Published on: 17 October 2018
Last Updated on: 02 March 2020
If you’re thinking of becoming an entrepreneur, you probably already have the motivation and guts to do so, but do you have the right knowledge and the right amount of capital?
Many Latinos have the drive and initiative to become entrepreneurs. This comes with many perks including consistency, hard work and an innate ability to be resilient and not stop at the potential of obstacles. But entrepreneurs often lack the proper information about how much it costs to start a business. For example, how many funds will I need upfront? How much do I have to invest from my own savings and how much will come to from a bank loan? How many employees will I have to pay? The cost always varies depending on the field. Usually, the industries with the largest profits are also those that require more expenses and ongoing investments: land, facilities, infrastructure, and major manufacturing equipment. Unless you’re starting a business solo as a freelancer or business consultant, there are a plethora of costs involved with starting a business.
Let’s start with a concrete example. If you are thinking of launching your own Mexican restaurant, what initial expenses should you consider? Well, first off you have to pay yourself. What will your salary look like? Then, estimate your business cost by creating a business plan. How many employees will you employ and at what hourly rate? What is the hourly rate for your state? How much do you have to invest in to make the restaurant appealing to customers including equipment and supply costs? All of these factors should be a top consideration in your mind and in your business plan. Having your own business means having to take care of your employees as well.
You will also have to consider administrative charges such as the fees you need to pay your state for being a business entity. Many companies opt to become a corporation, a process that can cost roughly around $100 – $250 in fees depending on the state. Franchise tax fees can cost an additional $800 to $1,000, with government filing fees adding an extra $50 to $100 to your expenses.
Plus, you cannot forget rent! In pricey areas, you can be coughing up around $50-$60 per square foot. That’s just an example, but the price varies depending on location and state. And, finally, insurance. Insurance is a pivotal part of business as you want to be sure you’re operating from a place in which you’re protected from liabilities. In an atmosphere where so many diners come and go day-by-day, insurance is a must-have.
Is your case similar to the one mentioned above? Do you dream of setting up your own business in a different field? Do you want to work for yourself? Whether you’re in the hospitality industry, the freelance industry, or legal, there are a lot of costs you should become aware of before you start. These are some of the questions you should think about and answer before starting your business.
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If you are someone that is looking to start a new business, you would have probably come across the term- LLC or Limited Liability Company. An LLC is an official form of company legal structure, where the business owners are not liable to the official debts that the business accrues over a period.
Forming any business according to any company structure can be an intimidating affair. This is because the paperwork, documentation, bonds, proof, and cheques that are required to be submitted can by themselves become a complex and confusing affair.
This is why companies like ZenBusiness and Rocket Lawyer exist to help business owners set up LLC companies with zero or minimum fuss for small fee payments. In this article, we are going to look at which is the better online platform that you should select by carrying out an in-depth comparative analysis between ZenBusiness and Rocket Lawyer.
Limited Liability Company: Meaning and Definition
In other words, the liability for the downturns or failures of the business does not end up at the doorsteps of the business owners or entrepreneurs. An LLC works to combine the model or a proprietorship with that of a large corporation.
However, it adds to the list of advantages like personal control of proprietorship with zero obligations like a corporation. This means that it is a great model that helps bring in advantages like taxation benefits, personal ownership, and more. This is why an LLC is referred to as a Hybrid Model that combines the features and functions of the two entities.
As you could have guessed by now, LLC company formation is the most sought-after one because of the major advantages it offers. This is why more than 70% of new businesses that open in the United States opt for an LLC legal company structure and formation.
ZenBusiness Versus Rocket Lawyer: Which is the better Online Platform for LLC formation?
For the last few years, businesses that have looked at not hiring a full-time business lawyer have depended on either Zen Business or Rocket Lawyer for their company formation needs. Needless to say, customers have always been made to do a choice between Rocket Lawyer Vs ZenBusiness.
In this section, we are going to pick up some important factors and compare where do the two companies stand-
1. Price Comparisons-
If you are looking to compare solely from the vantage point of prices, then defeating ZenBusiness will be a very tough call. This is because the ZenBusiness charges start at only $39.99 per month legal subscription.
