Monday, June 6, 2011

The Small Business Start-Up Kit: A Step-By-Step Legal Guide By Peri H. Pakroo J.D.

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The Small Business Start-Up Kit: A Step-by-Step Legal Guide

The Small Business Start-Up Kit: A Step-by-Step Legal Guide
By Peri H. Pakroo J.D.

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(18 customer reviews)

Product Description

The best step-by-step guide to starting a business available!

Many people dream of running a business of their own -- but often don't know how to start. Sound familiar? This book can help.

User-friendly and loaded with tips, The Small Business Start-Up Kit shows you how to launch a business quickly, easily and with confidence. It explains in plain English how to:

  • choose the best business structure
  • write an effective business plan
  • file the right forms in the right place
  • price, bid and bill your projects
  • draft and use contracts, online and off
  • manage your finances
  • be prepared for, and file, required taxes
  • reach customers online

    The Small Business Start-Up Kit also includes all the forms and instructions you need both as tear-outs and on CD-ROM.

    The 6th edition has been thoroughly updated to include the latest legal information affecting small business. Additionally, it includes 1) an updated chapter on financial management, which includes information on how to use technology to manage bookkeeping and other business aspects, 2) an updated e-business chapter which covers how to use social media to promote the business and, 3) updated material on the latest search engine optimization strategies to drive traffic to the business website.
  • Product Details
    • Amazon Sales Rank: #15783 in Books
    • Published on: 2010-03-12
    • Original language: English
    • Number of items: 2
    • Dimensions: .74" h x 8.40" w x 10.84" l, 1.90 pounds
    • Binding: Paperback
    • 368 pages

    Features

    • ISBN13: 9781413310993
    • Condition: New
    • Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!
    Editorial Reviews

    About the Author
    Peri Pakroo is a business and communications consultant, specializing in legal and start-up issues for businesses and nonprofits. She has started, participated in, and consulted with start-up businesses for 20 years. She owns and runs P-Brain Media (www.pbrainmedia.com), a strategic consulting and communications firm that develops information-rich media for web, print, video and other formats. Peri received her law degree from the University of New Mexico School of Law in 1995. She is the author of The Women's Small Business Start-Up Kit, The Small Business Start-Up Kit (national and California editions) and Starting and Building a Nonprofit ( all from Nolo), and has been featured in numerous national publications including Entrepreneur, Real Simple, Investors Business Daily, and BusinessWeek. Peri teaches adult education courses at WESST (www.wesst.org) in Albuquerque, a nonprofit whose mission is to facilitate entrepreneurship among women and minorities in the state of New Mexico. She is active in supporting local, independent businesses and is a co-founder of the Albuquerque Independent Business Alliance. Visit Peri's blog at www.peripakroo.com.

    Customer Reviews

    Most helpful customer reviews

    20 of 20 people found the following review helpful.
    5Great book that will save you more than it cost you
    By Dave
    As much as I like this book it is not exactly "everything you need to start a small business." On the other hand it is a well written and comprehensive guide that really does use plain English to explain a lot of obtuse steps and pitfalls. You will almost certainly need more professional help than you can get from this book, but this book does a pretty good job of guiding you to the help you need and avoiding the help you don't. That can translate into a lot of saved attorney's fees right off the bat. One less billed hour from your attorney will pay for this book. In that sense if you are starting a new business this book is pretty much free.

    The author is a law-school grad and business consultant who specializes in working with startups. She has written and edited other books for Nolo. All this comes out both the clarity of the writing and the command of the subject matter she clearly has. The book does a good job of covering all of the basics, and starts wisely with the most important topic: picking the right legal structure (which can save you a lot of pain later in the process). She moves on from there and touches on everything from taxes to marketing. Along the way you will find areas where you need to dig deeper, either with professional help or by getting additional guides (which Nolo of course, is happy to sell you). Nolo has been in this business for 40 odd years and stands out as one of the best in these business of "business self-help" books. One I would suggest as a companion to this is their excellent "How to Write a Business Plan" guide. This book has a section on business plans, but if you are going to be pitching your business to potential investors you're going to need more. If you are just writing a plan to clarify your business model to yourself (a good idea) this book alone is enough.

    The included software, while handy for things like some basic legal forms, is no replacement for professional software or legal help. It is nice to see what kinds of forms you are going to need and that can focus you on exactly what you need to get out of an attorney. It's amazing how much money you can save when you already know exactly what you want.

    All in all a priceless aid to starting up a new business.

    8 of 8 people found the following review helpful.
    4Small Business Owners, as well as Would-Be Small Business Owners, Need this Guide
    By L. Gildart
    This is one of the best guides Nolo publishes. It is exquisitely plain-spoken and easy to read, and 99% of the advice is unimpeachable. The framework for deciding what form your business should take is excellent and accurate. The guide contains highly detailed plain English explanations of income, payroll, sales, and state and municipal tax implications, right down to the tax treatment of the sale of a home that was used partly for business.

    That is a deep discussion of the subject matter, and it's thoroughly painless, as is the explanation of how to determine whether people who work for you are employees (for whom you must withhold and pay various taxes) or independent contractors. Again, it's extremely well-written and to the point, with an easy-to-follow structure.

    I docked one star from the review for two reasons. One, the book is supposed to have forms, and it does, but they are not particularly helpful forms. Many of them are easily found on web search engines and free to download from government websites. The forms are still helpful, but you do not get much guidance as to when you will need more forms than what you have and where you will be able to find them.

    The second reason I did not give this book five stars is that it fils to mention some of the potential pitfalls of the advice it gives. For example, the author advocates for businesses to draft employee handbooks and refers the reader out to another Nolo publication. A sample included on the forms cd-rom would have been helpful, but even more helpful would have been mentioning that using an employee handbook can create, and has created, more problems than it solves for employers who (a) cannot draft clear text and (b) do not always follow their own rules.

    4 of 4 people found the following review helpful.
    5No reason to pass on this book
    By J. Offenbach
    NOLO has once again produced an easy to follow, basic approach to a subject which provides a lot information in a presentable format and includes resources on a CD. Although many of the forms are readily available online, having the CD is handy. Obviously, this book is not the equivalent of an MBA, but it's definitely worth the price! As a small business owner, I found The Small Business Start-Up Kit offered me much information to help the business operate and I explored areas where I had been completely ignorant. I'd recommend this not only to those who are considering the start of a small business, but to sole proprietors like myself who have not fully developed their businesses. It offers a very realistic and practical approach to developing a business from conception to operation.

    http://astore.amazon.com/amazon-book-books-20/detail/1413310990

     

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