What to Do AFTER You Form an LLC - 6 Steps You Must Take

hey gang jim hart back at you here from hawthorne law are you operating your business as an llc did you form an llc recently and are you wondering whether or not you're handling everything properly now that you've started your llc today's video i'm going to share with you all the things that you need to do once you start your llc to make sure you don't mess everything up with your business moving forward [Music] hey my name is jim hart i'm the founding attorney here at hawthorne law we help online businesses and entrepreneurs to get their legal house in order so that they can focus on doing what they do best and that's helping other people and building their business and building something that is truly magical and wonderful in the world that is going to really change lives and today i'm here to talk with you about the things that you need to do after you have started your llc to make sure that your business is protected moving forward now most online entrepreneurs will start out as a sole proprietorship and if you're not making any money and you don't have any clients that's probably the best way to go because god forbid i don't want you going out there and spending you know any money forming an llc if you don't have any money coming in yet and that's a big question that people ask me about when i get on calls with people is how to when to form that llc should they do it and i've talked to a number of people who are just not at that point in their business yet where they're ready to start an llc and and that's fine and and not everyone is at that point but what we want to talk about today is if you've just formed that llc and you're wondering okay now what do i need to do this video is going to be for you all right so there's a number of things that you need to do when you are starting out with a brand new business with a brand new llc probably the first thing you need to do is make sure that you have an operating agreement drafted and that's something that that you can do for yourself you can find something online for free we offer an operating agreement you can check it out here or if you use my services to sign up for your own llc or if you did use my services to sign up for your own llc then you'll get an operating agreement through that service as well but having an operating agreement in place is vital to making sure that if anything would ever happen with your business if you were to get sued and i've talked to a lot of people who are in very high risk businesses where it's very possible that they could get sued in their business and you need to have a good operating agreement because that is going to show that you're following the proper procedures the following the proper legalities to make sure that your business can be protected so that that plaintiff's attorney that's trying to sue you can't come in and say judge you know what they don't even have an operating agreement so clearly this is just a big you know this is just them and they formed an llc they formed some articles of incorporation or excuse me articles of organization that's what they're called for llcs and they form that and they really haven't done anything they're not operating as an llc so disregard the llc and let's get at those personal assets shall we anyway an operating agreement is going to help protect you from that so you definitely want to make sure you get an operating agreement in place number two and again this is something we do for you if you sign up through our service but you need to apply for your ein to apply for an ein you need a tax id number or social security number all in existence right now and there are services that will obtain an ein number for you if you're a foreign or if you're from out of the country and you do not have a social security number there's ways to go about that it takes a little bit more time that's not something we offer right now but i've thought about it in the future and but you need to get your ein number for your business this is vitally important because you need it before you can go to step number three and step number three is you need to go and open up a bank account for the llc so maybe you've been operating as a sole proprietorship up until now and you're switching to an llc and so you need to make sure you transfer all the funds and all the money from the bank accounts you've been using for your sole proprietorship which hopefully is segregated against your personal bank account that's very important to maintain that distinction between the two hopefully you've done that and but you transfer all the funds from your personal business account into the account for the llc but to do that you need the social security number which i just talked about so open another bank account that's very important and you might want to open more than one check out my video on profit first for entrepreneurs and you might want to open two or three or four in my case i've if i had to count on one i probably got like six or seven once i'm not sure i i've got a lot because they all have a purpose right so do that number fourth thing you need to do is you need to apply or reapply if you've already got them as a sole proprietorship for your personal business license and permits now in some states in some municipalities you're going to apply for those on a personal level anyway like for me for instance i've talked about this before as an attorney i have to get what's called a privileged license in north carolina well specifically in in wake county or or cary north carolina where i practice as an attorney we need to have a privileged license and that's something that i apply for it's for me personally as a lawyer so if i were to leave my firm and go join another firm then i would take that privileged license with me to the new firm it has nothing to do with my llc so but in other cases you need to have an actual license for the llc so make sure you apply for the proper things as again as part of the business formation package that we offer we have an upgrade that you can get which will basically we will do a search in your local area for all the different business licenses and permits you need and prepare a report for you so you can go and apply for all those and make sure you've got everything you need for your business all right number five you need to make sure that you've got your contracts in place for your vendors and your clients or whoever you work with and so if you had contracts in place previously for them with you personally you need to just that's pretty simple you just change them all and substitute for your name the llc name and then making sure that when you sign those contracts you sign it the proper way you want to sign it as the llc by your name as member of the of of the or owner of the llc something like that so that you make sure that every contract you enter into with either clients or vendors or service providers whatever that it's between that entity or person and your llc as opposed to you personally now you may need to go back with old clients and all vendors and say hey i just formed an llc we need to redo our contract that's possible and in some cases that's not going to be a problem clearly with your clients uh hopefully that's not a problem if you've got clients that you're helping on an ongoing basis then you just tell them hey i need we just formed this new llc we need to sign it or if you have a really good contract in place it's going to say something like you know this contract is going to extend to any you know future entities or whatever you probably need a lawyer to help you do that you want to make sure you've got all your contracts in place and in order with your business another thing you need to do when you're signing up for your llc is you need to get a payroll provider and so that's really important i have a link to the payroll provider that i use up here if you sign up to them through that referral code you're going to get a 200 gift card to amazon after you run your first payroll so that's a pretty sweet deal um so yeah check that out any questions hit me up drop them below in the comments and if you're looking for a checklist that goes up kind of everything that we you need to do when forming your llc i'll put a link down there in the description below um i feel like i'm i'm giving you too many things to do in this video and i don't really want to do that and if you missed my video on common mistakes that people make when forming their llcs um there'll be a link up here and a link down below in the description it's one of my most popular videos that i've got on the channel and it's definitely one that you should check out if you're if you haven't already started an llc and you're just trying to figure out what you need to do there's a link to that and i look forward to seeing you in the next video [Music] [Music]

Channel: Jim Hart

Views: 620,816

Keywords: how to form an llc, how to start an llc, form an llc, starting a business, single member llc, LLC, limited liability company, what is an llc, llc vs s corp, starting an llc, how to start a business, hawthorn law, llc vs sole proprietorship, how to pay yourself as a business owner, how to pay yourself llc, how to pay yourself as a business owner llc, starting an llc in california, llc vs corporation

Id: sMV_zrbTNfI

Length: 9min 22sec (562 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 27 2019