Sign Indiana Banking Claim Simple

Industry sign banking indiana claim simple

welcome to this score webinar i'm bill petrovick i am a score mentor and i coordinate the workshops for score this is one of many workshops we have uh some of you may have already been to one if this is your first uh hope you enjoy it and welcome we we're running about two a month try to find topics that are of of interest to entrepreneurs or um future entrepreneurs this workshop here is designed more for people who may not be fully into owning or running a business but if you are that's okay too you probably pick up some some good tips here but score is the sponsor we are manned by volunteers all of the people you see at score doing mentoring or putting in workshops are all unpaid volunteers we're not for profit organization we are a resource partner of the small business administration and coordinate with them quite well a lot of people find score by going to the sba website and there it's easy to link over to our website so um we do these webinars at no charge we do our mentoring at no charge so score is is great for small business because uh it's free so i'm going to let this uh webinar get started and we have two speakers uh bill nikolai and don dorsey and they've divided up the presentation and a bill will be taking it over from here and going first and as this goes along feel free to put your questions in the q a and um i'll be watching those and sometimes i'll be butting in and asking them on the spot or saving some of them till the end so let's go and welcome susan bill don't forget to unmute thank you thank you bill and uh welcome everyone and uh bill didn't mention it but copies of the webinar is being recorded and copies of the slides will be provided so i thank you for everyone for coming today my name is bill nicolai i'm a retired corporate controller i've been with score since 2019 and in my career i served in many corporate roles or division controllership positions especially in the international realm so i'm thrilled to be here today i like you through the chat feature if you do have a business idea or a company i'd like for you to include those also why did you decide to come to the webinar it may help us in the future design these and as importantly if you have one question you would like answered today what would that be i'll let you type those in today we're going to talk about six different topics but just as importantly we have some missing realities to get you started with regards to what is or what it takes to start in your business there's different ways of doing it there's different characteristics of each person that does it there's ways of being found that's what we call the marketing area and you certainly have to worry about your government and state and federal tax regulations or licensing we'll talk about that a little bit the importance of cash and what it takes to make a plan because budgeting and planning is everything a very nice myth that everyone thinks about is all i need is a good idea to be a successful entrepreneur yes you do definitely need a good idea and if you have a unique value proposition even better but the reality is it takes a lot of hard work research planning and successful implementation strategies to get into a profitable enterprise you will have possibly many multiple ideas making sure that you can prioritize your ideas and also ensure that you can get your thoughts across is very very critical if you go out on your own you don't have to work so hard you know who has heard that one the reality is you will probably work harder than you ever have in your career but exhaustion fades when you get that aha moment that i did it on my own you know consider everything that you're going to have to do you may not have vacations you may not have sick leave do you have contingency plans to handle those downturns consider having backup plans there we go sorry about that another myth that you may have is you think that oh because i have my business i can deduct all my expenses so i don't have to pay any taxes well the reality is that paying taxes means that you're profitable so that's really not a bad thing but also know that you need to have good records possibly think about hiring an accountant if you're not strong in accounting or finance to make sure that you can maximize all your tax advantages if you work independently you don't have a box think again on that one the fact is you will have many bosses you have your customers your clients your vendors your suppliers don't forget about the government you're going to have to report to them the fact is you're going to be accountable to many many people the time never ends if you're a business owner you get to do the work that you find most interesting i wish that would be the case you're going to be wearing many hats you're going to have to juggle many skills and you're going to have to conduct many activities that you find downright boring there are going to be some tasks that you may not feel comfortable in you know you're going to have to take out the trash every once in a while you want to have to hire people you're going to have to train people you're going to have to negotiate contracts think again with regards to everything that is out there that you may have to do finally if you choose to be self-employed you're going to be limited to what you can achieve after all you're going to be working alone however the limitations are created mostly by the space between your ears you're going to be have to be realistic don't trap yourself into doing too many things or self-imposing your limitations but starting your business actually unlocks all kinds of possibilities it's just up to you in terms of what you can do think through everything that's out there the satisfaction of accomplishments can be tremendous but there's another reality after two years only 69 of businesses will be successful and unfortunately after five years nearly half of all businesses will fail the good news is that those companies that start with mentors and having people that help them the likelihood of success is nearly 70 percent think of that having a mentor greatly improve your odds of success and think through the four reasons why business fail there might be lack of planning you don't have enough money you had insufficient capitalization you mismanaged your cash we'll talk about that one in a little bit and something as simple as you didn't price your product properly we here at score offer mentors with different fields of expertise that can help you in all those areas so that you can succeed so when you start your business how do you do it well you can start on your own you can buy a business you can even buy a franchise where you conduct it is also a possibility many start from their own home many think all i need to do is do an online business or maybe i'll just have the traditional brick and mortar business let's talk about each one of these when you start your brand new business you're not hampered by you know what happened in the past as we mentioned previously you're only limited to what you can think of you get to choose your location your relationship everything that you want to do you can research what you want to do and you can make your dreams come true however that also sets the fact that there's no base to go on you're going to have to make all your decisions one error can certainly complicate your success you don't want to do that you're going to have your dreams turned into a nightmare proper planning is going to be very important you know i had a a a client who worked for a company that did doors and cabinets and he thought shoot i can do this better than this than my owner so he went out and started his own business did everything that was supposed to do with customer service and 25 