Any business owners here?

[theroberthogan]

With unemployment pending, this seems like the perfect time to start a business. Are there are small or medium sized business owners on the board who could chat with me about a couple things?

 

[SPIVY]

I am a business owner and am in the process of launching another. Shoot me a pm at your leisure.

 

[mox369]

I am a business owner as well, go ahead and give me a ring if ya want to chat a little bit, starting a new business is exiting and scary and if ya have questions, i can do my best to answer them!

 

[KusoJijii]

I am a business owner and one bit of advise I would give is to talk to a good accountant before you file anything with a lawyer. Let the accountant know how big you plan on getting how much you want to do your self. He or she will be your best ally.

 

[moki]

With unemployment pending, this seems like the perfect time to start a business. Are there are small or medium sized business owners on the board who could chat with me about a couple things?

You might want to post your questions in the thread, if they aren't confidential... you'll get more responses that way.

 

[theroberthogan]

Thanks to the guys who have provided advice to me so far. Here is what I'm looking at.

I've spent the last thirteen years working in Fortune 500 companies. I've done finance, HR, project management, PR, etc. What I want to do is provided these services to small businesses. If you own a small restaurant, cigar shop, or other small business you may not have the resources to hire specialized talent to do all those jobs you don't know how to do, or don't want to do. Instead, you would hire me, and I would take care of those things for you.

I've got pretty good idea of the services I want to offer, but I also don't want to miss anything. I was hoping some small business owners could share some feedback about what services you need help with. What is the dirty work that you don't like to do? What would you be willing to pay for services like this? Thanks for any opinions.

 

[mox369]

You are going more for the self employed side of things instead of business owner it seems like. The only advise i have for that is, Dont do it!!! Now you'll be working twice as hard, you will take your business issues home with you at night and will possibly not be getting paid as much. Someone can correct me if i am totally wrong here, but being self employed is not the way to go. You are going to want to be a business owner who can manage his employees in a few days per week. Right now i am working on building a team of employees under me.

Best Business Book out there "The E Myth" all about owning and managing a business!!!

 

[theroberthogan]

You are going more for the self employed side of things instead of business owner it seems like. The only advise i have for that is, Dont do it!!! Now you'll be working twice as hard, you will take your business issues home with you at night and will possibly not be getting paid as much. Someone can correct me if i am totally wrong here, but being self employed is not the way to go. You are going to want to be a business owner who can manage his employees in a few days per week. Right now i am working on building a team of employees under me.

Best Business Book out there "The E Myth" all about owning and managing a business!!!

The plan right now is to be a one man shop while I build up my client base, but quickly transition into recruiting a staff to handle the day to day business. Thanks for the recommendation.

 

[punk_lawyer]

I am a business owner and one bit of advise I would give is to talk to a good accountant before you file anything with a lawyer. Let the accountant know how big you plan on getting how much you want to do your self. He or she will be your best ally.

I tend to agree. I do lots of business/financial work and there is very little lawyering to starting a business. Most of the forms to get incorporated are pretty simple. You will need a basic operating agreement which may require some expertise but nothing that should run up lots of lawyer fees. An accountant can get you arranged on all of the confusing tax items and that is worth learning...most of the problems I see start with tax issues.

I think Mox is a bit off on saying not to be self employed. His business concept is probably larger than what you are looking to do and my advice on that point is to never, never, never borrow to pay payroll. If you aren't bringing in enough money to pay employees then do not have the employees. Walk before you run. Also, there are lots of advantages to being self employed. From a tax perspective you can get some real benefits and from a business perspective, you can maximize amounts of benefits given to you directly.

Good luck.

 

[mox369]

Punk_Lawyer: I totally agree on never borrowing to pay the payroll, and i don't want anyone to get the impression that i have a huge operation or that i know everything. But I have been a one man business and instead of being employed, i ended up working twice as many hours, instead of letting work stay at the office, you are always thinking and worrying about stupid little things at home, and I was just trying to pass on the warning.

Start small but don't get stuck being the employee in your business!

Has anyone else here read "The E Myth Revisited" just looking for a little back up here on how good of a book it is for someone starting a business, i took a lot of business classes and entrepreneurial classes in college and this book is way better than all those combined. Plus its a pretty easy read.

 

[DesertRat]

Best Business Book out there "The E Myth" all about owning and managing a business!!!

X2

Excellent book. Was recommended to me for reading before I started my business as well.

It sounds to me that what you are looking to operate is a business model similar to ADMINISTAFF.

I stumbled onto a service for small business quite by accident that has turned out to be a nice little supplemental income for me. I had a client who is foreign born and when it comes to reading and writing English, he is functionally illiterate. The client has been involved in a number of business ventures with a partner but the partner retired leaving him to go it on his own. He asked me if I would be willing to help him navigate the bureaucratic red tape of getting a Conditional Use Permit filed with the county for a convenience stor and I agreed. That C.U.P. led to others and they in-turn led to filing for Alcohol licenses, SBA loan paperwork etc... soon I got referrals from other business owners for the same type of service and on it goes.

Turns out to be a need, especially among the ESL (English as a Second Language) business owners for someone they can trust to help them in dealing with the maze that we call city, county, state and federal government.

Good luck to you in your endeavor!