Online Incorporation MaxBlog

Starting a business in the current economic climate may defy logic. Why would I be crazy enough to give up my secure job to take the entrepreneurial plunge right now?

Experts will tell you that a recession is one of the best times to start a business – several well-known successful companies today got their start during major economic turmoil in the U.S.  These companies succeeded because they found a niche market that wasn’t being filled by anyone else. Identifying a market need is vital for any business startup, regardless of the economic climate.

But risks of failure are greater in a recession so you need to keep expenses as low as possible. Businesses that start and survive a recession though are in a unique position to profit and benefit from the inevitable economic upturn. But if you wait to form a corporation until after the recession, you will be that much more behind.

Keep startup costs low by:

1.    Keeping you day job – If you’re fortunate enough to still be employed, start your business during your free time. You will still have steady income from your day job which allows you to focus on making your business profitable with less risk.

2.    Not buying, leasing or renting office space – Launch your business from a simple home office to save on this expense. Many ventures can be easily managed from the home, eliminating the need to spend money on office space.

3.    Not hiring employees – If you need help from others, consider hiring them as contractors rather than  employees.

4.    Advertising by word-of-mouth – There are many ways to advertise your products and services without spending money. If you can’t sell it yourself, no one can.

There are many recession proof industries you can launch a successful business in. These include:

•    Food
•    Healthcare (including psychology and substance abuse)
•    Computers and IT – people tend to fix broken machines rather than buying new ones during a recession
•    Security
•    Education services (many people go back to school in hard economic times)
•    International business – the economy in other countries may be better

One challenge to starting a business is finding your niche – something that distinguishes you from other related things currently available. One of the best ways to find your niche is to create a business that offers something you needed but couldn’t find.

Read this article from Entrepreneur.com for more insights. And when you’re ready to launch your business, turn to the online incorporation experts at MaxFIlings.com to form a corporation online easily in just minutes.

Are you ready to start your own business?

A lot of people feel they are, but they haven’t considered what running their own business will really entail.  They are interested in setting their own work hours, not having a boss and having unlimited income potential.  These items are the rose-colored glasses of owning your own business.

I’m going to share with you the five reality check questions I ask my fledgling entrepreneur clients.

Moolah

The first question is about money.  Yes, it is kind of true that you need to have money to make money, but you don’t need millions.  Do you have six months or more of living expenses in a liquid account?  Or do you not need your wages to contribute to the household income?

If you answered, “Yes”, congratulations.  If you answered no, how long would it take for you to accumulate that reserve?

One thing to consider is your current lifestyle.  Are there expenses you could eliminate or scale back on which would allow you to save additional money, plus, if you’ve eliminated the expense, it means you’ll need less to live on in the future.

Tick Tock

The second question is about time.  Do you have a minimum of 30 uninterrupted hours per week to devote to your business?  By uninterrupted, I mean time that you aren’t watching a child, doing laundry, running errands or telecommuting to a job.

A lot of people quickly answer yes to this question without really thinking about it, so I recommend that you take a calendar and map out an average week.  Be sure to put in everyday things you might take for granted, such as picking up the kids from school, doing household chores and exercising.

These items take up physical space instead of mental space because they’re repetitious and so they give you the perception that you have more time than you actually do.  Now, how many hours of uninterrupted time do you have?

When does that time fall?  If it’s between 9 pm and 1 am, you could start an Internet business, but if you’re offering a service to people or companies, they will want to do business during standard business hours.

If you find that you have less 30 hours per week, it might not be the right time for you to start a business.  A new venture takes a lot of upfront time and energy and it will take longer to build a solid client base if you don’t have the time to devote to it.

On the flipside of that, if you’re transitioning out of a full time job or know that you will soon have more than 30 hours, set yourself up for success by expecting your business to get started and grow at much slower than the average pace.

La La Land

The third question often surprises people.  Does your personal life run relatively smoothly?  You are the center of your business.  If you are also the center of emotional mayhem in your personal life, it’s going to show in your ability to start and run your business.  If you’re in the middle of a nasty divorce, adopting your first child, moving to another country or have some other intensely emotional taxing event happening in your life, adding the stress of starting a new business could send you straight to the funny farm, and if not there, to business failure.

Get your personal affairs in order then open your business.  I coach many of my clients for six months to a year on getting their personal and financial life cleaned up before they get down to opening their business.

One-Ring Circus

The fourth question is:  Do you work well by yourself?  Not everyone is cut out for working from home alone.  If you currently work in an office, ask your boss if you can work from home for a week.  See if you like working without outside stimulation or the environment of an office.  A day isn’t enough.  You need to be home for a solid week to see how it feels to be isolated and solely responsible for each minute of your day.

If you find this isn’t for you, you can still open a business with a partner or even several or you can rent office space in an executive suite.

