Starting Your Business

Having your own business is often a part of the American dream, financially, socially, emotionally, yes, and even logically, but for many there are too many unknowns to dare to proceed.

In this section we address the process of starting a business. There is a reasonably small set of mandatory things on the checklist, and then there are millions of little things that can pop up to "overfill all of the available time". One good strategy is to make sure the mandatory things take precedence over the "nice to do", "want to do" things that will show up.

For example, a handful of cities and most unincorporated areas don't require you to have a business license to carry out business within their domain, but the vast majority of cities do expect you to pay a fee to do business in their city. Many try to hide the fact that they are requiring a business license by calling it something like a "business tax". Bottom line, one of the mandatory things on the list is at least one business license in the city where you conduct the majority of your business, and additional licenses in any other city where you routinely go to conduct your business.

The mandatory list typically includes:

Determining the legal business structure

business license

Fictitious business name statement

Commercial banking account in the business name

Business insurance