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Visit yamava.com/palms to discover more. Radical Personal Finance, episode 31. (upbeat music) Welcome to the Radical Personal Finance podcast for today, Wednesday, July 30, 2014. I'm your host, Joshua Sheets, and today we're gonna be talking about business, specifically starting one. (laughs) One of my favorite topics, in case you can't tell from previous episodes, and I'm just gonna give a few tips and ideas for practically how do you start a business.

Unfortunately, it's a subject they don't teach in school, so we're gonna start teaching it here today. (upbeat music) This podcast is actually the result of a podcast and the result of some recent conversations with a friend of mine who's just starting a business of his own, and when we were talking, I was trying to give him some ideas and some tips, and we started talking about a few of the details surrounding business startup, and I realized that, I don't know why I haven't realized this in the past, but I realized that we don't talk a lot about business and about starting businesses, how to start businesses.

And it's interesting, I was reflecting back on the book that Jake DeSilis wrote on entrepreneurship and was just reflecting on why that is, and the reality is that most of our teachers in life, in formalized schooling, most of our teachers are employees. They're employees of the school board, or of a private institution.

And so I thought, wow, it's no shock that we don't know how to start a business, but I was just reflecting on and speaking with my friend, I was just reflecting on how valuable just some basic knowledge about how to start a business would be and can be. And there are lots of books, lots of excellent books that are written about this that I think are well worth reading, and I'll try to, maybe at the end of the show, if I can remember a few of the ones that I've really enjoyed over the years, I'll try to make some recommendations.

I don't have them written down, but maybe I'll do it off the top of my head. But it's fairly simple. The whole process of business is fairly simple, but in other ways, it's pretty daunting. And I recognized back, I was just thinking back to when I started my business, my financial planning business about six years ago, and I was an entrepreneur for the first time, dealing with business taxes and entity selection and all of that for the first time, and I realized, you know, it is a pretty daunting, overwhelming, overwhelming thing, but it really doesn't have to be.

So today's show is going to be a list of some tips and some things that I think are interesting and useful. And if no one listens, it's specifically for my friend that I want to give this information to, and I hope you can benefit by listening in on the conversation as well.

It's a little easier for me to sit down and compose some ideas like this than it is to talk his ear off, to talk his ear off in person. And I hope this will be a little easier to listen to. There are kind of two aspects to starting a business, and so the thing that was worrying a friend of mine was kind of what I would classify as entity selection.

And, you know, should I open-- should I start an LLC? Should I open a corporation? And I'm going to deal with, like, which entity in a separate topic, in a separate show. But today's show is basically just going to be-- my answer is don't bother with that right now.

Just don't even worry about it. So Joshua's steps to starting a business. And I think that this is so key because the reality is I think we should all be-- I think this should be useful to all of us. First of all, I think that we're all already in business, and we should learn to think like business people.

So to me, a stage of-- a very important step of freedom-- and I don't know how to list these out in an orderly way that this is the step, but I think a very important step along the way is for all of us to view ourselves as self-employed. And whether we work for an employer or whether we work for a business that we own, all of us to view ourselves as self-employed because if we view ourselves as self-employed, we'll start to run more calculations.

And I've gone over that in previous episodes, but those calculations are important. You know, am I getting the value for my effort that I need to be getting? Is there some way that I can enhance my value so that my customer, which happens to be my employer, is willing to pay me more money?

So the business owner is constantly thinking about it, saying, "How can I deliver a higher amount of value "so that my customer will choose to repay me for that value with their cash?" That's the essence of business in and of itself. And I think this would be really helpful for us as a culture if we really institutionalized this way of thinking.

But--and I don't see any way that it's gonna happen in our current paradigm, and that's okay. So Joshua, step number one for starting a business. If you have a business idea, number one, sit down with a pen and a piece of paper, turn your cell phone off, turn your computer off, get away from everything for just 10 minutes, 10 minutes at most, and write out what you propose to do and for whom.

So what is your business? What do you propose to do and for whom? So do you propose to make stuff? Do you propose to make something? And then who's gonna buy it? And then--or do you propose to do something, provide some kind of service, and who's gonna pay for that service?