A lot of people love working by themselves from home but they determine that they aren’t as productive when others aren’t around or someone else is setting the deadline.  Your level of self-management will impact this element.

Juggling

The final question is do you manage multiple projects and tasks simultaneously without getting overwhelmed?  If you answered yes, that’s great, because that’s exactly what you’re going to need
to do daily.  You are the provider of the service, the customer service department, the accounting department, the hr department, the marketing department, the administrative department, the
technologist-EVERYTHING (unless you have a good amount of startup capital and can hire help right away).

If you answered no to this question, you might be a tradesman or woman who desires autonomy in your work, but who really isn’t an entrepreneur.  The distinction is that a tradesman or woman wants to do their specialty, such as massage, process improvement, executive coaching, but they don’t want to punch a clock or beresponsible for all the ancillary duties of owing a business.

If you fall into this category, I recommend one of two things. Buy Michael Gerber’s book “The E-Myth Revisited” and see if you want to stretch into the areas necessary to run a successful business or find a company or business that has put the structure in place and pays you as an independent contractor.
This arrangement allows you to control when and how much you work without managing the day-to-day.

If you answered yes to all of the questions, then you are ready to go!

(c) 2009 Leah Grant Enterprises LLC.

New Business Mentor Leah Grant publishes Startup Success, a weekly enewsletter.  If you’re thinking about starting a new business or are in the early phases of entrepreneurship, get your FREE New Business Startup Kit including the Secrets of Successful Business Owners audio at http://www.leahgrant.com

While perusing online the other day in my daily ritual to find out what’s happening in the world, I came across this article in Foreign Policy about a topic we recently wrote extensively about in the online incorporation knowledge center at MaxFilings.com regarding microloans.

President Barack Obama recently awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, to the pioneer of microloans Muhammad Yunus. In the ceremony at the White House, the president commended Yunus for “[unleashing] new avenues of creativity and [inspiring] millions worldwide to imagine their own potential.”

Establishing a micro-bank in Bangladesh, Yunus demonstrated how very small loans to the poor can not only be repaid, but generate new entrepreneurial ventures and create jobs, etc.

But critically looking at Yunus indicates some shortcomings with his ideas…not that they are bad, but they do not deliver the results, as is often claimed, to lift the world’s poorest out of poverty.

First, implementing something this massive would be tremendous. Approximately 4 billion people in the world live in poverty – $17 billion was loaned through microfinance in 2004, which is peanuts when considering how to end poverty.

Another problem is that microfinance is generally heavily subsidized – private micro-banks and finance organizations generally charge very high rates of interest. A micro-bank in Mexico charges 100% for example, which makes it not feasible for the poor.

The article goes on to suggest other ways to alleviate poverty and provide the financing for someone with limited means to form a corporation. The author’s uses the best of both Yunus’ and economist Hernando deSoto, who proposed in his book “Mystery of Capital” that poor people across the world have close to $9 trillion in frozen assets.

Read a $9 Trillion Question at Foreign Policy for more.

Are you a new entrepreneur who anticipates forming a corporation?

Do you know what different terms mean when thinking about incorporating a business?

A Glossary of Business Terms found in the online incorporation knowledge center at MaxFilings.com can help you easily learn these terms – or simply a resource to reference when you hear a business term you’re not familiar with.

For example, what does “aggregate par value” mean?

Well, a quick look in the glossary tells us that it is “the number of authorized shares multiplied by their par value is a corporation’s aggregate par value.”

This raises another question – what does “par value” mean?

Again, another quick look in the business terms glossary tells us that it is “the assigned value of a share of a corporation’s stock.”

The glossary contains many different terms organized alphabetically. Know what you’re looking for already? Simply click on the first letter in the term.

Quickly reviewing the glossary means you will know the lingo of forming a corporation so when you do, you are aware of all of its parts.

An interesting post in Entrepreneur’s Daily Dose blog poses this question.

There has been a growing drumbeat among small business owners and entrepreneurs irked at many of his administration’s decisions…whether they perceive him as anti-entrepreneurial is anyone’s guess.

But the president is raising eyebrows among the left, who perceive the U.S. Small Business Administration as being too pro big business. Critics on the right are alarmed at the various stimulus spending measures – and about everyone is upset at the banking and auto industry bailouts.

Centrists even are critical that not enough stimulus spending is being channeled to small and medium-size business owners.

Some more conservative pundits declare that Obama has launched an all out “war on business” according to columnist Carol Platt Liebau.

While we are not political here at Incorporation-e we do want to stay on top of all policies that affect small businesses.

There is a lot of uncertainty about the future of our economy but forming a corporation and becoming an entrepreneur is one way to start over if you’ve been affected by the recession, which we all have in one way or another.

