Is This the Right Setup For Your Business?

The video Matt reacts to today gives three tips on how to set up a business to ensure success. Matt has some differing opinions and gives some more context as to why he has differing options.

There are tons of people out on social media giving business advice. Some of it is good advice, but most of it isn’t good. In this series watch CapForge’s owner react to different advice videos. He’s an expert in all things business and has 20+ years of experience under his belt. Some of the things he reacts to might even surprise you!

Video Transcript: 

Business Advice Video:

In your 20s and 30s and starting your first business, here are my three best tips to make sure you do it right. No. 1, naming your business. Research first as this is critical to ensure you don’t infringe on other business trademarks. No. 2, creating your LLC and selecting your business category. This is important and make sure your company is listed in the correct category. No. 3, Proper documents for your LLC to insulate you from liability and operating agreement. Real address and phone number are key for legitimacy and future funding needs. 

Matt’s Review:

Think we’ve seen this guy in other videos before. He’s always walking so fast, kinda out of breath, giving this advice like he’s on the way to go put out a fire right before he gives us a talk about how to set up our LLC. I don’t really understand that but as far as his advice – first naming your business. Yes, you don’t wanna infringe on anybody’s trademark but I also think you don’t wanna overstress about thinking about your business name. The name of the business is not a big deal to its success, right? Google is a trillion-dollar company but it also could be something that two guys run out of their garage, right? Google doesn’t mean anything and the name by itself doesn’t really carry any weight and only carries weight because they were successful. But it really could have been anything. So overthinking the name and expecting that the name is gonna have a huge impact on how successful the business is I think is a mistake. Apple, right, is another huge company. Apple could sell anything, it doesn’t actually even sell apples, it has no relationship to apples. So how they became a giant you know computer industry pillar company, who knows. It wasn’t because of the name. So there are some products that the name is what helps sell it, but I wouldn’t spend a lot of time stressing about the name. If you think you might be infringe – just do a quick US PTO search, US Patent Trademark Office search, just to make sure that name isn’t taken, the exact name you want isn’t taken by something else. But that’s a very quick exercise, I wouldn’t stress over. I wouldn’t say that’s critical to your total business success. If you screwed up, pick somebody else’s name, you can always change it later, and keep on going your – as long as your business is solid your customers aren’t gonna be too upset.

Then the second thing he said was get the right company category. I don’t understand, I mean well he also said your business could be red flag for your name. I guess if your name was We Sell Cocaine, yes, maybe you be might be red flag but – And I can’t think of too many other names that are gonna cause a problem with your business getting a loan or getting investors or whatever because of the name of the business. Unless it’s just something totally outrageous like that. Same thing with the business category, right? I can – we do accounting but if my NAICS code accidentally said we did plumbing or refrigerator repair or long haul trucking, nothing gonna get screwed up. I would just go and re-categorize it the next time I filed my tax return and on we’d go. Not a big deal at all. And again I don’t see you getting denied funding from investors or banks because your code doesn’t exactly match what you do. Obviously try to get that right but I mean the whole tip about that doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. 

And then the last thing he was talking about was having the correct paperwork for your LLC. Again yes, grab some boilerplate documents if it’s just you. If you’re a single-member LLC there’s nobody really to argue with. On the other hand, if you have partners, then yes, take the time to make sure you properly documented who’s contributing what, who’s doing what, what happens in the event that you close the business, or split up, or disagree, or sell the business. Those are all key things to figure out. But you know that should be part of your overall business strategy anyway. So hopefully you are taking care of that. But if you’re just a one-person business again boilerplate forms are gonna be fine. Having the LLC is gonna offer protection and the rest of it. Don’t spend thousands of dollars with a lawyer most likely asterisk this is not legal advice, it kind of is but it isn’t, you don’t need to spend thousands and thousands of dollars drawing up custom documents for your LLC when you can use boilerplate documents just as well if it’s just you running the business in 99% of the cases.