years later he retired very comfortably he fulfilled his dream so if you don't want to start from scratch you can buy an existing building or buy an existing business after all if you've done your research and the business has proven to be profitable and being successful you can say hey why can't i continue it well understand exactly what you're buying now you're buying assets are you assuming liabilities are there patents or customer lists that you have are there any restrictions or covenants to compete we had a client once who bought a business and the owner moved down the street two three miles and opened up a brand new business doing the same thing he hadn't done his research but this is a good place to start if you have it you just may want to consider getting good professional advice to help you and understanding exactly what you're buying we've all heard of the franchises before the ups stores the domino's pizza and of course mcdonald's there's many many advantages to buying a franchise it's proven everyone knows the name you get lots of help from corporate there's definitely consulting relationships and you have people that can help you out however understand that it could be very expensive to get in and you don't control everything that you're needing to do you're going to have operational boundaries you're going to have franchise fees you're going to have to make royalty payments you won't have any flexibility in your marketing or how you reach your customers understand all the contracts and all the requirements if you do get into a franchise that it will be so you decided what business you want to start how do you want to base it many of our clients are small entrepreneurs and they will start from home after all it's convenient i have my expenses i might even have a room that i can work from and if done properly and you keep the proper records those expenses can be deducted but can be deducted as part of the business but have you asked all the right questions what are your neighbors going to think do you have any zoning requirements do you have enough parking something that people don't think about is if i install new equipment is the infrastructure strong enough to handle all the power grids do i have space for expansion do i have room for inventory there are going to be many questions that you need to answer in terms of starting your business at home well i could think about going online that seems pretty easy all i need is a computer right well there are lower startup costs i can reach everyone in the united states or across the world it's definitely very flexible i can add or subtract from my product lines very easily unfortunately the pricing pressures are very very severe there's a low conversion rate think about the fact that one to two percent of all customers that come to your website actually convert those into sales why is that well there's low barriers to entry there's lots of competition if it's so easy to get into think about the numbers of people that are getting into it you know for you extroverts you're going to be sitting behind a computer where's that personal contact where's that sensory you're not influencing sales all you are doing is just waiting for someone to come to your website and hopefully buy your product which leads me to you will need an excellent website we at score have sponsored five excellent webinars on setting up websites search engine optimization google meet google search google analytics on our score.org website there's additional resources that help you understand the importance of being found don's going to talk of this a little bit about this a little bit later but you can do it there's no reason why you can't and finally the traditional brick and mortar we know the store that you go to you know you get to influence your sales you get to influence your marketing you get to influence how you display your products but it also means that you have higher startup costs you have a physical location that you're going to have to build out you have overhead you have electricity you have operating expenses you may have some fixed cost if you have a mortgage and certainly where you place your your building in your location is going to be very important once you've set it up you have you don't have the flexibility and if you're selling product think of those 70 to 90 percent discount racks at a clothing store if you didn't buy the right product or those seasonal products at the end your christmas or your your gardening supplies that you didn't sell think through all of those but also can you afford a covet hit unfortunately this year many stores failed because there's just the traffic wasn't out there but many people get a charge out of being able to meet their customers there's positive there's advantages and disadvantages of each so you start thinking through okay i got an idea do i have what it takes to become an entrepreneur everyone thinks and knows that they're hard workers and they're organized the reality of life is you will be responsible for everything that goes on in your business all the decisions all the tasks so you have to be decisive you're going to have to be able to negotiate you're going to have to be persistent you're going to have to ask people you're going to have to be organized because there are going to be many tasks and you're going to have to know you know there might be a lot of activities that you like to do but others that you don't well you're going to have to suck it up and understand that you're going to have to train people and hire people and negotiate contracts and work with your suppliers you know we think about all those different activities that you need to do but two that are very important here is it might be time to swallow your pride become a networker ask for help know who you can ask for help from and i don't want to underestimate the importance of having a great supportive family if there's conflicts one of them is going to suffer and we know what some of those long-term consequences might be go back to some of the myths that i talked about a little while ago all these points will definitely come into play so if those are the subjective characteristics what are you going to what other characteristics are you going to need where are you going to need enough money you're going to need enough capital to run your business you know we know that you need money to make money you know we talked about the the necessity to be able to manage all your activities and multitask just because you like doing one activity doesn't mean that other activities don't occur that you have to address do you have the education or the experience in the field that you want to get into we had one customer or one client that came to us that wanted to set up a barbecue stand and he was from a place in this world that hadn't had barbecue but he had eaten it a couple of times and thought it was pretty good so we asked him what do you know about it he goes well nothing actually we suggested that he possibly go to the stores and check it out even maybe become an employee or become a manager of a store learn all the ins and outs of what it takes to run a restaurant especially barbecues and understanding clients so it does take a strong work that could ethic you're going to need to manage your time and i can't emphasize enough just have the willingness to get input from others and do your research test your markets ask questions ask your vendors you know your vendors supply your different competitors maybe you can get some information from them talk to your customers again get a mentor venture ideas and really understand where you're going to need help because you're going to wear many many hats it might be nice to be the ceo but there's a lot of activities that happen underneath it i can't emphasize