Many people dream of running a business of their own -- but often don't know how to start. Sound familiar? This book can help.
User-friendly and loaded with tips, The Small Business Start-Up Kit shows you how to launch a business quickly, easily and with confidence. The book explains, in plain English, how to:
choose from among the basic types of business organizations -- sole proprietorships, partnerships, corporations, and limited liability companies (LLCs)
write an effective business plan
file the right forms in the right place
be prepared for, and file, the required taxes
acquire good bookkeeping and accounting habits
The Small Business Start-Up Kit also includes all the forms and instructions you need both as tear-outs and on CD-ROM.
The 3rd edition is thoroughly updated with the latest legal and tax law changes. It also provides new information on partnerships, running a home business, using a buy-sell agreement and protecting ideas and trade secrets.
The Adobe Reader format of this title is not suitable for use on the Pocket PC or Palm OS versions of Adobe Reader.
Introduction
You don't have an MBA. Hell, you've never taken a business class. You spent your college years studying literature and art history, and periodically dropping out to travel the world. And now you find yourself thinking about going into business for yourself -- maybe restoring antiques, illustrating books, running a café, or selling software. "Me, a businessperson?" you skeptically wonder. You keep trudging to work each morning, but as the hours tick by you find yourself fantasizing more and more about kissing your 9-to-5 job goodbye. You jot down some notes, work out some kinks in your plan and continue to wonder whether it just might fly ….
Unfortunately, most people who have toyed with business ideas this way never get to find out whether they would have worked or not. For a variety of practical, financial, and psychological reasons, most folks just don't take the leap from idea to reality. This is really a shame, since there's nothing that complex or difficult about turning a business idea into an actual working business. Most prospective entrepreneurs would be surprised -- and encouraged -- to know that they can get most of the way across the line between "I'm thinking about starting my own business" and "I own and run my own business!" simply by completing a short list of bureaucratic tasks. This book will explain what those tasks are and how to complete them.
Stephen Parr, owner and director of Oddball Film and Video, a stock film and video footage company in San Francisco, California:
I started making video art in the 1970s. After a while I started collecting all these weird bits of film because it was cheaper than shooting it myself. I gathered all kinds of old, found footage like military training films, educational films, home movies, and all kinds of other images and put them together into montages, which I screened in nightclubs as background visuals. I was showing them all over -- nightclubs in New York, Chicago, San Francisco -- and I made some money by selling the tapes to the clubs.
Then I started getting calls from these companies in Silicon Valley that produce industrial videos, like training films and promotional programs for corporate trade shows. Video game companies were calling, too. Companies like Sega, Sun Microsystems, and Silicon Graphics wanted to pay me for my footage. The guy I lived with at the time thought I should go into business selling the stock footage I had collected, but, at the time, I didn't know if I could make a living doing it. I didn't know anything about the stock footage business. There were a few companies doing it, but they were in New York or L.A., and they seemed really huge.
But since I liked working with images and since the business had already started to take off on its own, I finally decided to formalize it. I started by picking a company name. I wanted something interesting that conveyed what I did. We came up with Oddball. It's a word that people don't really use anymore, more of a '40s or '50s expression -- an oddball is someone kind of weird, unbalanced, or unusual, you know? Well, from there, I just kept compiling more footage, and over the years I started logging it, and buying more.
At the most basic level, my business involves finding, organizing, and preserving historical footage. And then distributing it. Our clients include ad agencies; news organizations; documentary and feature film makers; industrial, corporate, and music video producers; educational filmmakers; and anyone who needs offbeat and unusual images. In one way, we're like a library: We archive and license historical visual information.
mmore....
Table of Contents
1. Working for Yourself Is Easier Than You Think
2. Choosing a Legal Structure
3. Picking Winning Business Names That Won’t Land You in Court
4. Choosing a Legal and Lucrative Business Location
5. Drafting an Effective Business Plan
6. Pricing, Bidding and Billing Projects
7. Federal, State and Local Start-Up Requirements
8. Risk Management and Insurance
9. Paying Your Taxes
10. Home-Based Businesses
11. Entering Into Contracts and Agreements
12. Bookkeeping, Accounting and Financial Management
13. Changes in Ownership
14. Building Your Business and Hiring Workers
15. Getting Professional Help
Appendix:
Small Business Start-Up Issues
State Tax Agencies
State Sales Tax/Seller’s Permit Agencies
LLC Offices
State Unemployment Compensation Agencies
Reviews
Real Simple magazine...
Answers important questions, including whether to incorporate and how to price merchandise.
About the Author
Peri Pakroo is a media developer and consultant, specializing in legal and start-up issues for businesses and nonprofits. She owns and runs p-brain media (www.pbrainmedia.com), a media and communications firm that develops informational content for print, Web, video and other media. She received her law degree from the University of New Mexico School of Law in 1995, and a year later began editing and writing for Nolo, focusing on small business and intellectual property issues. She has edited such titles as Nolo's Starting & Running a Successful Newsletter or Magazine; Getting Permission: How to License & Clear Copyrighted Materials Online & Off; Music Law; and How to Write a Business Plan. Besides working with legal and business issues, Peri has also headed the editorial departments of two arts and entertainment weeklies and a monthly food and lifestyle magazine. She lives with Juno, Kitty B and Turtle in New Mexico.