On the other hand, Rocket Lawyers starting subscription stands at a price of $99.99. Both these are just the fees that are charged by the respective companies for their services. You need to add the official state taxes and fees on top of this.
2. Features On Offer-
The starting plan for Rocket Lawyer just comprises LLC registration services for their $99.99 subscription. If you wish to add an agent to help you, the charges will go up significantly by $149. Lastly, if you want some extra templates for agreements, Rocket Lawyer will charge you an extra $39.99!
As against this, ZenBusiness looks to offer all three features for a paltry sum of $39.99. Yes, you read that right. This means that in terms of features to price comparison, there is no denying the fact that ZenBusiness is the better deal to make.
3. Experience and Credibility-
Rocket Lawyer has been in the business of LLC company formation for a very long time. In fact, it has a solid reputation and credibility in the industry. If you go through their company website, you would notice that they claim to have helped 20 million businesses.
I am sure ZenBusiness would not have managed to reach that figure of 20 million in their limited time of existence. The company was started in 2015 and has since then tried to slowly build its own following through competitive prices and excellent service records.
4. Customer and Technical Support-
When it comes to chatting support, both these companies offer them on all 7 days. In this area, we felt that Rocket Lawyer has a slight edge over ZenBusiness. You see Rocket Lawyer offers customer support from 9 to 9 every single day on phone, email, and chat support.
ZenBusiness on the other hand tries to match up to Rocket Lawyer for the weekdays. However, on weekends it offers shortened support between 11 to 8. Here too you get support on chat, email, and phone. Both the support teams are highly professional and dedicated.
5. Add-On Services-
When you look at both these companies, you see that they mostly all services regarding company formation, agent registration, filing taxes, agreement farming, and so on. To that end, there is not a lot of difference between them.
The differences start emerging when you look at additional legal services on offer Rocket Lawyer goes above and beyond mere commercial legal help and extends it to Divorce Settlements, Will Formation, Eviction Notices, Real Estate Deeds, and so on.
The Bottom Line
There are so many other issues and areas that as a business owner you can focus on apart from the paperwork process. By leaving this to an established and credible online platform like ZenBusiness or Rocket Lawyer, you can rest assured that your LLC formation will be a smooth affair.
At the end of the day, every small business wants to save as much as possible on overheads. This is what gives ZenBusiness a comparative advantage. It matches Rocket Lawyer and stays within its league for almost all features. Where ZenBusiness pulls the rabbit out of the hat is in terms of the pricing.
If you have any other questions on LLC company formation that you would like to raise, let us know in the comments section below.
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It’s the end of your first day. You’ve completed a plethora of online applications, psychometric tests, digital interviews and hopped through all manner of recruitment rings of fire – and you’ve landed the job of your dreams. Or so you thought… But do you know what are the ways to prepare a new employee?
You arrived at your fancy new office, but there was no one to greet you. After waiting near an hour, your co-worker-to-be apologized and took you to your desk, only to find it hadn’t been cleared. Grimacing that your equipment hadn’t been set up, your ‘guide’ spun you around the office’s sea of blank faces. Did they even know you were starting? The awkward acclimations were interrupted by an irritated-looking administrator who lugged a thick binder of forms to fill in. You missed lunch with the gang.
After finally navigating through all the red tape, the person you were meant to shadow was never notified so you were given menial tasks to pass the time, while they were in an important meeting with a client. You stared at the clock, waiting, waiting, waiting.
With the day over, you’re just sad you didn’t get out sooner. Wait – is this really your dream job?
New hires expect and need their onboarding to run smoothly. The above scenario sounds like an exaggerated horror story, but in a survey, Cezanne HR asked new employees about their onboarding experiences and was shocked to find:
52% didn’t know what to expect on their first day
30% didn’t have a buddy
8% didn’t meet their managers
23% didn’t have a desk ready
6% didn’t get told about health and safety regulations
5% didn’t have data security training
6 didn’t have a laptop or computer.
Great onboarding is extremely important. It increases retention and reduces staffing costs. It delivers an engaging experience for new hires, so they connect with the organization and colleagues from the moment they’re given the offer. Also. it should turn first-day new employee anxiety into genuine excitement. It should make them feel prepared for the new job and welcome!