that enough we have a great example we like to share think of a baker she loves to make donuts loves to make donuts well the reality is that she may only be baking donuts 40 to 50 percent over time the other time you have all the administrative tasks you're going to have to hire people train people update that website so she can be found negotiate with the fumigator deal with the regulatory authorities to make sure she has her licenses in place and the list goes on lots of great activities and fun some people get a charge out of this and some people find it very stressful understand what is it that you can handle and there's many activ ties that go on and one of the most important ones is being able to to be found so i'm going to turn this over now to my partner don we'll talk to you about marketing good morning everybody good to have you with us on this saturday morning my name is don dorsey um i've been a score mentor for a number of years and uh my my work background goes goes back into a variety of different categories i was involved over the years in manufacturing a lot in sales and marketing general operations and it ranged from large companies fortune 500 companies to uh very small um entrepreneurial companies i've been with a couple of those as i've told people when we have these workshops in person that um i've i've lived in a world where the paycheck showed up every couple of weeks without any uh without any issues and then i've worked in the world where on friday afternoon we'd have a an executive meeting and we talk about how we were going to make payroll on tuesday so i understand really both sides of both sides of that coin and when you're in business for yourself there's a lot more of those friday meetings on how to make payroll than there is just uh automatically flowing into your into your checking account so what i want to talk about in the next uh next few minutes is key elements of marketing and when we do these workshops uh effect we have one uh that's a uh we call the business academy and when we get postcoded we'll do it again where we're we're together all day and uh in those we spend three or four hours uh or or slightly even more on the whole area of marketing what is marketing uh how do you how do you build the strategy how do you build your plan um all of those things so this morning we're gonna we're gonna do a very high level um kind of a brief look at it so next slide bill excuse me so right at the top um everything you do okay there we go thank you bill um really marketing edits at its heart if you will is everything you do to keep to get and keep a targeted customer so um it's a whole series of things and then from that you build a strategy because what it comes down to is you're trying to create a desire for somebody to purchase your product or service that's what it that's what it boils down to so if we take those first two points of everything you do that'll go into the strategy it includes things like branding you're gonna you build a brand for your company so that you're recognizable that means there's a visual identity uh what is it that you look like and that could be logos it could be taglines another part of your visual or your branding is a marketing message you've probably heard uh the the uh the term elevator pitch and that would say that if we're not if we get into an elevator and you strike up which we don't do in these cove times but uh you strike out somebody strikes up a conversation with you it's like what do you do well my business is and can you explain that in 20 to 30 seconds depends on the speed of that elevator but it comes down to what is that marketing message and it needs to be specific it needs to be precise it needs to be understandable so that when you give that to me i know what kind of business that you're in and i know whether i'm interested in in pursuing that any further so that marketing message is really critical and then that message needs to be conveyed in everything you do all your promotional materials all of your online advertising and so forth so building a brand is very very critical to the success of your business another part of of marketing is advertising and that can be promotional materials that you create uh public relations it's interesting if you search it out as to how many opportunities there are in the community to get free advertising where you can you can uh write a piece that you could submit to the indie star or local newspapers so there's a lot of places where you can get some some good recognition you got to do some work and you got to find these places but you can do it at no cost all your online communications any email marketing that you might develop to reach out to prospects in some cases email marketing can be used to acquire a customer in many cases as as we all have personally experienced it's we are a customer and others these companies then use email to reach out to us to to um for relationship purposes um instagram facebook these are all online platforms that allow you to in some cases to uh to sell um instagram as an example is is being being used significantly to actually try to acquire uh customers as is facebook and then there's the the whole area of direct sales calls where you knock on doors and you talk to people and you find those prospects and you make presentations you submit bids you make proposals um uh all of those aspects so if i kind of bundle that together and say you know we've got branding advertising uh promotions uh direct sales efforts that really is everything you're doing to try and find a customer and that really folds into a marketing strategy the next point there i am saying is that it's also the tactics to generate some kind of action or physical or measurable measurable response how many times when you're dealing online uh basically what uh what that on time online retailer is trying to do is to get you to to click on something to download to to call to uh to write back contact us you know get it give us your email and we'll we'll be in touch with you um that's what you're really trying to do with all of your marketing tools is you're trying to generate some kind of a response that's that's very specific uh come to your office come to your store we've got a sale on friday friday wednesday afternoons it's three for you know uh three for the price of two those kind of things or scheduling a meeting scheduling a session so all of the things that you do to try and and reach and and secure a a customer okay next slide bill let's take a look at at some of the things that you really need to understand uh as you're going into business uh starting point would be what is what's the industry look like so kind of you know get yourself up at a at a ten thousand foot level and look down and what this this indus this business i want to go into is in an industry what does that industry look like uh if i'm going if i'm in the in the tech industry uh for the most part that's on the left side of this slide where it's rapid growth it's that's very encouraging now there are a lot of downsides to the the tech business um but it's a growth business and then when you from a life cycle standpoint this industry kind of gets up to the top there uh of maturity and some examples of uh i'll call them more more localized businesses that are more mature and one example would be landscaping so if you think about the indianapolis area and there are lots of different parts to landscaping i mean it could be you're going to be a grower you're going to have a retail location where you're selling trees and shrubs and so forth but i want to talk about let's talk about landscape maintenance so the business i want to go into is cutting grass trimming shrubs doing some fertilizing that type of thing that's a pretty mature business and the needs in that business