I think sometimes it can be really easy to look at the established business owners in our space or look at your mentors and think, why didn't I know why don't I know all the things that they know? Or, you know, I wish I could go back and do things the way that they're saying from the beginning and have the experience that they have and all of that. So today I just wanted to share three things that I would have done differently if I was starting my business over. And these are legal things that you would think that I should have known, but they come from experience. That the law books couldn't necessarily teach me, that even working with other small business owners couldn't teach me. These are things that I had to learn by doing it. And so now I want to tell you about them. One, to give you, you know, the benefit of my experience, but also to show you that even the experts don't get it all right from the beginning from the first time. All that or in general, they don't always get it right. So we're gonna talk about three things that I would do differently if I was starting my business over again. And I just want to throw in one thing I would do the same because I'm proud of myself for doing it that way. Alright, let's do it. Hey, I'm Amy Nessheim, licensed attorney for online business owners and founder of my own business, Artful Contracts. You're listening to Legal Made Easy, the show that makes the legal aspects of online business easy to understand and implement so you can grow your business with confidence knowing you've got it all covered. Let's dive in. Alright, we're just gonna dive right into these three things. So the first one, if I was going back and starting my business over again, I think I would not choose a business name right away. So I chose my business name, Artful Contracts, before I did pretty much anything else. I thought that I had to have a business name in order to get started. I had to have something that created an identity for the business that was separate from myself. And I think that that's valid. There are reasons for wanting to do it that way. But if I were doing it again, I probably would not. And here's the reasons for that. So, first, my business has changed a lot since my initial concept. I originally thought that my target audience was going to be wedding professionals. I thought I was gonna do like wedding contracts for wedding vendors because that's the first place I saw the gap. Like knew them and had seen their contracts and knew that that was a problem that they had. But I didn't, I didn't know like about the whole online space at that point. So I thought it would be wedding professionals, and I also thought I was going to just be selling contract templates, and so that informed my choice of naming my business Artful Contracts, because of you know, the creative side of the wedding business is the artful and then the contracts. I thought it was just gonna be contracts. Fast forward three years and I do a lot more teaching. I have courses, I have trainings, I offer trademark services. My business is a lot more than just contract templates, and sometimes I feel like my business name does a disservice to all of the other things that I offer. Not to say that I'm going to change it. I still really like it and I like where it came from. But if I were starting over, I would probably give myself more time to figure out where I was going to land in terms of niche, in terms of offerings, before picking a name. And for a coach, for a service provider, that is especially true. You don't have to have a cute business name, you don't have to have a business name at all. You can start offering your services just with your name, and that gives you time to figure out where you're going to land. It gives you more flexibility because people expect a personal brand to evolve more, I think, than they expect a named brand to change. And then the other thing on that is I didn't do a whole lot of like research. I didn't, I mean, I made sure that the name was not already used by my would-be competitors, but I didn't consider I didn't put a whole lot of thought into the impression the name would give, or if I could trademark it, or the longevity of the name, or anything like that. It wasn't a super strategic decision. So I think I would just go back. If I were to go back, I would give myself more time to think it through to get settled in my business before choosing a name. And legally speaking, on that, if you start with your personal name as your business name, it's easier to add on a brand name than it is to start with a brand name and then change it. There's just more steps involved. Alright, that brings me to the second thing that I would do differently. So if I were to start over again, I would be a lot more intentional with my finances at the beginning. So what I mean by that is I did not have a good idea of what the expenses were of starting my business. So things like the LLC filing fee, the domain name, software that I had to use. I paid for Shopify, that kind of thing. And then also like all of the courses that I took. I took so many courses to like figure all this stuff out. So I kind of first my mom gave me the money to uh file for the LLC, which I'm super grateful for, and I did pay her back. But for the other things, I put a lot of it on credit cards, you know, you do what you gotta do, right? But that is a problem, or it is at least something I have learned from because what I should have done, or what I would do differently, is establish a budget, give myself a budget