And it seems silly, and I mean, it seems simple. You're like, "Well, I wouldn't be starting this idea "if I didn't know it." But many times we don't take the time to write stuff down. And if you just write a paragraph, "This is what I want to do and for whom," then that will help a lot.

And it's much more valuable to be specific, as specific as possible with it. And then number two, most important, next step, is write out a plan for how you propose to reach those people. If you go through formal business school and you learn about, you know, business plans and all of that--and by the way, one comment on business plans.

There is dramatic evidence to show-- I've read various surveys, none of which I can cite for you today, so you just take my generalized word for it. I've read various studies that have shown that the having of a business plan, the existence of a business plan, is a significant marker in the potential success of a company.

But if you actually interview the entrepreneur who's starting a business, it's very often--very often that the entrepreneur never refers to the business plan. And the idea is that the business plan is a way of sitting down and thinking on paper. And this is my opinion. Thinking on paper, thinking in advance of what all of the things that are going to happen and can happen and all the things that could go wrong and what you would do and all the things that could go right and what you would do then, just gives you a valuable mental exercise where without yet being out in the thick of things, you can sit down and you can just start thinking it through.

"What would I do in that situation?" So thinking on paper--and this is the essence. These two things are very simple parts of a business plan. You don't need to pull up a business plan template online and bother through that nonsense. You just need to answer a few basic questions.

"What do I propose to do and for whom?" And then, "How do I propose to reach those people?" "What's my marketing plan for reaching those people?" I think many business owners could easily-- many people who are starting businesses can very easily start and answer the question-- can answer question number one.

Many fewer can answer question number two-- "How do I propose to reach those people?" But it's incredibly important. Businesses don't succeed or fail-- businesses don't succeed or fail based upon-- businesses generally succeed or fail based upon not reaching enough people, not selling enough stuff. And oftentimes, if you have a reasonably good-- or at least average--product or service, it's the marketing plan that's the key thing.

And so you want to sit down and say, "What is my marketing plan?" "Am I going to reach people individually "by calling them out of the phone book "or out of the Chamber of Commerce directory?" "Am I going to reach people with a web page "that they find through targeted traffic?" "Am I going to reach people "through word-of-mouth referrals?" "Well, in that case, how am I going to let people "that know me and know what I do "know about my word-of-mouth referrals?" "How am I going to start reaching people?" If you have the answers to those questions, you basically have--you basically have your business.

And then the next step is, "Don't wait. "Just start. Start reaching out to people and start selling." There was a--there's a saying, and--called-- the saying is, "Ready, fire, aim." We're all familiar with the idea of "Ready, aim, fire." And an author named Michael Masterson wrote a book on it called "Ready, Fire, Aim." He used that as his title.

Excellent book. And the point that I agree with and that I've seen in many things is don't worry about how to be good at it. Just go--go--go start trying it. It's--it's so much easier to adjust once you've seen what the business is actually like, once you've actually gone out and started doing it, than it is to sit back in a closed room and try to imagine all of the possibilities that are--that are there.

So just go out and start reaching out to people. Start selling. Start selling. Start selling. And let the market give you the feedback that you need to adjust your product offerings. If you're finding that it's very difficult to sell what you thought you were gonna sell and you're not having any success selling that, then ask your customers or your-- your target customers, "Okay, the offering, "the product, or the service that I'm trying to offer you "is not--is clearly not attractive to you.

"Would you be willing to tell me what is attractive to you?" And then think--can see-- figure out if you can offer that. So the key with business is to ignore everything about it until you go and start selling. Don't print business cards. Don't get office space. Don't buy stuff.

Don't buy products, even. Don't, you know, set up accounting systems. Don't do any of this stuff. Go sell. And if you just go sell and you have money coming in, then you have the cash flow to sustain all of those other aspects. So I remember a-- there was one useful anecdote in 4-Hour Workweek with Tim Ferris-- that Tim Ferris wrote.

And I remember he put this into the 4-Hour Workweek as part of his suggestions for building an online business. He said, "Make a product and go put an ad up. "And create a landing page saying, "'Sorry, this product is not--'" I think he used, like, Hawaiian shirts or something.