are pretty much being satisfied so when i look at this industry that i'm thinking about going into if it's very mature then i have to understand uh do i need to i have to have something unique or if it starts to decline then i've got to try to reinvent myself or this thing is going to really go into the skids current situation right now is brick and mortar retail as a as a good example if you think about well i want to open up a store i'm going to sell such and such um in this world that we're living in today which has been exacerbated by the the covet pandemic there are a lot of retailers going out of business so that is a very very declining and in some cases rapidly declining industry so i'm not suggesting um there's nothing really to learn from this other than you have to understand the the industry that you're in so next you also have you have to understand your markets and the the main point there is defining a market need um you have to find a marketplace that has a need there's there's problems that have to be solved there's needs that have to be fulfilled and that these are compelling not just oh i think everybody needs to needs to eat so i'm going to open a restaurant or everybody needs um to have your your you know your grass cut so i'm going to go into landscaping because you need to really understand what problem you're solving and what needs you're filling and that comes then largely into your product and service what is that product or service what does it do what are the benefits what's the value proposition is your product or service truly unique what are the unique characteristics or term that we use in in our workshops usp unique selling proposition or are you just one more in a busy marketplace there's a lot of examples that you can find as you look into it where there are businesses that are they're just one of many they don't stand out in any way and when bill talked about the success of businesses after a couple of years or five years this is a real key part of it and then what's the competitive advantage i can't can't stress this one enough um what's your competitive advantage what will make you more attractive to the customer because right now if in fact if you have you have a product or service that is currently in the marketplace by a lot of competitors so some need is being fulfilled for the for the customer what's going to make you more attractive to that customer than people who are already providing it and uh there's a million examples of companies that uh have been able to create uh uniqueness or differentiation even though their product or service may be similar to many others so it's really that differentiation that uniqueness where you provide more value than somebody else and one thing that i've heard in in some of the sessions with with clients will be like well what is your what's going to be your competitive advantage well i'm going to i'm going to give the best customer service in the world okay how would you define that what are you going to do different than the other people because quite frankly there is no one out there in business typically maybe there is but probably no one in business that says what i give is i give lousy customer service that's that's what's my strength everybody says they give good customer service there so there has to be more than just that there has to be something new now that that is a good uh unique proposition if it's unique and not just not just some words so okay next one bro understanding your customers so we've talked about the industries uh the industry itself and is it is it growing mature declining uh we talked about really understanding your your markets but you really need to understand those your customers who are they uh are you going to be selling uh uh tour to retailers are you selling to consumers are you business to business um you hear phraseology like b2b that's business to business b2c business to consumer so you need to understand who you're going to sell to who you're going to serve because those considerations will determine the kind of channels that you'll use to go to market the number of prospects um how big is this space um you know i've i've met with clients that say well the service that i'm offering i'll give you an example let's let's say um human resources services so i'm gonna i'm gonna get into business where i provide you know i can work with uh with uh with companies on on building uh employee handbooks and uh and hiring people and onboarding and and uh dealing with uh labor laws and so forth so the question then is well who who are you going to provide these services to well small businesses okay anything more detailed than that oh no everybody could use my service well yes that's true but there are millions of small business businesses excuse me and they all have different characteristics and different uniqueness and so forth so you need to understand how big is this market you're going into and and as you think about who you're going to serve narrow that down into uh more of your niche and understand how many people are how many opportunities are there in that the income level ability to pay depending on the kind of service you're offering this may be uh only potential customers maybe only higher net worth individuals who can afford what you are trying to offer so you really need to understand your product or service and where that fits and your customers ability to to pay for it purchasing habits that could be could be something that's seasonal uh so you need to understand that when do people buy this product or service the demographics um what are the ages and gender of of your potential customers is this primary is this more of a a business that's going to appeal to to men or women younger people older people so you really have to understand those demographics because that starts to indicate how many prospects are out there and where do these people hang out so if we're talking about if you're talking about trying to reach out to find your target customer using social media platforms you may be appealing more to a younger demographic not that those of us with gray hair aren't savvy about technology and social social media platforms but that that's not necessarily the uh the majority so for example i've been with a client who was starting a business of renting floral arrangements for weddings uh these are artificial floral arrangements and she had developed a very unique technology purchased very very expensive and very realistic artificial flowers and then built creativity into the floral designs for uh the bride and for the reception tables and so forth so when she was looking at the demographics of her market who she was going to appeal to it was very narrowed down its brides in the in mid 20s to mid 30 age age range there were a number of other demographics but then she posed the question of where you know where do these people hang out how do i find these people and one of the one of the places that she would find them is on instagram and she said that very heavy uses of instagram by that age demographic by that gender demographic to find the kinds of services and products for a wedding and she started a very very robust uh instagram program and i've been following her for the last couple of years it's it's outstanding but there's a case where she really paid attention to the demographics of her potential customer where they hang out and how she was going to reach them purchasing channels is you know is this direct online again the geographic locations where you know where are these people and how are you going to get to them so next slide bill understanding your competitors i can't stress this enough this is really really important every business has competitors um if there are no competitors if there's nobody in this business and