Financial Partners, “the IRS looks to see if you have a separate checking account.” No business owner wants to pay more in taxes than they need to, and creating a separate checking account will keep that from happening. It will also allow you to be more organized. Once you’re a little more established, you should consider making your company an official entity by creating a limited liability corporation, or LLC. As an LLC, your personal finances won’t be liable in the event that your company is sued. In essence, creating an LLC makes the line between business and personal definitive. Before filing as an LLC, be sure to talk to your lawyers and financial advisers to understand the intricacies of the structure. There are a lot of other ways to ensure that your business finances don’t end up where they shouldn’t belong (i.e., in your personal accounts). You can pay yourself a salary, for instance, rather than moving money from one account to another irregularly. Nav, a service for small businesses, will allow you to track your business and personal credit scores separately, and its introductory tier is completely free. The bottom line is that whatever methods you use, separation is the road to clarity.
The Separation of Business & Self
Why You Shouldn’t Mix Company and Personal Finances
For many entrepreneurs, your business can feel like an extension of yourself. While this can be advantageous when it comes to building a personal brand and making connections with customers, there’s one area where it causes more harm than good: finances. Tangling your company’s finances with your personal ones can lead to confusion, bookkeeping errors, or worse. Sylvia Inks, author of “Small Business Finance for the Busy Entrepreneur,” advises separating personal and business expenses as the first step in building a solid financial
foundation. “If you want to save time, have more money, and pay fewer taxes,” she writes, “take the time to open business bank accounts and associated credit cards to keep your personal and business dollars separate.” The earlier you can create this separation, the better off you’ll be. From a tax perspective, the easiest step you can take to legitimize your business in the eyes of the government is to establish separate checking accounts. “If there’s ever a question as to whether it’s a hobby or a business,”
says Richard Salmen, a Certified Financial Planner® with GTRUST
CAN INJURY LAWYERS GET A WIKIPEDIA PAGE? Continued from back page
Wikipedia and its trustworthiness as a source of information, there’s no denying that regular people trust it. In the latest episode of my Secrets of Attorney Marketing podcast, I interview a respected marketing consultant named Bert Martinez. He specializes in helping attorneys (and other respected professionals, like physicians, dentists, etc.) elevate their perceived status. And one of his most popular services is landing his clients on Wikipedia.
What kind of evidence?
You need to collect different types of third-party, trusted evidence that justifies a genuine public interest in who you are and what you have done. If you can show Wikipedia this, they’ll let you have your page.
If you’ve ever considered getting a Wikipedia page and using it to enhance your professional status, you might want to listen to this podcast on the drive home because it contains some solid information. Listen to it or download it for later here: speakeasy.marketing/Wikipedia
Result?
When a potential client or a professional peer types your name into Google, they’ll see that Wikipedia has written a page about you. And whatever you or I might think about
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