Starting Your Own Business – from an Experienced point of view

Gong into business and setting up the business into a sole proprietorship, corporation or a partnership, the majority of people think that it is some arduous tasks that is too difficult, too complicated and not worth the time, effort or the money in the first place. This is the reason I decided to write Starting Your Own Business – From An Experienced Point Of View. I’ll try to explain starting your own business as easy as making an apple pie, and hopefully it would be just as good in the end.

Okay, lets start setting up a business for yourself or anyone else, if someone would asked for your help. Lets start with the three different type of ways you can get involved with a business and they are as follows:

1. Starting a business from scratch

2. Buying an existing business

3. Mergers & Acquisitions.

Mergers and Acquisitions is one way of getting involved with a business and you will be taking over an existing business or an existing business that is in financial trouble, whichever way you decide to enter into business there will be financial cost or some sweat equity involvement. But today, we are only going to talk about starting your own business – from an experienced point of view. The other two ways buying an existing business, and or mergers & acquisitions are ways but we will talk about those two ways at a later date and time. Now, starting your own business could be an expensive propositions, especially if you have no experience in the process of starting a business. The cost of or setting up the business could be minimal if you are doing all the paper work yourself. On the other side of the coin, it could get expensive if you have to involve an attorney, they could and should explain the different forms of ownerships and their responsibilities and liabilities. This information that the attorney’s provide you should help you choose which type of ownerships is best for you.

Now that you want to start a business, what are the types of ownership forms are you going to do business as? There are three different forms of ownership and they are as follows; sole proprietor, corporation or limited partnership. I’m going to browse into the types of forms of ownerships, an attorney can go further into depth, into each type of ownership, as I have stated early.

Ownership Forms are as follows; sole proprietor you are responsible for all of the liabilities of the business. Corporations are like being a human being and the corporation are liability for actions of itself.

Limited Partnerships, there has to be a general partner who is solely responsible for the day-to-day liabilities of the business and the limited partners are responsible for liabilities of their initial investments.

As stated early, please consult an attorney for all of your liability responsibilities regarding the form of business you choose, because the most important point is not, such much as the cost, of setting up a business, but to make sure that all of your liability issues are understood when the process is completed and that is the most important point of all. Also making sure that you are protected, and everything has been set up correctly.

The cost involved in each of the three ways of being in business could cost you a few hundred dollars to maybe a couple of thousands of dollars if you set up the business yourself. But on the other hand if you were to pay for an expert such as an attorney the cost factor to setting up a business could double or triple depending on the business form you choose.

How to set Up your business, I’m going to explain how step by step, so that there is no misunderstanding the processes of setting up or starting a business, if you do it yourself. The first thing that you’ll need is a fictitious business name to do business as, and this is whatever you call your business name. When you think of or about a business name, you need to make sure that you are the only one with that name of the business you want to start. You can do some research on the computer these days, and do a name search to make sure you are the only one with the name of the business that you want to do business with.

Now after you have completed your business name search and you are the only person with that business name, it is time to register the business, so that you can do business. Another piece of advice that I going to give you right here is that if you are using your own personal name for your business then you do not have to register that business because your own name is unique in itself. But there are a lot of problems or drawbacks with using your own name and we will talk about that later, personal lawsuit is one of the biggest problems, with using your own name to do business. Now if you use a fictitious name for your business, you are going to have to pay for that right to be called, let say your business name is; “Hamburgers.com or Hamburgers Inc.” Now you have to file the paper work, so you travel to the county hall of records or courthouse, depending on where you live. Asked the clerk where do I file a fictitious business name, because I want to start a business? There are people out in front of the county hall of records or county courthouse and their job is the help you complete this business form and this is all they do, is to help you fill out these fictitious business name forms for you, so that you can start a business, but for a fee I might add. The costs could be somewhere between to 0 dollars at most. If you spend 0 dollars to file the paper work to set up your business name, I believe this might be on the high-end of the fee service.

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Now that the paper work has been completed and submitted, you also have to publish your fictitious name in a local paper for 3 days, so that everyone knows that you are doing business as “Hamburgers.com or Hamburgers Inc.” The fee you paid to the county hall of records or courthouse, some of the monies is for the publishing of your fictitious name in a local paper to notify the public in general. Now, that is it, now you are in business, or at least you have a business name to call yourself to be in business. Now that you have your business name, you are the proud owner of that business name and everyone must stay back, just kidding. You want everyone to come to your business so that you can make money and not stay away from your business. One other major thing you have to do before you get started doing business, and that is to go to the bank with your business forms and opening a bank account with that business name. Now, you are ready and your business is registered you can now start doing business.