i've heard that before it says well i've looked around and nobody does this then the question you need to ask yourself is why and and if you get some good answers that nobody's thought of this i've created something that is totally unique um full speed ahead uh we'll talk more about how you how you validate that but that that'd be a great thing but for the most part you're going to have a competitor uh competitors plural uh so you need to understand the the products and services that they offer do they have a very broad line of product or service are they uh kind of you know full service whatever that you may only be able to handle a portion of that what are the price points this is real critical to you building your own pricing strategy how you price your product or service has to be largely based on the marketplace what the market will accept and then you have to look back into your cost structure to see if can i make any money doing this i mean it's fine to say i want to i want to sell my product for you know for ten dollars but if it costs you nine dollars and fifty cents to to make it you it may not be a business that uh that you can afford to be in and some of your competitors may be big e ough that they have a lower cost structure than you do and they can afford to price the product lower and still make a profit so you really need to understand again you need to understand these competitors what do they have that's really unique and what are the benefits that they offer this is very very very critical because that's who you're going up against if you're in a mature market the way you're going to get customers is to take them away from a competitor so understanding the competitor will help you understand how difficult it's going to be to to take those customers away and the size and profitability of these businesses if you're going up against a uh you know a large multi-faceted landscaper um you may be able to compete in a niche but you need to understand that they offer a lot more and their size and their profitability may allow them to if you start to make an impact on them they can start to squeeze you so again these aren't these aren't go no-go decisions these are as much as anything just make sure you understand them and then what says you know what strategy do they use how do they go to market how do they attract their customers how do they reach them how do they find them um because understanding how the your competitors go and get customers will help you to build your strategy in terms of where you need to go so do your research we've seen so many examples of very unprepared clients who come in and they'll start to explain the business and they're all excited about it i can remember one in particular a lady came in and it was it was going to be an online service that she was going to offer and i asked who the competitors were and she said there's really nobody in this area doing it and it literally only took one click on a google search and it was like wow here's here's four different options that that are available so do your homework that's the beauty of the internet that we have in the search engines is there's a lot of data out there that you can find that you know 10 10 15 20 years ago you couldn't so okay if there are any questions about uh marketing uh it's it's a deep complex subject and you know we'd love to work with you individually on uh building your your marketing plans but uh that's kind of a high level look at it today um so if there any questions just pop those in to uh chat and uh now we're gonna we're gonna switch gears and we're gonna talk about kind of a legal structure of your business and again this one's gonna be at a very high level uh number one we're not gonna provide any legal advice and i just want to give you kind of a highlight of structuring your your your business uh from a legal standpoint um sole proprietorship different business entities there's really basically five there are a lot of subsets of this that you can get into but the five basic ones the sole proprietorship and the partnership which is you know one or more persons operating in a business these are these are informal structures these are informal entities they don't require a state they don't need to be allowed by state statute the the key there is you want to secure a name doing business as um so some years ago i started a uh a personal consulting business and i just called it don dorsey consulting pretty simple um registered the name and away i went i operated as a sole proprietor uh my clients paid me as a uh under that business name i had a separate bank account uh but there was it wasn't very complex i had several clients and it was it was fairly simple i didn't need to do anything more than that didn't really have liability or tax considerations to make um so that was a sole proprietorship uh could have done the same thing if it was me and my brother uh operating as a as a partnership the the last three then are formal structures that are allowed by state statute or state law limited liability company is the one of the most common ones that's used and then there's the conventional uh c corporation and then the sub chapter x corporation which is really um the subchapter s is a corporation but under that under that uh statute of subchapter s uh it addresses different uh tax considerations so most of these are really done on the basis of of liability and tax considerations the the uh the link that is shown here on this slide is a really really good one it's the indiana secretary of state's site if you're if you're really interested in learning more about it go to that site it's it's an easy read but it gives you the specifics excuse me of of these different types of entities and what you what you need to do or why you should select one over the other one next keep it simple this i can't stress enough um don't don't get too complicated when you're in the early stages of business uh so proprietors the simplest register your name with the the state it's called a dba doing business as so in my case it was doing business as don dorsey consulting and um i registered the name i wasn't concerned about somebody stealing it so i didn't trademark it uh it's just it was my entity if somebody started to use it in place of me then i would have figured out how to deal with it llc the limited liability company is the most uh popular if you will with small businesses even even larger and mid-sized businesses uh when liability is a concern because it protects your personal assets from liability of the company as does a c c corporation the c corporation has a lot of advantages and uh a lot a lot a lot more elements to it excuse me multiple owners when you get into multiple owners it now gets a lot more complex because um now you need to consider a a c corp or under an llc participants are are are not owners per se of the business so it's anyway i want to keep it as simple as possible and uh those are excuse me oh losing my voice here this morning anyway the considerations are really about liability and taxes so go to the next page because this is where it kind of ties back you need a team uh every new business every small business every business needs a team oh i'm jumped ahead of myself i apologize insurance we'll take a minute on insurance you must have insurance again we're talking about liabilities we're talking about a lot of those legal considerations you have to be sure that you've got the right kind of coverages like motor vehicles for example if you're using your your your your car your truck for for business um you just have to understand that your personal uh car insurance is not gonna they're not gonna do do the trip if you're in business if you're using it for business you could have a claim that could be denied so the recommendation is there's