of okay, I'm willing to spend X amount of dollars on this business before I start bringing any income in, because of course there's going to be expenses before there's income. And you can limit that, that can be pretty low, but I would just be more intentional and set an amount, and then I would I would make that amount, my initial owner's contribution to my LLC so that I could be really clear that all the money was coming through the LLC. So, to explain that a little bit more, once you have an LLC, all of your business money that's coming in and out of your business should be going through your LLC. Like many new business owners, I was not great at that. Yes, I admit it. I tell people not to do it all the time, but I did it myself. I use my personal credit card to pay for you know my domain and all that stuff. And I did get a business card pretty early on, but not right away. So, two ways you can do this. If you have the cash, do an owner's contribution. When you create your LLC, you can give money, an initial investment to your LLC so that your LLC has money, it has cash to pay for those initial expenses. And that does a couple things. It gives you a budget, you have a certain amount of money that you can spend, and it also makes sure that that line in between your personal assets and your business assets is really clear and you're only spending money out of your business and you're not paying for some things with your personal card, some things with your business money, and you're not just setting up the LLC but not doing anything with it because there's no money in it yet. So funding it from the gate, from funding it from the get-go helps you keep that line really clear. Now, if you don't have cash, like I didn't have cash at the beginning to put into my LLC, which is why I didn't do that. You can get a business credit card. So you get a business credit card that is tied to your business, it's separate from your personal cards, and so that keeps all the transactions clear. You will have to pay it off, so it depends on how confident you are in the timeline of when you're going to make money versus when that credit card bill is due. So don't get yourself into a bad situation there, but it is an option. And just as an aside, I think credit is a great kind of overlooked tool in business. Big businesses use it all the time, and it's great for cash flow. It just helps you manage. I have an expense today, an income tomorrow. You put it on the credit card and pay it off when the money comes in. And you have to just be really on top of it and careful about it. But it is a really important tool for when your cash flow is inconsistent and just managing those ups and downs that we face as entrepreneurs. Anyways, that's an aside. But that second thing is that I would create a budget and contribute that amount of cash to my business right from the get-go to my LLC right from the beginning, so that I have a clear amount of money to go towards startup costs. And you can do that more than once too. You can do a capital contribution anytime your business needs more money. I'll put the episode where I talked about it in more detail in the show notes so you can I would talk through the whole process there. Okay, that brings me to the third and final thing I would do differently if I was starting my business owner over again. And that is I guess all of these things are coming back to being more intentional from the beginning. I was really winging it. Um, but I would be more intentional about mapping out my offerings and creating contracts for each specific offering. So I did not go into this business expecting to offer services. I was planning on being like fully um fully digital product based, but I ended up deciding to offer services. It was something that people asked for, so I did it. So that's what happened. People, I didn't have contracts, I didn't have offerings. I had people asking for things, and then I was like, Yeah, I could do that. So that meant that I was not intentional about mapping out my boundaries, the rules for working with me. I just kind of received an inquiry and then created a contract right for that person. So if I was doing it over again, I would create offerings, create packages, and then offer those. And yes, it makes sense when at the beginning to respond to what people ask for, it's something like it helps you get business if you're responsive to what people want. So I'm not saying put blinders on and ignore those requests, but if you create a contract ahead of time based on clear boundaries and expectations that you've mapped out, instead of just jumping on the next inquiry and being responsive and reactive to it, you are in a much better place to outline your expectations, to outline the client's expectations, to put boundaries around your offerings in terms of you know, number of provisions, timelines, refunds, what happens if a client goes to, all of that kind of thing. So that's a two-fold process. It's deciding what your offering is going to be, and then creating a contract for that offering before you even have a client for it, so that you're not rushing when you do get that client to create something that is not thought through, that doesn't have everything you need in it. This is one of those places where being proactive can really pay off. Alright, so the one thing that I am proud of myself for doing and that I would do over again is that I created an LLC before I did anything else in my business. Before I had my website, before I even knew what I was gonna sell, I