Sadly, many business owners fail to protect inventions or trade secrets. Down the road, they may find an unexpected competitor who is using methods you crafted or offers a product very similar to yours. Business owners often don’t think their company name, product or service is an asset but it is.

Obtaining a trademark is one way to protect these assets. A type of “intellectual property”, trademark’s basic concept is to prevent unfair competition. Patents and copyrights are the other types of intellectual property that mainly protect inventors, artists and literary writers.

While it isn’t mandatory to register a trademark to receive protection, registering with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s Principal Register means more protection than the generic “common-law” designations.

Advantages of USPTO protections include:

• Notice to the general public of the registrant’s claim of ownership
• Registrant’s exclusive right to use the signature ® symbol nationwide on all goods and/or services listed in the registration
• Ability to bring legal action regarding the trademark in federal court
• Use a basis to obtain trademark registration in other countries
• Ability to file registration with the U.S. Customs Service to prevent foreign goods from being imported into the U.S.

The USPTO application process takes 10-12 months. While the application is processing, you may use the ™ symbol for trademarks and the symbol for service marks. You are not permitted to use the ® symbol until your product is listed as “registered” with the USPTO.

Current regulations require a trademark be renewed every 10 years.

Read some examples of trade secrets in the online incorporation knowledge center at MaxFilings.com. And once you are ready to form a corporation , do it easily online in 10 minutes or less, or fill out the forms, save and finish them at your convenience.

Economic confidence among entrepreneurs ticked up slightly in June according to a survey conducted by the Discover Small Business Watch. The index rose to 80.9, up from 78.1 in May according to a Daily Dose blog post at Entrepreneur.com.

According to the data, the increase is attributed to better cash flows…the number of business owners experiencing temporary cash flow problems dropped 8 points in June from near 50% to 42%.

Also increasing is the number of entrepreneurs who think economic conditions are improving – up 3 points from 23% in May to 26% in June.

Much of the news regarding the recession and entrepreneurship has centered on laid-off workers looking to form a business but the survey indicates another trend – many entrepreneurs would rather find a good paying job since it’s harder to get business and deal with regulations.

And on healthcare reform, a topic included in this month’s survey, 78% of respondents do not offer insurance. Nearly 50% of these employers opposed a government-run health care plan. Of the ones that do offer insurance, 62% oppose government mandated health insurance.

If you’re feeling more confident, now may be the time to incorporate online…MaxFilings.com has a proven online system where you can form a corporation in 10 minutes of less. Or save your information and return when it’s convenient for you.

Many of the entrepreneur guides today recommend forming an advisory board…but a surprising number of entrepreneurs ignore this advice according to an interesting article by Mary Sullivan at the First Year blog.

It’s hard to know why entrepreneurs ignore this advice – perhaps they don’t understand the role of an advisory board or think they can find everything online. While there’s a lot of useful information on the Internet, nothing takes the place of advice specific to your situation.

At a minimum, an advisory board should include a legal and financial/tax advisor and any other area you lack the necessary experience to make your business run.

After incorporating online, you’re not likely going to have a large management team in place so a group of people to float ideas with and get their perspective. It’s best to meet as a group, usually each month.

In addition to advice, your advisors will pass your name along to their friends and business associates, giving you support at a critical time.

Read Mary’s article for more tips on forming an advisory board…and once you are ready to form a corporation, take care of it easily online in as short as 10 minutes at MaxFilings.com.

It’s not a pleasant thing to think about, but what would your employees do in the event of a disaster? Are mechanisms in place to keep things going even if you’re gone?

No matter your age, continue reading for important tips from small business blogger Denise O’Berry.

First off, when you consult with an attorney and accountant before incorporating online, make sure your affairs are in order should something happen to you…don’t forget about your will!

Next, have a small business operations manual that’s easily accessible and includes all the information needed to make your business run.

Finally, don’t forget about all those online passwords – keep a running master username/password list of online subscriptions, blogs, business accounts, etc.

When you incorporate online at MaxFilings, have these things in order before you even begin.

Easily locate an accountant and attorney through MaxFilings’ affiliate program!

In an effort to help entrepreneurs accurately assess the risk associated with incorporating a business, an Odds of Success Calculator has been introduced by business advice and networking website StartUpNation.com.

The device uses eight factors to determine entrepreneurs’ chances of success: amount of capital investment, difficulty in obtaining funds, quality of financial management, degree of business planning, annual industry growth rate, management experience, industry experience and timeframe.

After completing a questionnaire, the tool computes the probability of success by comparing the company with data points of up to thousands of other companies.

The idea for the calculator was in response to the site’s visitors who wanted a tool that could tell them if they’re on the right track or not. It’s also a bit entertaining – giving quick and definitive results.

Read this Daily Dose post and see how Twitter fared on the calculator.