Of course, no one said it’s an easy process, and orchestrating the activities to get onboarding right is time-consuming for everyone. In addition, the burdens of paper-based systems or dancing between data spreadsheets, such as Excel, allow important processes to slip through the cracks – which shouldn’t happen in a modern workplace. However, with the right HR software, you can make new employee onboarding engaging and straightforward, while automating and streamlining the admin involved in bringing on new hires.
Here are the ways to prepare a new employee:
Stay in touch after the job offer
It’s very important for a new employee to engage with employers from the moment they’re hired. This can go beyond a simple email. Make sure you consider the following:
Welcome portals are a very common feature in HR software because they do precisely that: they welcome people. Welcome portals act as an information hub and enable constant communication. They are a platform to share all essential details, including the new hire’s start date, office location, and contact details. It’s also a great way to prepare the new hire by letting them know how their first day will be structured and what their first projects will be.
Make sure you send your new hire links to any documents they need. Provide them with essential advice including what they should bring with them on the first day or week, including items like their passport, P45, national insurance number and other relevant work documents. You could use your HR software system’s welcome portal to deliver this information and advice.
Get the paperwork out of the way in advance of the first day. Signing a lot of forms can delay more pressing tasks, such as the relevant introductions, training, and the new hire’s first projects. HR software can be especially effective here. Instead of wasting time filling out form after form, new hires can sign documents electronically. It streamlines admin processes and makes everything available in one place – and it can all be done before the starting date.
Making use of welcome portals and their visual content is a powerful way of engaging with new hires and allows companies to add photos and embed company videos – it might be a hello from a CEO, or a video demonstrating the company’s culture, or brand values and goals. Portals can also allow new hires to self-serve, adding a profile, information, bank details and the like.
Moreover, all information you collect should flow straight through to your HR system. Cloud HR solutions should come with onboarding modules that are simple to set up and accessible 24/7. Storing information in one place also cuts back on the task of re-entering the same data into multiple systems.
Prepare the desk
When your new hire’s first day comes, ensure you’ve got a plan:
assign someone to receive and greet them at the door
put in an order with IT and prepare all the relevant equipment: a computer, phone, email, and network access, and office supplies
moreover, ensure security and compliance policies are explained as appropriate.
Spread the duties for onboarding tasks across different departments. For example, the IT department might be responsible for setting up the new hire’s laptop and email; the finance team might organize payroll, and the line manager will arrange inductions as well as check-in meetings. HR software’s task management systems can help significantly here.
HR software makes it much easier for these departments to fully understand their roles in the onboarding process. Task managers and checklists make use of notifications, meaning important processes don’t get forgotten about. It gives an overview of what’s been done and what needs doing.
Involve your employees
Send the first-day welcome announcement to the organization and share the news of the new hire with the team. Give their name, title, and something that distinguishes them: it might be a hobby or interest, for instance. This allows current employees to easily see if they have anything in common, making everyone more prepared for the big day. Moreover, give your current employees details of the new hire’s background, making sure the new employee’s biggest strengths are acknowledged.
Find a peer and assign them to mentor/buddy the new hire. This will help the new hire to get settled and to be comfortable enough to ask any questions that are on their mind. This also helps build relationships with the team, integrating the new employee into the company significantly faster.
Also, consider explaining who’s who – HR software can create a staff directory mapping this for you. This will help your new hire to familiarise themselves with their co-workers and assists them in directing their queries to the right people from the right departments, so they don’t feel like they’re barraging their mentor with questions.
Planning welcome social help breaks the ice, too – and not just between the company and the new hire. From team lunches to company happy hours, both new hires and current employees can benefit from getting to know each other in a more open and casual environment, building stronger relationships and channels for collaboration.
Establish a formal training program
The importance of setting a clear and comprehensive training program can’t be overstated. Doing so helps prepare and motivate the new hire for the first day and sets a precedent for the weeks and months ahead as they approach their new projects. Such a structured program does much to ease their potential short- and longer-term worries. Indeed, the HR portal assists here, too. By being able to provide access to important training documents, setting out a comprehensive program schedule through calendars, and by making use of notifications to make clear to current employees what is expected of them in the onboarding process and when. On top of this, it’s an effective and simple way for new hires to view set assignments and tasks, as well as their own schedules.
