You Can Do It! Here’s How To Successfully Set Up Your Business | Ep. 233

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Tiffany Grant: Hey, hey, this is Tiffany’s. Take where I answer your many questions. Right here on the podcast if you want your.

Question, answer, just go to www.moneytalkwitht.com/tiffany. So for today, I wanted to go over business registration. And the reason is because over the weekend I had a few business consulting calls and they all had the same, um, you know, kind of gist to them, which is, Okay, Tiffany, I’ve been operating my business, but how do I get it set up correctly?

Okay, so I was like, this will be a great conversation for the podcast because if, you know, the few people that I met with over the weekend are having issues, then there’s probably some other people out there as well. So first things first. Um, with one of the clients, they did their e i n registration and so they were like, yeah, you know, we’re a registered business, we’re on track, not so fast.

So an E i N is through the i r s website, and yes, all businesses do need one, whether you’re a sole proprietorship, an L L C A corporation, regardless of partnership, regardless of what type of business, business structure you have. Yes, every business needs a e I N. But let’s get into business structures for a minute.

So when you are, um, registering your business, you also need to do so through the state that you live in. And this is one of the steps that this particular client missed. They thought that once they got their e I n. That, you know, everything was all fine and dandy. They were registered, they were ready to go, but they missed a step where you have to register with your actual state.

So regardless of what type of business you are, you still need to register with the state entity. So let me just, And, and I can just talk in reference to North Carolina. I have had some clients that I’ve helped in other states as well, but every state is gonna be different. So for the purposes of this episode, I’m just gonna focus on North Carolina to give you a, a brief overview cause that’s what I’m most familiar with.

And so when you’re looking at the state of North Carolina, you need to register with the Secretary of State for the State of North Carolina, and you can do so on their website sos nc.gov. Okay. Now, depending on what type of business you are setting up, if you are a sole proprietor and you just wanna do a D B A, so a doing business, as you can register for that with your local government.

So here in North Carolina you can go to, you know, your, um, Register of deeds, maybe downtown in whatever city you are, and you can register for a DBA there. So that’s what I did. So Money Talk with Tiff is a sole proprietorship with a DBA A. So what does that mean? Sole proprietor means that I’m operating as myself.

I’m just doing business as money Talk with Tiff. Okay, so that’s the. First type of business that you can have. The second most popular type is an L L C. Now, when you have an L l C, I’m not gonna get into the pros and cons and all that stuff. Um, of any of these, I have an article on my site, which I’ll make sure I link to in the show notes.

That kind of goes over the pros and cons of each. But for the purposes of this podcast, um, an L L C, when you’re thinking about register, Registering that you have to go through your state. And so if you have an L L C or you, well, if you want to register for an L L C, all you would do is go to your state’s Secretary of State website and you would go to.

Uh, register a business. So on North Carolinas, they actually made everything online now, so they have a whole online portal that makes it very, very easy to register your business. And generally speaking, um, at least for North Carolina and some of the other states that I’ve helped people with, it’s pretty straightforward.

You just need your business name. Whatever you come up with, um, you need your name, your address. And that’s pretty much it. And who your officers are. So who’s your C E O? Who’s your C o O? You know, who’s your C-suite? Pretty much. And that’s it. So it’s really straightforward to the point, and it embraced my heart when I hear people saying that they paid people hoos of money to set up this stuff when it really doesn’t take.

That much. Y’all can definitely do this on your own. It’s just knowing where to go and how to do it. So that’s why I’m like, okay, let me go ahead and put this podcast episode out because I don’t want my people spending on stuff where they really don’t have to. And E I N is free to get. Um, and so once you have your business registration, okay, so whether that’s a sole proprietorship with a D B A, which you do through your city or county, or an L L C, which is done through the State Secretary of State website.

Now you have officially registered your business. Okay? Now, once you do do that, then you go to the step of getting your e i n, and like I said, doing that, you just go to the irs.gov website, and e i n is an employee, your identification number. What that does is it gives your business its own tax id. So that way when you’re filing taxes, your business has its own tax id.

That’s the only thing that it does. Okay, so you’re not using your social security number now, you can use your social security number if you’re a sole proprietor, but that’s completely up to you. I personally have a e i N for my business, um, as a sole proprietor. So, When you are, um, registering for that, again, very straightforward to the point, you do need to have the business name that you’ve already registered.

So if you skip the first step, you may have to, um, you know, change or tweak this, this e i n number. Um, Because it needs to match up. Okay. So make sure that all of this information is matching up. I’ve had that issue with a client as well, where they had, you know, got somebody to do their e i n for them.

They did the e I n registered them as an L L C. When they didn’t have an L L C, they were really a sole proprietor, so things just didn’t match up. And that can cause an issue when you’re filing your taxes, because if the government is looking for you to be an L L C when you file your taxes, but you’re not really an L L C and you file, you know your taxes, let’s just.

Say you do a Schedule C. Um hmm. That’s kind of a bad example cuz you can, but let’s just say you file your taxes in a way that the government’s not looking for, then you can, um, get into issues. So you always wanna make sure your business registration and your tax registration is set up and also matches.

So once you have your business registration, go for the e I n. Fill out all the same information. You get it immediately and make sure when you, when your e I n pops up on that screen, you go ahead and screenshot that. They usually send an email as well with your e i n. And they’ll also sell, send a letter in the mail.

Okay. Um, I don’t know if they’re doing an email anymore. I’ll have to double check that. But, um, I know that it immediately pops up and I know that it comes in the mail as well. Once you get that paper in the mail, hold onto it. Another thing that I do is I’ll take a picture of it cuz they will not send it to you again.

So you need to make sure that you have that because the next step in making sure that your business is set up correctly. Is getting that business bank account and you need to have your e I n paperwork. You need to have your business registration paperwork and, and you need to have your ID. With those three pieces of information you can go to, go to a bank and open up a business bank account.

That’s important for moving on. To the next step, which is getting funding growth, so on and so forth. So make sure that you are doing all of these things in order so that way you have your business set up. And like I told the clients over the weekend, I. Once you do this once, you don’t have to do it again, so you might as well make sure everything is set up from the get-go.

Okay, so I just wanted to quickly go over business registration and some tips around that. If you have any questions or you would like to hire me as a business consultant, just let me know. You can go to my website and put in an inquiry there and I’ll shoot you the link to get something on the books, but.

I do offer business consulting and I love helping my small business owners get their business life in order. So if you have a question for the podcast as well, go to www.money talkt.com/tiffany and I’ll be more than happy to answer for you. And excuse me, my nose is just doing something funny. I hope I’m not getting sick.

Um, but until next time, I hope you all have a wonderful rest of your day. Bye.

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