"So create what you think is a super great tropical linen "Hawaiian loose weave shirt. "Write an ad for it. "Go out and buy some Google ads "and put that ad in front of customers "and measure the results. "Have product A and product B, "and neither of them have been created yet.

"But go out and get some people to click on that "and then measure--maybe put a form there "where they can opt in to be notified "when the product is ready, and then measure the results. "And then that will help you to identify "what product offering there is." Until you've sold something, you have no ability to have a business, period.

And so the key is go out and sell, sell, sell, sell, sell. Sell your product, sell your service, sell your product, sell your service, and then adjust and get feedback from your customers. Ask them, "What do you really like about this? "What's going well about it? "What would you like to improve?

"If I could offer you a better service, "what would you improve about that?" This is the most important thing, is to get really comfortable going out and selling. Unfortunately, this is also the hardest thing. So what many entrepreneurs will want to do is they'll want to go out and rent office space and get furniture and set up a website and all this.

Selling is uncomfortable. But you have to go out and sell. If you can't go out and sell and you can't get cash coming in the door, you have no business. You have a dream, you have an idea, so I say get out there and sell. Now, as far as what do you formally need to do to start a business, nothing.

Absolutely nothing. You don't need to do anything. You could start and run seven businesses in one year, zero the next, 15 the next, zero the next. So from the-- Generally, people are concerned about taxes and legality and all of that. Unless there's some kind of business license that you need from a local municipality or there's some kind of occupational license, and that stuff does exist, and you should know about it if you're going to go and find your industry.

But from a tax perspective or from the IRS perspective, you don't have to do anything to set up a business. Just go do it. If you make money at it, you need to record the money, and then you'll offset the expenses, which is what we'll get to in just a second.

But you don't need to start a corporation, you don't need to start an LLC. Just get out there and start selling. And if you get out there and start selling and you're a successful business, now go ahead and get the formalities in place. And the formalities can be put in place very, very quickly.

So it's really not that big of a deal. If you make money and you don't have anything in place-- let's say you haven't started a corporation, you haven't filed for an LLC, any of that stuff-- and you made money, all you'll do is you'll simply total up at the end of the year how much money you made, you'll subtract any expenses that were associated with that money, and then you'll file what's called a Schedule C on your taxes.

And a Schedule C is a separate schedule that you file with your Form 1040 for your annual income tax return, and it's for profit or loss from a business. And if you made money on the business, then you'll go ahead and pay income taxes and employment and self-employment taxes on the money.

And if you lost money, you can deduct that loss against your other income. So it's no big deal. And you don't have to keep the business going. You can have one business that you did in January, one business that you did April through November, and a third business that you did for 2 months in July and August.

It's really not a big deal. You would just file under that scenario. You would file 3 separate Schedule Cs. Now, you do, of course, want to keep this practically in hand. So step 4 is very simple. Open a business checking account. And this may or may not be a business checking account.

In fact, I think you're probably better off just starting with a personal checking account and ignoring the name of your business. Don't worry about going out and getting a business checking account in the name of Acme Corporation. Rather, just simply say, "Hey, I'm Joshua Sheets, and I'm opening a checking account." And people are just going to write their checks to Joshua Sheets.

But set up a separate business checking account for every business that you're running. And this is the simplest way to keep records. Just simply establish a separate account. Again, you can use a free personal checking account. A lot of banks want to charge for business checking accounts. So some banks will offer lots of free personal checking accounts, but then will charge you for the business checking accounts.

Technically, a business checking account is going to-- basically, the only difference between a business checking account and a personal checking account in general for a small business is going to be the fact that your business name will be listed on your checks, and the fact that you can accept checks written out to your business name.

So that can be useful if someone's going to write out a check payment to XYZ Corporation. That can be useful. But it's probably not necessary in the beginning. So it may just be simpler to start a separate personal checking account. And then if you need to spend any money for the business, make sure that you spend it out of that business checking account.

Pull out your phone, do it at the same bank you bank with with your personal banking. And if you're going to spend business, you need to go and buy some materials for your company or whatever. Just pull out your phone, transfer $100 from your personal checking account into your business checking account, and then swipe your debit card for $100 at the materials store.

