Operations • Explain how business will be managed on a day to day basis. • Discuss hiring and personnel procedures. • Account for equipment necessary to produce your products or services. • Account for production and delivery of products and services.

Concluding Statement • Summarize your business goals and objectives and express your commitment to success of your business

Ok, you have your rough draft business plan together and you are interested in incorporating! Here’s next step… research, research, research! As I mentioned in beginning of this article, in today’s society our access to enormous amount of information that exists gives us a great advantage. It is time to start thinking about your legal structure and type of organization that will best suit your needs, not just now, but for successful future you are seeking. I have listed below some information to consider when you begin thinking about incorporation. Another option is to use a full service consulting firm who can give you advice from different perspectives, such as legal and tax implications, as well as expansion management.

When organizing a new business, one of most important decisions to be made is choosing structure of a business. Factors influencing your decision about your business organization include:

Legal restrictions Liabilities assumed Type of business operation Earnings distribution Capital needs

The easiest form of incorporation is Sole Proprietorship. It also is least expensive and has least barriers to incorporation. The majority of small businesses start out as sole proprietorships; sole proprietors own all assets and profits of company. The business is easy to dissolve, if desired, which can also be a benefit. The downside, is that that sole proprietors have unlimited liability and are legally responsible for all debts against business. In addition, they may be at a disadvantage in raising funds and are often limited to using funds from personal savings or consumer loans.

Another very popular form of incorporating is Partnership. A partnership is easy to organize but must have an agreement. In a partnership, partners have unlimited liability; however they receive all income from business. With more than one partner, ability to raise funds is increased, but since decisions are shared disagreements can occur.

The last form of legal structure is corporation. The corporation is considered by law to be a unique entity separate from those who own it. A business may incorporate without an attorney, but advice is highly recommended. The corporate structure is usually most complex and more costly to organize than other two business formations. Control depends on stock ownership. Persons with largest stock ownership, not total number of shareholders, control corporation. Shareholders have limited liability for corporation’s debt’s or judgments against them.

The process of incorporation requires more time and money than other forms of organization and corporations are monitored by federal, state and some local agencies, and as a result may have more paperwork to comply with regulations. There are different structures that may be best suited for your needs, such as C-corporation, Subchapter S-corporation or Limited Liability Corporations. You should seek professional consulting advice before deciding to choose which form of corporation is most applicable to your business.

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Example: "our business must grow" is an obscure, non-measurable objective. What exactly should we measure in order to find out if objective was met? But if we change it to "our business must grow in sales volume with 20%", we've got one measurable objective: measure being percentage sales rise from present moment to given moment in future. We can calculate this very easy, based on recorded sales figures.

3. Be ATTAINABLE!

Some use term "achievable" instead of "attainable", which you will see it is merely a synonym and we should not get stuck in analyzing which one is correct. Both are.

It is understood that each leader will want his company / unit to give outstanding performances; this is spirit of competition and such thinking is much needed. However, when setting objectives, one should deeply analyze first factors determining success or failure of these objectives. Think of your team, of your capacities, of motivation: are they sufficient in order for objectives to be met? Do you have means and capabilities to achieve them?

Think it through and be honest and realistic to yourself: are you really capable of attaining goals you've set or are you most likely headed to disappointment? Always set objectives that have a fair chance to be met: of course, they don't need to be "easily" attained, you're entitled to set difficult ones as long as they're realistic and not futile.

Example: you own a newborn movers company and you set objective of "becoming no. 1 movers within state". The problem is you only have 3 trucks available, while all your competitors have 10 and up. Your goal is not attainable; try instead a more realistic one, such as "reaching Top 5 fastest growing movers company in state".

4. Be RELEVANT!

This notion is a little more difficult to be perceived in its full meaning; therefore we will start explaining it by using an example in first place.

Imagine yourself going to IT department and telling them they need to increase profit to revenue ratio by 5%. They will probably look at you in astonishment and mumble something undistinguished about managers and way they mess up with people’s minds.

Can you tell what is wrong with objective above? Of course! The IT department has no idea what you were talking about and there's nothing they can do about it - their job is to develop and maintain your computerized infrastructure, not to understand your economic speech. What you can do it setting an objective that IT department can have an impact upon, and which will eventually lead to increase you wanted in first place. What about asking them to reduce expenditures for hardware and software by 10% monthly and be more cautious with consumables within their department by not exceeding allocated budget? They will surely understand what they need to do because objective is relevant for their group.

Therefore, quality of an objective to be "relevant" refers to setting appropriate objectives for a given individual or team: you need to think if they can truly do something about it or is it irrelevant for job they perform.

5. Be TIMELY!

No much to discuss about this aspect, since it is probably easiest to be understood and applied.

Any usable and performable objective must have a clear timeframe of when it should start and/or when it should end. Without having a timeframe specified, it is practically impossible to say if objective is met or not.

For example, if you just say "we need to raise profit by 500000 units", you will never be able to tell if objective was achieved or not, one can always say "well, we’ll do it next year". Instead, if you say "we need to raise profit by 500000 units within 6 months from now", anyone can see in 6 months if goal was attained or not. Without a clear, distinct timeframe, no objective is any good.