Questions to Ask Yourself When Starting Any New Business

In my 20+ years of business operations and business start ups, I have found that the initial planning stage is the most important time to "set the correct foundation" of your business operations. When people don't know what to do, they unknowingly or haphazardly rush forward and pay dearly for it. I urge you to remain excited about your new business and let me help you set the right foundation for lasting success.

Here is a sample list of the kinds of questions you need to ask yourself when planning your business:

1. What kind of legal entity am I going to set up? Do I know the tax and liability differences between Sole Proprietor, Corp., Sub-chapter S, and LLC? Do I know how to save money by setting these up myself?

2. How am I going to handle the Federally required bookkeeping needs of my business? QuickBooks? Will I get simple live training to teach me how to post to my books? Will I need to use a VPN service to get access to my numbers, anywhere anytime? What are the best deals on QBooks software and secure VPN access? Do I know how to initially set up my books and get the reports I need to analyze my business operations? Do I know how to set up and manage my customers, and vendors for bill pay?

3. How do I stretch and save my start up seed capital? What do I need to lease or buy in the way of equipment? What do I need to think about when leasing office space? Should I be a home based business? What about tax issues on all of these these issues?

4. What about payroll? Do I understand what 1099 means vs. employee status paychecks? Do I know how to file Federal tax forms on time and correctly? What about setting up payroll in QuickBooks vs. expensive outsourcing to payroll companies? What kind of problems could I run into considering each of these options?

5. What about hiring people? What are the kinds of problems I could run into? Do I have a HR plan in place?

6. Do I know about managing my banking, investments, and deposits? Do I have an understanding about shopping carts, settlement dates, and merchant banking? What's the best deal on cc processing rates? Who does a good job on shopping carts? What about inventory management? Do I have an understanding of how PayPal works and problems associated with PayPal?

7. What about advertising and marketing? What do I know about Goggle page ranking, AdWords, AdSense, and web based monetization and advertising? Do I know how to evaluate a SEO for help? How do I avoid costly pitfalls here?

8. What do I do if I run into financial trouble? What are some helpful tips in speaking to people who owe me money, or to creditors?

Although this is just a sampling of questions you should ask yourself, planning ahead is the best insurance you can have against business failure.

Plan your work..... work your plan and above all...don't let anybody hold you back.
Push ahead and live your dream!

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