Check-ins
Check-ins are a series of regular discussions between managers and employees about their progress. They are:
ongoing and build a rapport, setting short and long-term goals
an extremely effective way of ensuring employees are continuously aware of their professional development within the company, allowing them to express any concerns and ask questions, and
they form a crucial part of the onboarding process.
At the end of the first week, give the new hire the opportunity to ask any outstanding questions. This helps demonstrate your enthusiasm towards the employee’s start beyond just the first day and will help set a clear and lasting relationship between the new hire and the company.
HR software can make continuous performance reviews and check-ins an integral part of company culture. Cezanne HR, for instance, provides a seamless and engaging way of recording conversations, achievements and agreed goals or outcomes, so it’s easier to ensure everyone is aligned.
The right HR systems are equipped with performance management functions that allow employees to make use of their flexibility and to collaborate in an online forum where others can easily and securely request feedback, record check-in conversations, and track outcomes.
Poor onboarding is a wasted opportunity
The benefits of great onboarding are infinite. It reduces unnecessary barriers that might otherwise inhibit the new employee from settling in or performing at their best. It gets new hires up to speed swiftly and immerses them in the company’s values, vision, and culture.
Furthermore, great onboarding protects your new investment. A robust, systematic onboarding process boosts new hire retention by 50%, and new hires that experienced strong onboarding are 58% more likely to stay with the company for more than three years.
Why would you waste all your efforts with a dissatisfactory onboarding process?
Onboarding can be the difference between a quick and costly new employee turnover, and a long and lasting productive relationship.
Above are just some of the boxes to tick to ensure an engaging onboarding experience. Do you have any more? Let us know!
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Investing and trading, alongside entrepreneurship, are the backbone of America’s economy. However, investing and trading are two of the more intimidating routes to take on the road to wealth.
When you take the entrepreneurship route, you put your money into a business, but it is more than likely in a field that you understand well. As far as trading and investing go: well, many people who have no interest in finance as a career don’t even know that they’re two different things. That’s a good place to start, so keep reading to learn some of the basics about trading and investing.
How are trading and investing different?
Trading and investing share similarities, but their difference lies mainly in their intent. Trading is a quick investment strategy, and investing is much more long-term. A day trader might buy and sell the same stocks in the course of a day based on price fluctuations. An investor might hold on to their stock for decades. They both have their benefits and risks, but your first big decision is to answer the question of whether to trade or invest.
Trading can be instantaneous and compulsive, or at least that’s how it may seem to the untrained eye. You’ve seen the images of the traders yelling frantically on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. How could anyone gather anything intelligible from that ruckus? Movies about Wall Street depict rambunctious firms where the office is as lively as the floor of the NYSE. All of this raw energy is because there is big, fast money being made and lost, and for them, it is all about pulling the trigger on a deal at the right time to make a profit.
A major benefit of investing is that it’s a great way to set yourself up for early retirement. It’s all about the long game: you put money into hedge funds, bonds, shares, and property, and then you forget about that money until you are ready to withdraw your revenue. You don’t make money overnight as an investor, but that’s not what investing is about. A good investment strategy is a solid retirement plan.
Trading 101:
There are several markets that you can trade in, and each one has its strengths. You can trade stocks, bonds, or commodities to name just a few. It is wise to invest in more than one market and diversify your portfolio — this is one way to safeguard against taking large losses.
Trading stock is trading shares of companies. You buy stock in a company, and when it is to your advantage, you sell it for a profit. However, it quickly becomes much more nuanced than that. Stock trading is a gambling game, but with the right guidance, you can make money quickly.
Trading commodities are different than buying stock because rather than buying a share of a company, you are buying a product to sell. Trading commodities require a little bit more knowledge, especially in relation to the commodity being traded.
For example, if you grew up in Texas and worked on an oil rig during your early adult years, then you might have more of a knack for crude oil trading than someone with no knowledge of oil or trading. If you grew up helping your parents out on a farm, then you may learn how to trade food commodities more easily.
Before you trade or invest, it is important that you do your own research. Get to know the market(s) that you are thinking about investing or trading in. You have an opportunity to earn extra money right away or invest for the future, and if you study and be patient, you’ll be successful.
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