5 Business Beginner Basics

The Momentum Marketing Podcast

Here are the five things that I regret not having in my business when I first started.

Hey, there, I'm Jillian Kendrick and welcome to the Momentum Marketing Podcast. I'm a mama, a wife, an entrepreneur and a three time best selling co-author. In each episode you'll get real world practical advice and strategies and maybe a parenting tip or two along the way. If you're ready to create a business that supports your family and your lifestyle, then you're in the right place.

Before we get started. I need to give a disclaimer that everything you're about to hear is for educational informational purposes only. And for me to be able to share my story. This is not legal advice. This is not accounting advice. This is not money advice. For all of those things please go talk to a lawyer. I have had so much benefit of just paying $100, $200, or whatever it was, to go talk to a lawyer and have those hard conversations because it has saved me so much heartache. But my business might not be exactly like yours. I might be incorporated in a different state than yours, which has different rules than yours. So go talk to a lawyer and make those decisions with the best information possible for you.

Thank you so much for joining me on this episode of the Momentum Marketing Podcast. As always, I am Jillian Kendrick. You already knew that. I hope you're having a great day. I'm having a really good day. Today is my Monday and I'm excited to get started. I've got some new projects going. Lots of things happening in the business. It’s a really, really exciting time and it's definitely giving me tons of energy and inspiration to be working right now and getting things done.

On the table today, we are talking about the five things that I wish I had and regret not having in my business when I first started. I want to walk you through those things, talk about some mistakes, talk about some things that I know now that I wish I knew then. And what that can mean for you and how you can prepare your business and be set up for success right out of the gate.

The very first thing that I wish I had in my business and that I regret not having immediately is incorporating and getting my LLC. An LLC, If you're not familiar, is a limited liability company or limited liability corporation. It just means that you have told the state or country that you live in, or you've told your government, that you are in business and that this is your business entity and you have created it as an entity. Does it really exist? Well, it exists on paper and if you are a contractor or solo prone, it kind of exists on paper. But there's a lot of really good benefits to having your LLC and becoming incorporated that I genuinely wish I knew sooner. And I want to pass that knowledge on to you.

There are two really big things that are huge benefits and protections when you have an LLC that you won't get otherwise. When I first started out in the internet marketing world and this was, gosh, at least 11, almost 12 years ago, I spent the first two years of being in business just being a freelancer out in the world. Taking odd jobs doing what I could to make money. I didn't realize until later on it was about two or three years into what I was doing for a living that I needed to protect myself. That there was always the possibility that I could have a bad client, or I could end a relationship poorly, or I could get sued or that something bad could happen. And people could basically, the person that I worked for, or clients that I had, could then sue me for my personal property because I was just a contractor. I had no idea what it meant to have an LLC. And I really thought it was this pedestal thing that I could achieve someday. But didn't feel like I was either good enough, or experienced enough, or that I was making enough money, or whatever head trash. I was telling myself you need to make a dollar in order to have an LLC, and in order to legitimize yourself as an actual business. In fact, you can make no money and you can still be an LLC. And what an LLC does is exactly in the name. It limits your liability as an entity and as an individual. So what that means is if somebody were to turn around and sue you for whatever reason, loss of damages, loss of property, anything like that, if you have an LLC, if you are incorporated, they can only sue you for the assets owned by that LLC and creditors.

If you were to default or something, creditors can only come after you for the assets owned by that LLC. You personally cannot be sued when you are doing business as an LLC. If I were to knock on wood, it has never happened. Thank God. But if I were to get sued by a previous client or, or somebody else for whatever reason, because I'm an LLC, because I've incorporated in the state of Florida, someone can only sue me for whatever my business is worth whatever assets I have in the business. And if those were to be liquidated, right? If I were to like, sell off my office supplies and my computer and my microphone and my mouse and all of this stuff that would be totally worthless. Anyway, somebody can only sue me for what my actual business would be. They can't take my house, right. They can't take my car, they can't come after me personally. They would have to sue me personally in order to do that. So, having an LLC really protects you in a lot of ways from creditors or lawsuits and their ability to either seize assets or sue you for only what the business could actually pay, not you personally.