And that way you'll have a bank statement that will generally have all of your expenses that are associated with the business. And so this can be from the little to the big. You really want to make sure that you have everything listed on there. So whether this is, "I bought some pens at Office Depot." Are they still in business?

I think so. "I bought some pens at Office Depot or Office Max or Staples or whoever the latest business people are." Or if it is, "I've had lunch with somebody as a prospective client lunch." If there's anything that you're doing associated with the business, and basically that's all you need to know.

If this expense that I'm about to incur, this expenditure is associated with my business, swipe your business checking, your business debit card. It's a good idea to probably set up a separate business credit card as well. So you might set up just another credit card account. This can be a personal credit card, just like it can be a personal checking account.

One reason to do that is just to protect yourself from, potentially in the future, bankruptcy laws, things like that. For example, in the state of Florida where I live, you just want to make sure things are separated. And then also if you are going to go into debt to start your business, which may or may not be a good idea, probably isn't, but better to out-earn it, but if you need to, if you want to go into debt to start a business, then you want to make sure that any debt that you have is deductible debt.

So if you were going to make the choice between spending money on the-- let's say you have $100 in your checking account, and you need to spend $100 on business and $100 on personal stuff. Better for you to go--so you're going to be $100 short. Better for you to go $100 in debt on the business credit card, which can just be a separate personal credit card that only has business expenses on it.

The IRS would want to see if you're going to deduct this and you're audited, the IRS would like to see that you only have business expenses, that you're not commingling your business and your personal expenses. This is a big deal. But it would be better to go ahead and charge the $100 on the business credit card and pay for the $100 of groceries that you need out of your personal checking account.

That way, if you're going to go into credit card debt, you don't wind up with non-deductible debt. You want to make sure that you can deduct those interest payments as a business expense. So just a little tip. So simple business checking account, simple business credit card, both of which can actually be a personal checking account and a personal credit card, but just a personal checking account that you only use for business and a personal credit card that you only use for business expenses.

This is--you don't need to get any more complicated than that. And that could work literally for years. You don't need to worry with all the entity selection in general for most parts. All the books that you read notwithstanding, most businesses have pretty low liability, and most people don't have a lot of assets that they need the liability protection from.

Now, we'll talk about--it's fairly easy and simple to set up a corporate form of some type, and I'll talk through that in a separate show as far as entity selection, LLC versus S corporation versus C corporation versus sole proprietorship, LLP if you're in that kind of business, and partnerships and all those options.

But for today, just ignore it. Go and get your business making money, and if you go and get your business making money, you can deal with all the rest of that stuff. If your business isn't making money, no matter how perfect your corporate formation is, it doesn't matter. It's completely irrelevant.

Keep that business checking account balanced. Keep that business check register. Because what this will turn into is this will basically turn into a very simple profit and loss statement. So let's say that you look in that business checking account register, and you see that you have money piling up in there.

Well, that's good. That means you're making a profit. And so then once a week or once every two weeks or once a month, go ahead and if you need money for your personal expenses, go ahead and transfer the money out of that business checking account into your personal expenses.

But you want to make sure you keep that account current. Put all of the money that you're earning from the business into that checking account, and then just write a check over to the personal checking account or just pull out your phone and transfer it right from your phone.

That's fine. But the key is you can see how profitable your business is. And this is a very rudimentary but still useful form of a profit and loss statement. People oftentimes get bogged down with the accounting stuff. Don't get bogged down. This is a very simple, very useful profit and loss statement.

If you write a check once a month from your business account to your personal account, you can sit down and you can look in there and say, "Oh, look, there's $5,000 in there. There's $50,000 in there," depending on your scale. Great. That means we're making money. Now, some of that money you'll need to reinvest back into the business.

So if you have $5,000 and you're going to pull $3,000 out, well, you know I'm reinvesting $2,000 back into the business. But you'll start to get an idea of am I making money or not. And as silly as it sounds, that's actually a big deal, and many business owners don't know if they're making money or not.

By keeping everything associated with that separate account, you can be confident, whether it's checking account or credit card, pay that business credit card out of the business checking account, you can be confident that you know, "Okay, I'm operating in the black. I'm making money." It's a big deal. Second suggestion that is associated is set up some kind of business journal.