First you are going to how start Up costs, and this is where it could get very expensive, about starting a business from scratch, because now you have to find a location, where to do business you have just set up and published to let everyone know. There are two places where you could do business and one is your own home and the other is that you either are going to buy or lease a location to do business. A Home Office, is less expensive, if your business is not a large business at the beginning, you could use one room in your home as the office and not spend thousands of dollars a month on rent. This would be the cheapest way to get started, also because you do not have someone checking your credit to determine if you are credit worthy. If you have great credit, then this is no problem at all, but if you have some credit issues, then your own home is the best place to start your business.

The best part about using your own home is that you do not have to pay first and last month’s rents and this is very expensive when you are starting a business from scratch and you have not made any money. One other thing about being in business is that you are going to need liability insurance or worker’s comp insurance, before you can do any business, if you are thinking about having any employees working for your company. The cost for the workers comp insurance could be another two or three thousand dollars to attain the certificate and the certificate has to be placed in a location where it can be seen by all employees and workers comp officials. If your business is going to be large then you need Office Space, and the outlay of monies for renting or buying office space could get very expensive, and you have not made any money. This is all to get the business ready to start making some money. To rent or purchase office space you are going to have your credit checked, and I hope you have preferably good credit, because the building owners or banks, are going to run a credit check on your credit to determine if you are credit worthy to rent or purchase this office or manufacturing space if this is type of business you are involved with.

The office or manufacturing space is going to cost you about ,000 to ,000 dollars a month, depending on how much space you need to do your business. There is going to be first and last month’s rents that get collected by the owners or banks, and this could be anywhere from ,000 to ,000 dollars just to get into a place. As I stated early and throughout this article the cost just keep getting higher and higher doesn’t it. Also just like the home office space, you are going to need workers’ comp insurance, just in case some of your employees get hurt or laid off from work. This insurance is there to compensate them if anything should happen while they were working for your business, this is another ,500 dollar a month expenditure.

To do any work your will need business equipment and there are two types of equipment, office and or manufacturing equipment to do the business that you have chosen to start. Depending on the types of manufacturing you are involved with, the manufacturing machines your business needs, are expensive as well. Also you are going to need office computers, desks, chairs, pens, office paper, computer paper, and stationary with your company’s name on the stationary, and this could cost you another ,000 to ,000 dollars or more, hopefully you do not need any vehicles to your business, because the cost just got that much larger.

Before any work can be done you are going to need Utilities, so do not forget the utility man, because he cometh, for his share of the monies as well. To do business in an office location you are going to need lights, gas, and water. Because without any of these three, there is nothing that is going to get done, until all three are turned on in that location. Also there are additional costs, such as with advertisement, to let people know that you are in business. Advertisement costs, has gotten to be very expensive in some places, but I know with the internet advertising costs should have gotten to be a little more cheaper than the traditional ways of advertising. That can be hard to determine if advertising costs have gotten to be cheaper, unless you do an comparison of both ways to advertise. Also because of the internet, other businesses which are your competition has just gotten that much closer to your company. How because now people can learn about other businesses that are doing the same type of business that you are involved in doing in other cities, and those businesses maybe next door to your city where your business is located.

Costs or spending more money to get started, these costs seems to be just adding up and becoming way too expensive, right? But you can take heart in the fact that, if costs are rising, hopefully your business is starting to expand or ramp up and profits are going up as well. The cost of doing business will definitely increase as your business expands, but you will have more chances or opportunities to earn or make more money. Well, this could be the scenario, you could be in for if you wanted to start a business from scratch.

Love What You Do or Know Something About the Industry, this is a major point I would you to understand and it is probably the most important point before you get yourself all fired up on starting a business. Please, do not read over this point or take this point lightly, because this point can make or break you before you go into business. The point is before you start, buy, takeover or complete and acquisitions of any business, make sure you know or love something about the area of business you are getting involved with. That little point above

“Love what you do or Know Something about the industry”, this point or statement have broken so many people or entrepreneurs because they went into or bought a business they did not know or they knew very little of or just do not love what they were doing about the business they got involved with. When I tell you this I am talking from experience. So do not fall into this trap and start or buy something you have very little or do not know anything about the business. Alright.

Now let’s go over the steps you need to start your own business: Those steps are:

1. Get a company Name

2. Form of Ownership

3. Research to make sure you are the only one with the name

4. Go to the county recorder to register the company name

5. Register company name

6. Business location, if you need it or you could use your own home

7. Start up costs

8. Stationary, purchase stationary if you need it

9. Advertise your Business or product or service

10. You are now in Business So until next time let’s do business

 

www.howdini.com How to start a business – Starting a business Tempted to start your own business but just not sure if it’s a smart move? Career consultant Maggie Mistal from Martha Stewart Radio has great advice to help you through the decision making process. Keywords start a business starting a business how to start a business start your own business starting your own business starting a small business