligations would fall on larger operations — generally those handling the personal data of 100,000 or more Michigan residents, or 25,000 or more if they earn revenue from selling that data. Many small businesses would fall below those thresholds. But the direction is the real signal. Data-broker registration with the Attorney General is already moving forward, and the privacy practices set by larger companies tend to become the baseline that customers expect from everyone.
Bottom line for small business: You likely don't need to overhaul anything today. But this is a good moment to know what customer and employee data you collect, where it lives, who you share it with, and whether you could honor a request to see or delete it. The businesses that understand their own data now will adapt easily if and when Michigan acts.
The Business That Can Run Without You
This year at TNLG, we began working closely with an operations specialist to streamline our systems — turning the way we do things from habits in someone's head into documented, repeatable processes. It's humbling work. It forces you to see how much quietly depends on single personalities, and how fragile that can be.
The book that has framed this best for me is Clockwork by Mike Michalowicz. Its premise is simple: a business should be designed to run itself, so the owner isn't the bottleneck for every decision. That isn't just about working fewer hours — it's about building something durable.
I see the other side of this in our work helping people buy and sell businesses. The single biggest factor in what a company is worth — and whether it can be sold at all — is whether it can operate without its current owner. A business that runs on one person's instincts is a job. A business that runs on systems is an asset. The work of delegating and documenting isn't busywork; it's how you build value that stands the test of time.
If you stepped away for ninety days, would your business keep running — and if not, what's the first system you'd build so that it could?
Thank you for reading “The Quarterly Compass,” the email newsletter of True North Legal Group designed to help small business owners, entrepreneurs, executives, and business-minded professionals in Northern Michigan.