So just a 10-cent notebook is fine. But open up some kind of notebook and write down what you're doing for the business on a daily basis. So each day when you're working in the business, write down what you're doing. So if you're working in a service business and you have a job in the morning and a job in the afternoon, just write down, "Okay, job for client A in the morning, four hours, I may earned $300.

Job for client B in the afternoon, this, you know, three hours, however much you earned." Write down where they were. Write down what part of town those jobs happen to be in. This is important for a couple of reasons. Number one, it is important from a tax perspective to have records.

So you want to make sure that you get all your deductions, and you're not going to be able to know to get all your deductions unless you have some sort of written record. So you need to have a mileage log. So any miles that you drive for business, you need to make a note of those miles, and that can go right into this simple notebook.

Every day, the simplest way, although technically it probably wouldn't pass muster with the IRS, but it probably would, I think it would, but you wouldn't know until you tested it. Simplest way is when you get in the car, from your place of business, wherever your place of business starts, make a note, and you zero out the trip meter.

Drive your days done, and when you're done, at the end of the day at your place of business, write down what that trip meter said in the notebook. Technically, in my knowledge, according to the IRS regulations, you should have beginning odometer reading and an ending odometer reading, and then the difference between them, and then you need to have a listing of the trips.

But you can basically have that if you're taking a business-- if you're just keeping a business journal of your activities. And write down all of your activities. Track all of your activities. You don't know what activities are going to be the good ones that are going to be very productive, and you don't know how to coach yourself unless you have data.

So if a business coach comes in--let's say that you're in sales, and you are in sales because you're running a business. If you're in sales, the first thing you're going to say is-- let's say that I'm coaching you, and you're in sales. You say, "I'm not doing very well, Josh." Okay.

First thing you say is, "Well, what are you doing? What is your activity? How many calls are you making? How many appointments are you getting from those calls? Of those appointments, how many appointments are resulting in business?" Very rudimentary tracking. And so all salespeople know--all good salespeople know--all highly paid salespeople know-- you need to have a net record of that.

Today I made 63 phone calls that were potential for business. Of those 63 phone calls, I reached 24 people. I reached 24 people. I scheduled 9 appointments, and so I've got 9 appointments. You go on those appointments, you know I've got--I had 9 appointments scheduled, and out of those 9 appointments, I was able to write--I was able to secure 3 contracts or 3 sales for my business, whatever it is.

So you need to have a record of that. Even if you're operating a retail store, you want to have a record of the traffic into your store-- how many people are coming into your store. If you don't have any metrics, then you can't figure out how to improve things.

So if you were running a retail store, and you didn't know how many people were coming into your store, you wouldn't really know any scientific way. If you invest in a new sign out front, or you invest in paying a sign spinner to stand on the road, you wouldn't have any way of knowing if that's increasing your business or not.

You may have a gut feeling, and that gut feeling may be accurate, but it's much better to have the data. And so set up some kind of tracking mechanism. In the beginning, all you need is a notebook, and just write down what you're doing and what you did, and write down any detail you can think of that might be helpful.

Now, with these details, you can then later on, you'll be able to coach yourself. You'll be able to coach yourself. And so one of the major things that people forget about with anything-- with financial planning, with starting businesses-- is that you can coach yourself, but you need to be able to be a little bit disattached.

And so it helps to be a little bit emotionally detached from the situation, and data and records and tracking will help you to have that information. So just keep a business notebook, and write in there your financial transactions, even though you're going to keep the checkbook, write in there what you're spending your money on, what the income was from, because then at the end of the month, you can go through there, and you're going to spend some time working on your business.

If you read any business literature, you'll find-- I think Michael Gerber, with his book "The E-Myth," was one of the first ones who-- or he was one of the ones who really popularized this concept in modern culture. But you can either work in your business, or you can work on your business.

And both are probably going to be important. But most people spend a lot of time working in their business and very little time working on their business. But those who work on their business are going to experience a dramatic improvement-- dramatically better results than those who are just simply working in their business.

