How To Start A Business
An On Trend Magazine Mini Guide
Created By Jamie Palmer Owner Of
Outlier Marketing Group
With more and more women (and men) turning
to entrepreneurship to create the life they
desire more and more people are searching for
the basics for starting a business.
Entrepreneurship and business ownership can
be a lot of fun but it is also a lot of work.
Stepping out into the world as a business
owner can be a bit overwhelming. This is a
guide that will help to declutter those first few
days of chaos and will help organize and
prioritize your efforts when it comes to
launching a business.
Legal
When starting a business the first step is to
determine what type of business it will be.
Sole proprietorships and LLC’s are very
common among one to two owners or
businesses under twenty employees.
Corporations should be considered if what is
being sold has a great deal of liability or if it is
patented and plans to go into mass production
(think amazon). Most of you that are reading
this article will either be a sole proprietorship
or a LLC. LLC’s are great because they offer the
protection of your personal assets without
being taxed as a corporation.
To get your business registered as a sole
proprietorship, you can simply head down to
your local town hall and get a business license.
From there you can then get your bank account
and you are off and running.
As an LLC, two things need to happen. The first
is getting an EIN or tax id number from the
federal government then you will need to
register your LLC with the state in which you
wish to make it legal, typically your own state.
Once you have completed these two things you
can then open your bank account.
If you don’t want to do these things yourself
you can always hire a lawyer to help walk you
through this process. There are lots of websites
online that can also help you with this phase.
Last, after you decide upon a name and a logo
it is important to run it by a lawyer for
trademark infringement. I have seen this
happen to a client of mine and they had to go
through and redo a bunch of stuff. Save
yourself the headache and have a lawyer
review it. I’m not suggesting you should
immediately trademark your logo but be sure
you aren’t infringing on someone else.
Legal Checklist:
Sole Proprietorship or LLC
EIN Number
Lawyer or Legal Review
Run Trademark Search on Brand
Financial
When first starting a business, it is important to
get your finances in order and have a
bookkeeping system in place. Freshbooks or
quickbooks is a great way to get invoicing, time
management, payroll and general bookkeeping
under control.
Once you have a way to invoice customers or
clients, you will need to find a way for people
to pay you.