a whole series of of uh insurance considerations here that you need to think about get in contact with an agent that specializes in business insurance i'm not proposing anybody in particular but a lot a lot of times what you'll find is find an independent agent who has some specialty they may do some personal insurance but they they they specialize in business insurance and they can write policies with a lot of different companies they're not just a state farmer an all-state or geico or progressive or liberty mutual whoever they can write policies with a lot of different companies and so that's the recommendation that you would that you would contact an independent agent okay next slide you also need to uh pay attention to government regulations so the business you're going into make sure that you understand if there are licenses and approvals that are necessary if you're getting into some kind of uh health care field there are uh there are county uh approvals and state approvals and regulations and and so forth you need to really understand those clearly and there's a wealth of information at uh secretary of state's office uh online etc need to understand labor laws immigration laws particularly if you're going to hire anybody you want to be sure that you're not running a follow of the law when you're uh when you're hiring people to be sure that they're properly documented and so forth depending on the nature of the business you're getting into irs and social security withholding you don't mess with those guys i worked with a with a company um that was struggling and they felt like if they could not make their withholding payments to uh to the federal government and the state governments that they could get by for a couple of weeks and that is just really really high risk and uh unfortunately the uh the uh the cpa that they were working with said yeah we could we could do it for a little while and they played they played that game for a while it it'll it'll just it'll just catch up and and bite you so you just got to really understand what's going on there and and don't don't mess with the with the feds in the state um state sales tax requirements if you are selling a product in uh in the state of indiana then you have to charge sales tax and there's a whole process that you need to go through for that and highlighted on the screen there on january 27th from noon to 1 30 there is a webinar called the indiana state tax primer and if it's that's on the indianapolis score website which we're going to show that to you in just a little bit but if you're if you're getting into business you need to understand the elements of of tax sales tax consideration i would strongly encourage you to uh to spend that hour and a half and watch that it'll be very good okay uh next slide last slide for me uh you need to build a team which is what i tried to get you into a couple of slides ago prematurely but every business needs a team we've talked about legal entities you need a lawyer we've talked about insurance you need an insurance agent bill's going to talk to you about managing funds and funding you need accountants you need banker relationships so uh you don't go it alone you build the team because as bill said there's a lot of hats to wear and you got to get some get some help don't go it alone and the business mentor we will emphasize that over and over again a very critical member of that of that team so that uh that covers my portion for a bit i'd like to turn it back to bill and he'll talk to you about uh some funding and cash management so there you go bill thank you don so you've got a plan you got a marketing plan you set up your business structure you're ready to execute it you're ready to do it so what's it gonna take to get there well it's gonna take some money but before you even get started do you have enough have you considered everything that it's going to take and especially in those cases where you've gone from earning a salary and knowing that that paycheck comes in every other week to starting your business where you're going to be depending on the profits have you considered what that transition is going to cost so very diligently you must determine your monthly budget this includes your mortgage or your rent your groceries your entertainment your utilities your child care clothing your gift allowances think through everywhere where you spend money including where can you scale back running a business without cash is the is the first cause for destruction you do not want to run out of so understanding where your debt is and what your other fixed obligations are is going to be very very critical starting your business is not where you put your 401k monies your 401k monies is your emergency fund to handle your living expenses you will want six to 12 months of of living expenses before you launch your business so have you prepared your budget and you really understand where your money goes to because your life savings will definitely play a part because when you start your business there's going to be two sets of cash requirements the first one is what do you need up front we talked about you know those professional fees so their accounting fees are those lawyer fees depending on how your business is set up don talked about your marketing strategies in your research have you had to pay to set up a website and understand what all that means if you're setting up a landscaping company what is it what are the tools and the equipment that you're going to have to purchase these are one-time purchases that don't generate any revenue when you've made those those costs if you buy a brick and mortar or you have display locations what kind of leasehold improvements have you made again these are all cash outlays if you set up a restaurant do you have your licenses in your permits that you might have had to pay for that initial inventory that you're going to have and do you have enough working capital reserve understand also that any plan is as good as you said it but there's always going to be some surprises think through all the contingency planning and other funds that you may need for any unexpected expenditures and understand that if you're setting up a manufacturing company a retail a consulting company your level of initial investments will differ depending on the types of businesses that you will establish because going forward you're going to have ongoing expense salaries which includes even what you might pay yourself if you're a sole entrepreneur is included your rent your insurance your taxes and fees yes you're going to have to pay your withholding taxes one thing that you never get out of even in bankruptcy are withholding taxes and payroll taxes that you collected on behalf of your employees don spent quite a bit of time on marketing if you borrowed money you're going to have to pay it back and of course all your operating expenses we at score have many templates to help you set up operating budgets manage those budgets set up templates to understand what the difference is between startup expenses ongoing expenses and how you manage your cash going forward so where are we going to find this money well i may have it that's the equity that's money that i own that i don't have to pay back but that very differs very significantly from debt which is money you're going to have to pay back you have money that comes from your own personal savings don't forget about your friends and family you may have partners if you're a sole proprietor well you're going to have to contribute everything but if you have a partner that partner can contribute and very importantly profits retain your business think through before you take in your salary or taking money out of the business what money do you need to reinvest so the profits retained in the business that