More and more individuals are stepping out on their own and starting a home based business. Unfortunately, many make the wrong decisions or go about it the wrong way. In this article I’ll go over three easy steps that are a necessity when beginning your own home based business.
The first thing that you need to do is either incorporate, become a sole proprietorship or form and LLC (Limited Liability Corporation). Usually when you go into business for yourself you’ll form a sole proprietorship. This simply means your the only member of your company.
When forming an LLC you can also be the sole member or you can also have partners who have a stake in the company. Usually employees are hired as well on a small scale. Corporations on the other hand usually have a board of directors, stockholders and thousands of employees.
When your just starting out with your home based business you’ll want to go with either a Sole Proprietorship or and LLC. This can easily be done online at legalzoom.com. They’ll take care of everything.
Make sure to either have them apply for an EIN number or get one yourself. An EIN number is like a social security number for your business. You can get one for free at irs.gov.
Now, once you have your company formed you’ll need to open a business bank account. It is very important to do so because you want to keep your business accounting information separate from your personal accounting information. This will also help out when tax time comes around and can help keep the IRS off your back.
A good bank for small and new businesses is Synovus. They have very reasonable rates and are ranked among the top banks for small businesses in the nation.
Finally, you need to decide whether your going to have an online presence or not. Honestly, your crazy if you don’t have your own website for your business. More and more individuals are shopping online and this trend is expected to rise dramatically in the coming years.
You can get your own website address and hosting for next to nothing. Yes you may have to hire someone to set the site up for you if you don’t know how, buy products and services for your site and possibly open a merchant account, but it’s easier than it sounds. People take the plunge and open up shop online everyday and you can too.
In closing, make sure you take the right steps when starting your own home based business. Doing things the right way the first time can save you a lot of headaches in the future. Nothing worth doing is easy; if it were we’d all be millionaire entrepreneurs.
One last thing, so many small businesses fail within the first 5 years after opening shop. Don’t let this be you. There is one piece of advise I got from watching Donald Trump and it is, “Don’t ever give up, ever”. I’ve taken this to heart and so should you.
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