created my LLC. And I know that's not gonna be the right decision for everyone necessarily, and it also heavily depends on the state that you're in. I lived in New Hampshire at the time, so it was really cheap. It was only$100 to form the LLC, so that's a no-brainer. If you're somewhere like Illinois or California, it's going to be a lot more expensive, and so it might be more of a pro-con weighing decision. But here's why I decided to form the LLC right away, and why that made sense for me, even though I had to borrow the money to do it. And just as a quick explanation of that, yes, I had a law firm job, yes, I was making good money, but I was in a financially controlling relationship, and that person didn't want me to do this. So my mom was like, go follow your dreams. Here's a hundred dollars to form your LLC. And right around the same time I got out of that relationship, so that's all good now. But, anyways, here's why I decided to form the LLC right away. Number one, I owned a house, and the number one reason to form an LLC is to protect your personal assets from the risks of doing business. I had an asset to protect. Number two, my business I thought was relatively risky. Providing any type of professional service that requires licensure, that has rules involved, where you're dealing with people's livelihood, it's it's relatively more risky. And I would also say anything health related, anything that you're really diving into people's personal lives. So if you're dealing with people's personal lives or their money, then that's relatively risky in my view. Also, anything to do with children, if you are doing high-ticket sales or if you are anticipating a super high volume, all of that adds risk to your business. So that's all reasons to have the LLC. And the other reason, so number one, does it make sense? You know, do you have assets to protect or do you have risk in your business? And then number two, it's a lot easier if you're planning on forming an LLC at some point anyway. It's a lot easier to just start right from the beginning with the LLC than it is to do the transition. You absolutely can if you already started as a sole proprietor without the LLC, you absolutely can make the transition later whenever you're ready, but it is just simpler to not have to do that. All right, so as a quick recap, the three things that I would do differently is that I would probably not choose a business name right away. I would create a budget for my startup costs and do an owner's contribution. So all that money is in my LLC and I know when it's gone. And third, I would map out my offerings and create contracts specific for each offering, each package, even if I don't have clients for it yet. And then lastly, the thing I would do the same is form an LLC right from the beginning. If this has brought up any questions for you, I'd love to chat about it. DM me on Instagram, my handle is at ArtfulContracts. Is there anything that you have learned that you would do differently if you were starting your business over again? It's such a fun thought experiment, so send me a message around that too. If you want to avoid some of the mistakes that I made, if you want to make sure that your business is legally legit, whether you're just starting out or if you are a little bit into the process, if you've been thinking about forming an LLC but aren't sure how to do it, I would love to invite you to join my annual membership, Cover Your Assets. I have previously offered Cover Your Assets as a lifetime access course, and I just recently have decided to switch it over to a membership model. Accessibility has always been one of my main, one of the main drivers of this business. One of my core values at Artful Contracts is accessibility. And as a lifetime access course, I had to charge a lot more for cover assets, and I felt like it was getting too far away from that value of accessibility. So we have transitioned over to an open enrollment annual membership to keep that monthly cost low, relatively speaking, and make it more accessible to everyone and kind of decrease the urgency. We're not gonna do um open closed doors launches anymore. We'll have launches with some extra bonuses, but I wanted to take away some of that pressure and just make it more available so that you can join whenever you're ready. So Cover Your Assets is open for enrollment now and will remain open. Inside the membership, we there is a three-phase course. It has like 37 videos and it walks through all of the things to get your business legally legit, setting up your LLC, setting up your contracts, and then everything external to your business, like your website, your marketing, all the things that bring clients in, trademarks, etc. And to go along with that, to make sure that you can implement everything, there is a template vault that has over 30 legal templates so that you don't have to draft anything from scratch. We also have two enrollment levels for that. The self-study option allows you to go through at your own pace if you're not someone who needs support, and then the complete experience option includes support from me with monthly legal workshops and coaching calls so you can ask questions and get more guidance as you go through the program. If you have any questions about cover your assets, if you want to make sure it's a good fit for you, feel free to DM me on Instagram. And if you're ready to join, go to the link in the show notes to check it out. It's artfulcontracts.comslash C Y A. Alright, that's it for today. I'll see you next time.