can be reinvested can be a very very important source of cash or those profits go towards monies that you've borrowed the principle and most common source is banks and credit unions but you can also go to your friends friends are nice but money makes you know strange decisions so make sure you've understood what all those requirements if you're going to borrow money you can go to the sba they can help you with micro loans and in the worst case scenarios you may even want to consider using credit cards but understand that the interest rates are very onerous the repayment terms are very stringent and certainly something that we do not recommend if you're having to use credit cards you probably haven't capitalized your business strong enough so how do you know if you have enough well you can go to the bank and don mentioned you'll need a team and one of those team members was your banker your banker needs to be your friend get to know your bank and get to know your banker and have him or her understand your business they can be one of your biggest partners but they're also going to want to make sure that you have the capability to repay the banks in the business to get its money it doesn't want to have a loan that goes sour so your background and your credit score and your willingness and your ability to pay back the the soundness of your business that financial plan that we've talked about a little bit and we'll talk a little bit more in the next section is going to be very very important how much you show of your business how much money you're investing if you're putting in 50 into the business the bank is going to look at that saying well this person is serious and certainly is invested and therefore is a better risk as compared to that person that only has 5 or 10 percent of his money including his financial history and the financial projections is shown by that business plan your experience will matter and also how many competitors out there what is the likelihood of success you know those three characters there's throats three c's your character your collateral and credit are critical and that business plan that you put together that demonstrates the capability and the ability to generate and to execute your plan and your business are going to be very very important so when you get this money how are you going to manage it certainly separate all your personal from your business activities we can't emphasize that enough we talked from the very beginning you need to keep very good records your tax accountant is going to also appreciate that when he or she puts together your financial statements your tax returns and anything else that they need to report so what this means is that you want to make your deposits in total or gross don't net expenses against your deposits someone gives you a hundred dollars to pay for a bill and you need twenty dollars to go buy lunch for the group well make your deposit for 100 and show an expense report for 20. you need to understand all the ins and outs of your business because as you analyze your business you need to understand what are the gross receipts and what are the gross expenditures as you proceed so there are some strategies also you want to hold on your cash as long as possible as long as you have cash you can continue managing your business we had a client he was a printer he started spending his money too quickly and he would schedule a job or he would contract for a job and he'd have to buy special paper well he had lost all his credit and people would supply to him so he had this two thousand dollar printing job but he couldn't get the paper to print it definitely was a strong catch 22. so as long as you have cash you'd be able to stay in business so have strategies to hold on to that cash talk to your vendors can you negotiate 30 60 even maybe 90 day payment terms they're also a partner you can work with them if you do run into a little bit of trouble and uh you've shown that you've been able to repay in the past you may be able to get a longer payment terms use credit cards to collect your receivables it's immediate cash sure there's a one to two percent fee but having cash in the bank is going to be very important so understand all your banking activity reconcile your bank statements have adequate cash reserves when you start your business there's going to be contingencies and surprises that you just did not think of so when you put your plan together add 10 for contingencies even 15 that day that that comes when you have an emergency and you have that in the bank you're going to be very very appreciative so understand all your flows and continue updating your cash forecast at least six months in the future if not a year into the future we can't emphasize enough that managing your cash goes a long way towards the success of your business and finally you're going to have to plan and i'll let don talk about that thank you bill uh boy the the whole cash side of of starting a business is so critical the story i i told you earlier about uh sitting there trying to figure out how to make payroll on on tuesday um it's just it is such an incredibly important part of being being in business being successful and staying in business so that's that's something and you probably need some help with that you know that's part of uh part of the team so let's talk a little bit about business planning typically i'd say some years ago if we met with a client it would not be uncommon for them to start you know explain their business and so forth and somebody would say well do you have a business plan well yeah i started to write one well if you go to the website you can get a template for a business plan and um i worked with one client this goes back quite a few years where uh i don't know that we recommended that to him but he was doing that himself he's he spent an inordinate amount of time writing a business plan but he hadn't really hadn't really determined whether or not this business uh was going to be um viable and so that was kind of the starting point was he went through what i would call more of an academic exercise so a traditional business plan is not necessarily where you should start because that plan assumes that the business can be built i could sit down today with a business idea and i could write a 15 20 page business plan i'm going to put a whole lot of assumptions into it and i could build that build that plan and it would show that the business can be built but what i don't know is whether that business should be built that's the big question that's the question you have to ask yourself um you know back to my landscaping example can i build a plan that uh that describes the landscaping because i can't but should i start the business that's the big question so if one thing you need to do is really articulate your vision this should be a very very detailed look at your vision of the business what that's going to look like and what you have to recognize is that this idea that you have initially lacks any compelling demand you don't know if there's anybody out there who wants your product or service and is willing to pay for it and while they they might say they do when the time comes to you know sign on the dotted line uh remains to be seen so you need some customer proof you need to [Music] you need to get uh proof that the customer is willing to buy it and that means you need to engage with potential customers you need to talk to a lot of potential customers not a few you might need to talk to 50 or 100 and explain here is my business idea here's what i'm going to do and if i can do these things would you be interested in doing business with me so it takes a lot of effort to really engage those those potential customers and your score mentor can help you to build a plan over how you go out to find those