And the other big reason to have an LLC or to incorporate yourself is the tax benefits. Sure. As a subcontractor, as a contracted worker, as a freelancer, there are things that you can deduct from your taxes. But I believe, and again, talk to a lawyer, talk to an accountant. There's so much more that you can deduct or maybe a greater percentage that you can deduct when you're an official business that you can't do as a contractor. So do yourself a favor, do your due diligence. Get an LLC become incorporated. It's a little bit of money upfront, but I promise you it will save you so much heartache and it will protect you and your family and your personal assets in so many ways.

The second thing that I wish I had and wish I knew about when I first started my business is business insurance. I used to think that insurance was auto insurance or life insurance or health insurance. But there's so much more than that. If JLo can insure her butt, then sure enough, you can insure your business. And there are a couple of different types of insurance policies that you'll want to be aware of. And as always, talk to a lawyer or talk to an insurance broker who is specific in business or small business insurance before moving forward with any of these. So the first is gonna be general liability insurance or GLI. This is really just an umbrella type of insurance that kind of protects you in your business. This will protect from bodily injury to someone else, property damage, personal injury liable, slander. The second is going to be commercial property insurance. So this wouldn't necessarily be applicable to me because I don't have a brick and mortar, I don't have a front business face. I do everything online. But if I did or if I rented a property or if I owned a property that I conducted business at. I would want to have commercial property insurance that would then protect the property that I either owned or rented. Plus it can protect equipment and other things that are necessary to run your business. You might also consider commercial flood insurance. There might be tornado insurance. There might be earthquake insurance, there might be other types of insurance that are specific to the area that you live in. Or where you conduct business. The next is Business Income Insurance, BII, and this is not covered under property damage if I remember correctly, but this can actually replace your lost income if you had an interruption in income. For whatever reason you had ongoing expenses like rent, utility bills, pay et cetera that you needed help with business income insurance can help with that. I don't know all of the ins and outs of it, but talk to an insurance broker and they can get you more information. The next is professional liability insurance. This is also called errors and omissions insurance. And this is really, really important. It can help cover with lawsuits claimed by mistakes that are made, omissions that were made if you forgot to do something because we're all human and we all make mistakes, professional liability or errors in emissions insurance is going to help cover that. Workers' compensation is another one you've probably heard of workers' comp or workers' comp cases where somebody could get sick or injured on the job and this would help pay medical bills, lost wages, funeral costs, ongoing care, physical therapy, injury, illness, stuff like that. And most states who have employees are required to carry some type of workers comp policy, but you need to check it out for your specific specific state and know exactly what you need for your individual business. The next is data breach or data, some kind of a data or cyber policy insurance. So this helps if you have a data breach. If you have data that is personally identifiable to another human being if that gets lost or stolen, or if your computer gets hacked, if your email and passwords get hacked, and these hackers have access to data that could be yours or your clients or your customers fiber insurance or data breach insurance is going to cover stuff like that. It will help notify impacted individuals. It will offer identity theft monitoring services and it will help with the public relations that you might need in order to rectify your data breach. The next is commercial umbrella insurance.

This would extend the coverage limits of some of your other liability policies. So if a claim exceeds the limit of your policy, so say somebody sues you for a million dollars and your insurance only covers you up to half a million or $750,000 or something like that. Then this would then cover the remaining portion of that and it would really just help you cover that difference right? There might be some other things I'm not super familiar about it, but as always talk to somebody else who's way smarter than me in those departments. And the last one is going to be commercial auto insurance. So if you have a vehicle. Not a vehicle that you use. For instance, I own my own vehicle and I use it now and again for work purposes, this is not part of that. Commercial auto insurance is if the company is, if your business entity is the legal owner of a vehicle and it could be a golf cart, it could be a limousine, it could be a bus, it could be a car, it could be a truck, some sort of equipment, whatever it is. If the business owns that vehicle and you need to be protected because you or some of your employees or contractors are using that vehicle for work, then commercial auto insurance would be highly recommended in that particular case. But again, you cannot be the owner of that vehicle, I believe and ask an insurance professional. I believe the business would have to own that car or that bus or that truck or that vehicle in order for this to be applicable. But talk to an insurance expert on that one. So I really, really wish I would have known about insurance. Again, knock on wood, I have never had to use it. I have it, it's relatively inexpensive compared to the risk of being sued. I highly recommend you get some kind of insurance policy.

