Keeping You Honest

I don’t remember where I heard it, but I can recall once hearing that many small businesses were started in a recession, and I have also heard that the only way to truly be financially independent is to work for yourself. Otherwise you are just making someone else rich.

There are many things to consider when you are starting a business. There are a lot of risks involved, but with some careful planning you can avoid many of them and make the rest very manageable.  I have seen a LOT of people claiming that you can make thousands of dollars a month “doing nothing”. And they will be happy to tell you how for a “small investment”.

That is not what I am doing here. But I am going to be going over what you need to to do start your own business. It will take some work. I am not a lawyer, and there are legal implications to starting a business. Local laws very as well, so you will need to check with someone if you have question. What I am discussing is going to be my own personal experience and my opinions. Use at your own risk.

My wife recently decided to start a business. She was thinking about a certain service and thought to herself, “I’d pay for that.” And no one else that we knew of was offering a service like this, so she decided to do it. This is a common way for new businesses to start.

Once you have an idea, the next thing is to do a little market research. This doesn’t have to be anything fancy. My wife and I did this by asking friends and family about the idea and what they thought.

With some positive feed back, the next thing is to decide how you want to organize the business. there are many ways you can do this, each with positive and negative aspects.

The simplest way is with a sole proprietorship. If you want to minimize your start up costs and paperwork, and are not sure how well the business will go this is the way to go. It does expose you to the most risk – as your personal assets can be used to settle any business debts. From a legal standpoint, the business and you are the same.

Related to this, but if you need more than one owner is a partnership. I will go into more detail on the other types of business entities in a future post.

Some other key things to decide early on is your business model. Will you have a “brick and mortar” store front, or exist solely as an online business? Having a brick and mortar will have more costs but some services or products work best with face to face transactions.

Online stores have some initial costs too. Domains tend to cost around $10-15 a year,  and also require some sort of hosting, which can cost anywhere from $5 to $50 a month, or more. In addition, you have to create a website and online presence. If you are not a designer or developer, you will likely have to pay someone to do this. This can cost hundreds or thousands, depending on the scope of the work needed. You may be able to use a “site builder” or “store builder” provided by your hosting company, but be careful if you do. These are default templates and if you use them your site is likely to look like everyone elses. You need to be able to have your site branded and recognizable.

While I am not a designer, I am a developer, and so I am creating the site for my wife’s site myself. Along with this, I am also creating an application that will allow us to manage the business and our customers. But that is a topic for another post.

After you have your business idea, and have decided on a basic business model, the next step is to write a business plan and a mission statement. these two documents are here for your benefit. The will guide you and help you meet your goals.

There are many good resources for writing a business plan. The US Small Business Administration (SBA) has some excellent resources available to help you create a business plan.

A mission statement serves as a strategic guide for what you want to accomplish as a business. It’s a statement of purpose. According to MissionStatements.com,

A mission statement defines in a paragraph or so any entity’s reason for existence. It embodies its philosophies, goals, ambitions and mores. Any entity that attempts to operate without a mission statement runs the risk of wandering through the world without having the ability to verify that it is on its intended course.

The business plan is how you plan on accomplish what you state in the mission statement.

Once you have you idea and your general business model ready, and you have created your mission statement and business plan, you can start thinking about funding.

If you already have a good stash of cash available or if you can keep your start up costs low enough, you can use personal funding to get started. If you are not so fortunate, you will need to seek out a business loan or a venture capitalist.

I have never had to deal with a VC or with business bank loans personally. Both have their merits and their potential problems. If you are dealing with a VC, make sure that you read the contract very closely. Same thing with a bank loan. In both cases however, you stand a much better chance of getting the money if you have a well written business plan and mission statement.

Keep in mind though, that things change and so the plan is only a rough guide. You more than likely won’t be able to follow it exactly. It’s more of a view of “how I wish things will go”.

There is a lot more to starting a business, but this covers most of the basics. As always, be sure to check with the appropriate professionals if you have questions. Lawyers, tax lawyers, accountants, the SBA and the IRS themselves are all available to help with questions. Some are free and some are not.

I will write more as my wife’s business progresses, and I will also put together a list of resources that I find useful – in the hopes that you will find them useful as well.

Please feel free to leave comments if you have questions or other tidbits of useful information.

The site has been quiet lately, I know that. I’m not going to apologize, but I am going to try to write more.

I need figure out my focus and direction for this site, but I haven’t really had the time to think about that. When I started the site, I wanted to focus on accounting, mainly internal audit and IT or computer science. Those are my main loves in life, outside of my wife and family.

Lately, I have been rather busy. My wife has decided to start a business, and I have been focused on getting that started for her. I registered a domain, setup a twitter account and have been planning and writing an app to power the website and the business.

Looking back over the articles I have written, I see something that I alluded to in The Curse of the Gemini. I see articles that are all over the place, and several unfinished series. I meant well when I started them, but I never got around to finishing them. Some, like the health care series aren’t even all that relevant any more.

I want to keep writing, I just often lack motivation. I have a number of goals for the coming year. One is to help my wife grow her business. As this originally started off as a blog for small business and how accounting, internal audit and IT can help small businesses, I think I am going to move back into that direction with the coming year.

My other major goal is to become a CIA – a Certified Internal Auditor. I will also be chronicling my journey towards that goal.

I really do exhibit many of the traits of the stereotypical Gemini. I am a “jack of all trades, master of none”. I think it is time I focus a little more and really start to work towards my goals, both professionally and personally.