people and the questions you ask and so forth but here's the key question do enough people really care about this problem or this need for this to be a viable business are there enough people who care and will they tell their friends about it not your friends you telling your friends but are there enough people out there to make this viable and they will tell their friends this is the person you need to do business with and why so that's the that's the main question next slide so rather than start uh in creating a traditional business plan we suggest using a planning tool called the business model canvas and this is a one-page business plan that has a lot of different sections to it there's about nine parts to this this canvas covering areas like your customers your value proposition customer relationships the different key resources that uh that'll be required partners costs revenues so there's it really on one page is a template to give you a tool to think through these various elements and quantify them there's significant resources available at indianapolis.score.org which you see on the screen not just for this but for a lot of different elements of starting a business so from a business planning standpoint let me summarize here i would not recommend writing a traditional business plan initially what you build in this business model canvas can be easily folded into a more traditional business plan if you need that to go forward to a bank to get funding or for for an investor so this is not a um not a waste of time relative to that because all of the pieces that you put together in this canvas are going to apply to a traditional business plan but the important thing here is that you you have to be taking steps to validate this business idea prove that it can be a viable business so next there's some things to do on your own we would strongly recommend if you go to the that website indianapolis.score.org i'm going to show you the home page in just a second um you can go to the that 45 minute webinar on an easy easier way to prepare your business plan the business model camera is very very well done by a couple of score mentors and they show you the uh the forum itself you can download the forms and the instructions etc uh excellent excellent uh way to spend 45 minutes also the startup roadmap uh your guide to successfully starting a business it's a about 12 chapters and it's it's an excellent way to kind of move through the the things that we've talked about uh today in the last hour so uh you drill down so much deeper and it's uh it's it's very very worthwhile if you're serious about starting a business strongly recommend that so those are some things to do on your own so what are the next steps again indianapolis dustscore.org wealth of information so we're suggesting that you complete the business model canvas and go through the courses in the roadmap uh there's also a tremendous amount of other resources in the website library and we also are going to encourage you to sign up for mentoring and i think it's our next page there we go um the box that this is the home page at indianapolis.org and uh you see the one box highlighted there it says browse the library that will that will take you to a lot of different uh white papers and instructions and so forth uh you can find webinars there and in the center of the box um looking at the beautiful downtown skylight and skyline and the white river probably doesn't look quite that way today but it's a it's a pretty sight schedule a mentor meeting today and this is what we encourage you to do you're serious about starting a business set up a session with uh with one of our mentors we do zoom sessions and if you go if you register online that's the easiest process to go through because it provides us with information like email addresses and phone calls and so forth uh you just click on that box and it takes you right to a a very easy sign up so encourage you to do that and encourage you to utilize the resources uh on our website it's uh they're they're very very significant and can be a big help to you so that's your homework and we hope to see you in a mentoring session we're here to help okay don thanks uh that was great uh covered a lot of material uh i've i've been uh manning the q and a's i've actually been able to answer them as we've been going along and they were not the kind of questions that the whole group would probably have more more specific uh got a couple responses that said just signed up for mentoring so uh so it's it's working here but uh we're doing real well on time uh i just uh yeah i'm watching the questions that um we're all up to date on them i appreciate everybody coming uh most people came on time and then stuck it out to the end that that that tells me that we kept kept everybody engaged um you see a comment coming through here in the chat this webinar has answered many of my questions we'll um take a look at the resources on site yeah this this webinar is is kind of the introductory webinar to score the most of the other ones are deeper dives into specific topics that we covered here but every now and then we do like to have this webinar for those people who are more in the thinking stage in the planning stage and a lot of the problem that people have is where do i start what do i do first and i hope we give you gave you some thoughts on that here today this morning so i think bill did you did you address the uh the subject of the availability of the slides let's talk about that um no not not uh as well as i should have and here we go uh everybody who's registered for this webinar we'll be receiving a follow-up email that gives you a link to these same slides powerpoint slides as well as a link to our youtube channel where this webinar will be posted for you to watch again or to send to a friend or associate and that takes us a couple two or three days to get done because we have to um move it from the zoom platform to the youtube platform we edit off the chit chat at the beginning and uh and and go from there but those those will be coming back to you and when you get that by the way there's also a click the box to give us some feedback so there's a a questionnaire attached appreciate it if you fill out that but i'm watching the chats i think everybody can see the same chat that i'm watching the last question came in are these recorded webinars accessible to review and i think we just talked about this what is uh the youtube channel okay if you go to youtube and then you use their search engine so it's it's a subset of google uh it's owned by google but you go to the search engine in youtube and you put in indianapolis score those two words you will link to our channel which means you will link to the it's up to about 10 now 10 webinars that we have done uh here in indianapolis since march so um it's a it's a resource that's that's available uh webinars are recorded and and posted there so uh have a look at that if you haven't uh found it um you could catch up get a snowy day sometime when you when you're not able to do anything else go enjoy an hour hour and a half webinar from score let's see i think yeah i think we're good i think we're good i want to thank everybody thank our speakers don is the one that's got the big smile on his face because he's actually broadcasting from florida [Laughter] and that's uh not a bad place to be at the end of january beginning of february but we'll get by we'll welcome don back in the spring uh along with all the robins so uh thanks everybody for uh joining us uh i think we're we're all caught up on the questions and uh keep you're on our mailing list for future webinars and uh just just keep signing up and glad glad to have you and thanks to don and don and bill so are you gonna go ahead and and end the webinar now uh goodbye to all