Welcome to the launch of Making it Legal – The Small Business Mentor’s Guide to Entrepreneurship and Law! I’m Nina Kaufman, a small business attorney, occasional stand-up comic, and your guide through the wild, wooly, and wonderful of having a strong legal foundation for your business growth and success.
I know that many women entrepreneurs look forward to receiving legal information about as much as having root canal surgery without anesthetic. No surprise. It’s dull, written in a completely foreign language (might as well be Aramaic), and conceptually thorny. To make matters worse, it’s often delivered with a dry, haughty, “how-can-you-be-so-ignorant-that-you-don’t-know-this� tone. I say, phooey! to all that! My goals for Making it Legal are to:
- Help empower women entrepreneurs to become comfortable with legal issues and advisors
- Demystify the mumbo-jumbo that often surrounds legal concepts
- Share examples of others’ successes and missteps that you can learn from
- Translate the jargon/lingo into plain English
- Serve as an information resource to help you know more
And . . .
- Have fun doing it!
It’s that last point that’s especially important. Yes, entrepreneurship is about learning. It’s about making money. It’s about pursuing a dream. And not every day will be a “gold star� day, that’s for sure. But if you’re not having fun, the days become drudgery. I’ll work to make small business legal issues less scary, less mind-boggling . . . and hopefully bring a smile to your face in the process. In turn, Making it Legal is part of a conversation about how to make your business the best it can be, and I welcome hearing from you. I’m looking forward to building a community with you of empowered women entrepreneurs who enjoy laughing as they learn – even if some of the lessons are hard ones.
To your abundant legal health!
This entry was posted on Monday, April 23rd, 2007 at 5:02 am and is filed under Legal Levity. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.2 Responses to “Laughing While Learning about Law”
Leave a Reply
April 25th, 2007 at 11:08 am
Hi Nina,
Congratulations for your new blog
I found you blog throught entrepreneur.com
Currently I am planning to start my entrepreneur adventure - create a website to sell service.
I am preparing a RFP now, but I haven’t register a business name yet. I am wondering if it is OK to not use a company name to send out RFP to web design companies; or I had better register a legal company name to use in the RFP document? Is there any legal issues involved in RFP in this case?
Thanks a lot!
April 25th, 2007 at 1:59 pm
Dear Explorer:
Thanks for your question! In the U.S., there’s generally no requirement that you register a company name before you start doing business; provided that you are doing business under your own, personal name and not a made-up one, such as Exploring Blogosphere. Just make sure that you’re consistent: if you’re using a “fictitious” name for business, register it and use that name in the RFP. If you’re going by your own name, use that.
Whether you want to do business under your own name, and possibly expose yourself to personal liability, is a whole other issue. Check out my article, “The Top 5 Reasons to Avoid Sole Proprietorship” (available at www.wisecounselpress.com/articles/avoid_sole_proprietorship.html) and consult with an attorney in your area to help you decide what’s best for you.
Enjoy the adventure!