Starting a Business...

[ALVIN]

I know a few of you have started a business. I am really contemplating starting a LLC, and I have a few questions for those that have started a LLC.

1) Where, how much, and how do I go about making a LLC?

2) How hard is it to get a business loan?

3) What advice do you have to offer?

Please and thank you.

[Jkuao]

How solid is your business plan? How much capital/collateral do you have on your own? What's your experience in this field? Those are the questions they're going to ask you when you try to get a loan...unless you have very good answers it's going to be tough.

I started a business w/ my brother back in '00. Severely undercapitalized w/ a total of $1200 up front from my dorm room at GT. Using effectively free internet, storage space, and our parents to cover our other costs we were able to grow it just on cash flow. When I went off to NY for school, my brother continued to run it and grew it to a fairly decent sized company with multiple distributors, a website, and ebay sales. It outgrew his dorm, then apt, house, and we eventually wound up at a 3600sqft warehouse.

It was still doing decent revenue when we sold it...my brother just got tired of the stress. He refused to take on any debt to float the company so it was always a huge cash flow crunch even when we were doing well. Between nearly 2k/mon for the warehouse in addition to payroll, marketing, and floating persistently late customers(import parts retailers suck at paying invoices), my brother was pretty much spending/paying off 10k/mon on his credit cards. I had worked a proposal to the SBA and we were approved to be financed to buy our own machinery...50k+ worth and my brother just decided it wasn't for him anymore.

Given your age, bank small business loans may be tough to come by. The SBA gives preference to disadvantaged minorities but you probably don't have much collateral for them to really consider. Not sure how much you're needing to startup but in your position, your only solution may be family/friends and then work a bank once you've got some cash flow or at least a solid enough concept.

[turbosx©]

thats really good advice

[Mangrum]

dam that even gave me some info i wanted lol

[blacknightteg]

damn lol yeah, and as far as like registering your company thats going through the secretary of state and waht not to get your business license and your assumed business as certificat