The next thing you want to have on your website specifically is a privacy policy. This is gonna be really, really important for you to share and be transparent about the way that you collect information and data from your users, from clients, customers. And whether or not you share that information with a third party or could potentially sell that information to other companies, businesses or organizations. So having a privacy policy is really, really important because not only does it help you be transparent with the way that you collect and use and possibly share or sell data, but it also helps you be transparent and open and honest with your customers so that they can understand exactly what they're getting involved in when they choose to either use your website or choose to do business with you. And ultimately, I really do believe that this helps protect you. Now, whether or not you can make up your own privacy policies, how that all works. Talk to a lawyer. But when you have a policy in place and when it's shared, when it's on your website, when you're upfront and honest with your customers and your clients about the way in which you do business that just makes it so that they can then choose to do business or not to do business with you based on the policies that you have and it protects you because then you're upfront about the way in which you're using someone's data and really for all policies in general, you want to have that transparency, the next policy that you want to have.

And the fourth thing on my list is a refund policy. You want to explain in detail and in my opinion, talk to a lawyer. But in my opinion, stuff like refund policies should be written in layman's terms as a consumer. I hate when I look at a refund policy and it's miles long, it shouldn't take an advanced law degree for me as a consumer to understand how I can or cannot get a refund and what that process would be. So talk to a lawyer for whatever you need to do for your business entity, for your state, for your country. But I firmly believe in refund policies and most policies in general being written in as clear and plain of language that is humanly possible. You want to explain things like the eligibility or requirements for a refund, the types of refunds that are given the time frame in which someone can receive a refund and what the refund process is or could look like for someone who's going to go through that process with you. This really does just help you be completely transparent with people who are choosing to do business with you.

The last thing that you need that I really wish I would have known sooner in business is a terms and conditions policy. These are ultimately set forth to protect you, the business owner. They give you the opportunity to set rules where applicable with the laws of your local state and federal governments. And they really detail the conduct in which you are doing business, the context in which you are willing to do business and the context in which your service or product is going to be shared sold the copyright conditions, limitations governing law rights policies, reservations that just ultimately lay out the way in which you do business and the way in which you conduct yourself and the applicable law for state, local and federal governments to which you are doing business. And it really does help protect you because anybody who is not willing to agree to your terms and conditions, they don't need to do business with you, period. It's that simple. You want terms and conditions that protect you, the business and you the business owner, but you also want terms and conditions that are fair to the customer or to your client. So make sure that you speak with a lawyer to figure out the best terms and conditions for your business.

And those are my five things that I wish I had known about in business much, much sooner. I hope that this has helped you as always. If you haven't watched my latest training, how I get over 600 leads every single month, go ahead to jilliankendrick.com/webinar and you can get access to that immediately. As soon as you sign up and hit the sign up button, you'll go ahead to the page with the video on it and you can watch it right there. There's closed captioning if you need that as well. And definitely make sure that you check that out because that will also subscribe you to my newsletter where you can get the most up to date information about what's going on in the marketing and business world.

Thank you so much for joining me on this episode of the Momentum Marketing Podcast. As always, if listening to this has brought you any value, improved your life, or given you insight on how to build your own momentum in your business, then please share it with a friend. And I will see you on the next episode.

The Momentum Marketing Podcast By Jillian Kendrick Episode: # 23 Topic: 5 Business Beginner Basics Contact: [e-mail] IG: instagram.com/automatedmamajilliankendrick.com/webinar