I will still write about cigars and pipes now and then, but I think I will instead try to do that as “guest reviews” on sites that are more cigar or pipe oriented.

I may not write much doing the next few weeks. Or I may. We’ll have to see.

With this post I would like to talk about one of my other passions – pipe smoking.

I own a number of pipes, and find them quite enjoyable and relaxing. Like with a cigar, there is a certain ritual that goes along with smoking a pipe. It really does just force you to slow down a little and enjoy life. What you do as you smoke varies. It is a good time for reflection and introspection and also a good time to share with friends and to celebrate.

But you may be wondering how you can get started with a pipe. There is a common misconception that you have to make a big investment to begin smoking a pipe. For that matter, many people think the same about cigar smoking, but that is a matter for another post.

You can actually get started with enjoying a pipe for not very much money, and I will show you how.

(continue reading…)

This year, I have been taking a more active role in the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards (PCI DSS) compliance at the company I work for. I have also been taking on a role of an assistant systems administrator / co-sysadmin.

For someone with a degree in accounting, this may seem a little odd. However, I had an emphasis in internal audit, and a minor in Computer Information Systems. I was also originally a computer science major.

My main role in my company’s PCI compliance has been in writing and editing policy documents, auditing firewall rules, access control lists (ACLs), site audits (through security scans) and in the near future, penetration testing. All of these activities are ones that very closely relate to internal audit.

With any system, be it accounting, business or computer, there is always the possibility that something bad will happen. This could be from a natural disaster, an attack, theft or some sort of fraud – which is really just another form of theft.

Each system will also have compensating controls, policies, rules and other such devices to remove, minimize and mitigate the various threats that face it.

One of the key aspects of internal audit is to identify threats and to suggest compensating controls or adjustments to policy to reduce the threats. Where possible, the threats are removed. If they can’t be, then they are classified as “acceptable” or a compensating control is devised.

In setting up a network, the same things must be addressed. In obtaining or maintaining PCI compliance, many of these threats are already defined, as is what is acceptable risk and what requires compensating controls and what must be avoided.

(continue reading…)

According to Cigar Law Altadis USA has sued Tatuaje cigars (@TatuajeCigars). From what I can tell, this is over Tatuaje’s usage of the Fleur de lis – a very ancient, and very common symbol.

Personally, even given the similar markets, I would not be confused between the two products.

Because this seems like a stupid, petty lawsuit, a group of people on Twitter decided to  boycott Altadis USA.

Here is a list of the bands and brands they produce and control:

• A. Turrent
• A. Turrent Six Generations
• Bering
• Bering Hallmark
• Bering Sabor Bundles
• Big Butt
• Bock y Ca Edicion de Oro
• Butera Royal Vintage
• Butera Royal Vintage Maduro
• Butera Vintage Select
• Casa de Garcia
• Cabinet Selección
• Da Vinci
• Don Diego
• Don Diego Aniversario
• Don Melo Centenario
• Edicion Limitada – Montecristo, H. Upmann,
• Trinidad & Romeo y Julieta
• Frank Llaneza
• Gispert
• Gispert Maduro
• Havana Sweets
• H. Upmann
• H. Upmann Cabinet Selección
• H. Upmann Reserve
• H. Upmann Reserve Maduro
• H. Upmann Vintage Cameroon
• Henry Clay
• Juan Lopez
• La Primadora
• Las Cabrillas
• Maria Guerrero
• Mi Dominicana
• Montecristo
• Montecristo Cabinet Selección
• Montecristo Classic
• Montecristo Platinum
• Montecristo Reserva Negra
• Montecristo Serie C
• Montecristo White
• Montecruz
• Nat Sherman 489
• Nat Sherman 1400
• Nat Sherman Private Selection
• Nat Sherman Suave
• Omar Ortez Honduran Maduro
• Omar Ortez Originals
• Onyx Reserve
• Playboy
• Playboy by Don Diego
• Por Larrañaga
• Por Larrañaga Cabinet Selección
• Primo del Rey
• Quintero
• Quintero Maduro
• Quintessa
• Romeo y Julieta 1875
• Romeo y Julieta Aniversario
• Romeo y Julieta Cabinet Selección
• Romeo y Julieta Edicion Limitada
• Romeo y Julieta Habana Reserve
• Romeo y Julieta Reserva Real
• Romeo y Julieta Reserva Real Maduro
• Romeo y Julieta Reserve Maduro
• Romeo y Julieta Vintage
• Romeo y Julieta Vintage Maduro
• Royal Jamaica Gold
• Saint Luis Rey
• Saint Luis Rey Serie G Maduro
• Saint Luis Rey Serie G Natural
• Santa Damiana
• Santa Rosa
• Seijas’ Signature Series
• Siglo Limited Reserve
• Siglo Limited Reserve Maduro
• Te-Amo
• Te-Amo Aniversario
• Te-Amo World Selection Series
• Trinidad
• Trinidad 100th Anniversary
• Trinidad Habana Resserve
• VegaFina
• AyC Grenadiers
• AyC Wise Guys
• Backwoods
• Dutch Masters
• El Producto
• Erik
• Hav-A-Tampa Jewels
• La Corona Whiffs
• Miami Suites
• Muriel
• Phillies
• Phillies Blunt
• Phillies Mini Blunt
• Phillies SLS
• Supre Sweets
• Tampa Nugget
• Tampa Sweet
• 1886
• Black Max Menthol
• Dutch Treats
• Hav-A-TampaOmega

Let’s show Altadis how we feel about stupid and petty lawsuits!