So if you sit down, and you're able to sit down and say, "I'm going to go back through this last month of my journal," and just read through it, and you'll start to notice, "Hey, look at this. This job here I was at, I did this job for one hour." And by the way, for you, the audience, I'm specifically thinking of my friend as I record this show, and he's starting a service business.

That's why I have a lot of service business anecdotes here. But you're looking at it saying, "This job, I did this job, I was there for one hour. It was close to home, and it was an extremely profitable job. It cost a lot of money. What were the characteristics of that job?

How did I find it?" And then think about it. And then look for any trends, and look for any information. You need to have the data so that you can read through it, so that you can kind of mine it. Now, you will probably, over time, get fancier. You'll get fancier and start tracking things with graphs and charts and things like that.

Or you may not. But if you just keep a simple business ledger-- and this can be something that is very useful to you. Every phone call received, you write down the name and their phone number. That's a really useful info of any leads, things like that. That's really, really useful.

So with these two things, you have a business checking account. You've got your financial stuff taken care of. You know the income that's coming into your business. You know the expenses that are going out of your business. You know if you're making money or not. And you have something that you can sit down with your accountant at the end of the year and give to them.

And with a business journal, you have a journal of all of your activities and write down in there everything that you're doing. It's simple, it's low tech, it's low key, it's cheap, both of these things are free. But you have... they're both very important and very valuable if you implement them.

And then, here's the key. Go make money. Go sell. Sell, sell, sell. Do work, do jobs. Sell, sell, sell. Do work, do jobs. Sell, sell, sell. Do work, do jobs. And do that until you start to make some money. And that could be a couple weeks, it could be a month or two, a couple months, that could be, I don't know, it could be a year or two if you're doing this as a sideline gig on top of your standard employment.

Just go and sell and go and make money. And then adjust. And listen to the feedback that you get and ask people for feedback and listen to the feedback. None of this, clearly, is like rocket science business stuff as far as entity stuff. But I've just seen so many people get paralyzed by all of the financial planning topics when reality is you got to get out there and do business.

So, that's it. I mean, really, that's all I've got. And with those two things, I mean, it sounds so simple, but with the business checking account and with the business journal, you'll be able to have the tools that you need to coach yourself or to be able to have somebody else coach you and help you.

And you have all the information that you need so that your accountant, your financial advisor, your attorney, your business partners, your employees, your mentors, so that these people will have the data that they need to be able to help you. And the key is to have those data. So then if you were sitting down in my office and we were talking about, you know, should I set up an LLC, then I would just say, "Well, tell me about your business," or, "Should I establish an S-corporation?

Tell me about your business." And then we would talk about the financials and we would go through the personal records. So, this information is the starting block. So, start tracking this information and go from there. I will do a separate show, a completely separate show on entity selection, and that will be the next one you want to listen to.

So, do I want to file for some kind of corporate or partnership form of entity selection, or do I just want to stay as a sole proprietorship? Well, my message, the drum that I want to beat today, is don't worry about it. Go make money. And then once you've made money, then come back and fix all that stuff.

Now, there are exceptions to this rule. If you are an established business person and you have a very high, you know, investment into-- you're setting--you're planning to, I don't know, open a restaurant, you're going to do $100,000 of renovations, this is not necessarily how you would do it. But for just the vast majority of businesses that are starting, it really is this simple.

There's not much more to it. My opinion also, it's easier to ask forgiveness than permission, so just go do it. And if you need some kind of business license or something like that, then deal with that when you find out about it. That's our show for today. I know it was a little bit different than the normal Wednesday topics.

I really struggled. I hope this was interesting. I had about four or five different show topics I wanted to deal with today. And I actually started recording this show twice on-- three times, actually, on a completely different topic, and it's just falling flat. So I said, "I'm going to go with what I'm inspired to do," and that was this.

So I hope that this is helpful to you. I hope this is beneficial. Thank you for listening, and I would encourage you, go start some businesses. The cool thing about doing it the way I'm doing it, there's no risk. Go start some businesses, and you'll find out, "Hey, I like that one, I don't like that one.

Oh, this one looks like this one's good." And then once you've done it a few times, it's really not that big a deal. There's so many business opportunities that are out there that are easy to do. So I'd encourage you, pick one and go for it. Have a great Wednesday, everybody.

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