First ask yourself what sort of business to I want to own? Most people start a business without any pre planning. I always think about Demings 85/15 rule 85% of your effectiveness is the system 15% is the skill of the individual. If your thinking about opening a small business please do a little pre planning and save yourself a lot of frustration in the future.
Opening a small business can create financial freedom and extra time to spend with your family friends and loved ones. Unfortunately many fail to do so properly in my experience over the last 11 years I’ve found that well held small business board meetings are one of the constants in successful businesses.
There is mountains of work about what you should do before opening a small business, today I’m going to focus on the business entity management.
It doesn’t matter if you setup an LLC or a corporation. You will need to have a corporate formalities system in place for the entity.
This is your Directors (if a corporation) Managers (if an LLC) Officers. Almost all small businesses don’t pay much attention to these roles or the corporate formalities that go along with them. All of these small businesses generally stay small and don’t end up giving their owners the financial rewards they are looking for.
Not only is it a requirement to hold business meetings you need to accurately document them. Most view corporate formalities as trivial. This is a grave mistake! Not only will documented corporate formalities keep your assets safe they also give you as the owner to develop a strategic plan that will end up paying huge dividends for the owners.
There is something to be said about opening a small business and figuring things out as you go. You don’t want to spend all your time sitting around writing business plans and making fancy flyers.
I suggest a sort of hybrid to opening a small business. Once you have chosen your business entity you are going to use do what you need to do for your business to thrive. At the same time plan on holding monthly or quarterly board meetings. This keeps your business on track and you personally protected if a lawsuit ever happens against you and your business.
If you start to get into the mindset that board meetings are going to be fun and productive you will start to see drastic changes in your business faster than you can imagine.
Entrepreneurs love to strategize over time the day to day grind can wear down the entrepreneur and just leave him in a tactical rut. By holding regular board meetings and practicing corporate governance you will spend more time implementing new strategies and getting results than spinning your wheels and getting burned out.
To recap. Start taking massive action. Do what needs to be done to get your business up and running. Hold board meetings to strategize. Implement what was voted on at the board meetings. Before you know it the best financial idea you ever had was opening a small business.