January 7, 2021 – Business Entity Setup & Convertible Laptops

It's January 7, 2021. When will 2020 EVER be over?

Business Entity Considerations

After yesterday's events, I feel like I need some time away in the mountains. I fear it's only going to get worse. Maybe even wind up with President Joe Biden getting assassinated.

Geez, people, settle down.

Anyway, you didn't come here for politics and I'm not really enjoying writing about it here. Presumably, you're here to learn about marketing, technology, and running a business.

So that's what we'll talk about today. Pick one. Go ahead, pick one.

Okay, good choice.

Running a business is serious stuff. It's not for the faint-of-heart. If THIS is your business, you know right now, especially after the tumultuous year 2020 was, that a LOT can go haywire and you need to get your ducks in a row at lightspeed.

I'm not here to give you legal advice. Find a lawyer or Legal Zoom to do that. There are many ways to set up a small business entity, from a legal entity standpoint, but there are three basic ways:

1. Sole proprietor
2. Limited Liability Company
3. Corporation

As I said earlier, I'm not going to give you legal advice. I will tell you the easiest one to set up is a sole proprietorship. You really don't need to do much. You may have to file for a fictitious business name. Then you track everything as an individual would.

From my non-legal perspective, this is the ONLY business I want to run. I've had a corporation and it was a pain in the ass. It was also fairly costly and was bogged down by red tape and taxes (great name for a country band).

When I was getting my MBA, I had a professor who swore by LLCs. He said they were easier to set and administer (compared to a corporation) and just slightly more difficult than a sole proprietorship, with the added and important benefit of insulating you personally from legal liability for some things.

I don't know if that was true then, or now, so look into it yourself. It may be the “Goldilock's ‘just right'” solution.

I don't know.

New Laptop

Moving on…my new laptop arrived after taking a very circuitous journey around the globe. It started in China, hit Alaska, then California, then a couple states in the South, back to California (it missed the sunshine), and finally to Washington.

It's nice! The AMD processor seems to be far more powerful than the Intel i7 I have in my behemoth that I hated carrying around. It's a convertible (so can be a large tablet) with a touchscreen, SSD “hard drive,” and 16MB of RAM.

It's certainly no gaming laptop or business workhorse, but I didn't need or want either. It came in at an awesome price point and it's fully capable (and then some) of running everything I want it to run.

So I'm happy with it so far.

I was going to get the top of the line Google Pixelbook Go. It specs out nearly the same as my HP but with a 13.3-inch screen instead of the 15.6-inch I got. Mine folds into a tablet; I don't think the Pixelbook Go does. The Pixelbook's battery runs longer (up to 12 hours!) whereas the HP Envy may be lucky to get half that.

The Google product may have a better camera, but I really don't care.

Oh, and my HP was less than half the price.

Always buy what you need. Nothing more. Nothing less.

Do these two stories relate in any way? Yes.

Get what you need. Not a bit more and certainly not less.

Keep that in mind when you set up your business entity and when buying equipment.

The article was originally published here!