MInTheGap

I just finished writing a series at Weekend Kindness that tells the story of a recurring theme in my life—that at many points in my life I’ve had to train my own boss, or have had a boss that I haven’t necessarily thought had the skills that I have when it comes to leadership.

Part of the reason for writing this series was to help me think through what is going on in my own life, and to reflect back on what God has done in the past, and look at the problem in a logical manner.

Be Your Own Boss

However, in writing it, I’ve come to the conclusion—yet again—that there’s always a “grass is always greener” aspect in my head about being my own boss.  I think I’d really like it.  I think I would enjoy doing freelancing.  And yet I also know that if I were to do something like that I’d be trading 4 bosses (no joke) for many, many more.

The neat thing is about small businesses, though, is that you are much more free to use your creativity and brain power than you are at your own company.  Every time you can bear more of the risk you have the opportunity for greater reward.

A Decision

It’s been just over two years ago that a college friend and I decided to incorporate a business.  That business?  Doing web hosing and consulting.  We wanted to help smaller churches to be able to get an online presence, and we thought we had a good idea how we could do it cheaply (using some open source CMS software) and keep the costs low for the churches.

Part of the whole decision making process involved just how the company would be organized and how it would run when we both live on opposite sides of the country.  It was decided that we’d either need to file to form a s-corp, or form an llc.  We decided to do the latter because we didn’t want to be involved with dealing with shares, and the paperwork for the s-corp seemed excessive for just two guys.

Why a formal company?  Because an LLC or s-corp allows you to spread your liablity—if someone sued us they could only go after company capital, not our own.  Plus an LLC helps in case my friend and I ever had a falling out, or if we wanted to add people to our little merry band.

The next decision we needed to make was where the company would be based.  Though you can incorporate a business in any state, we decided that we’d prefer if it actually existed in one of our own states—save us having to get an address in another one!—so my state was chosen.

We didn’t need an attorney to file the paperwork, though it meant a lot of reading up on different things and hoops to jump through for compliance.

So, how’s that going for you?

So so.  We do not have any more churches since our first year of signups—getting our own local churches plus that of our relatives.  But, admittedly, we aren’t trying that hard.  Basically, we’ve shifted a little in our interests.  I’ve started up a few blogs—as I know that most of you’re aware—and he has done some more consulting.  This will be the first year that our little company will have actually pulled in a profit.

This may mean that we’ll begin to have some money to do some advertising, etc., which could grow it, but I’m not sure this thing will ever get to be something we could do full time.

The point is that opportunities abound.  You don’t need an attorney, you can use the online site I linked to.  You can do research and fill out the forms yourself.  There really is a lot of potential out there.