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Sam “King of the Hilltop”
Alright, you have decided to do it. You are going to start that company and you are going to be a board game publisher…now what? Well, each state is going to require different documents but here are a few things that you might want to consider or be aware of.
First, it’s important to know what kind of business you want to start. The information here is not from a tax or legal professional and I highly encourage you to talk to one in this phase. A good one will give you some insight and things to watch out for when starting your business. I have found that many good ones will take a bit of time, usually a half hour to an hour, to talk with you about your business.
1) Reserving a company name – Before you start a company, if you are worried about someone taking your name or checking to see if someone already has it, you can go to some Departments and reserve a company name for a certain period of time. I know for us, we did this and it was nice to have the peace of mind while we got everything else together, plus they checked to make sure we weren’t doubled up with someone else in the state.
2) One-Stop Business Portal – An awesome resource that can give you a checklist of things you need to do for your business is a state’s One-Stop Business Portal. Some states have them but if they don’t, check to see if you can find your Secretary of State’s website. Here are a few examples of some One-Stop Business Portals:
https://www.nebraska.gov/osbr/index.cgi
https://secure.utah.gov/osbr-demo/welcome.html
3) Resources – The key to having an easier time understanding the process of starting a business or even playing a board game is doing your research. There are many resources available for people starting a business. These can include:
https://www.sba.gov/ – A government website providing some good foundation work in developing a business plan.
https://startupnation.com/ – A website that offers a lot of information for small businesses and start-ups. Some of the info can be for different audiences than board game publishers but there are some good articles in there about starting a business, doing business, marketing, and developing a brand from the start.
http://www.jamesmathe.com/ – This is an incredible resource that is a literal treasure trove of information on doing business as a game publisher or game designer. Amazing stuff here!
I hope some of this will be helpful to those looking for a place to start and the key I feel when starting a business is do not be afraid of what you don’t know, just be willing to find information, ask people who know things, and learn.
The Beginnings of A Business
Ed “The Duke of BAzlandia”
So everything has a beginning, even a business. So the big thing my brother and I decided to tackle was to actually make everything official. The first real goal we wanted to accomplish was to actually start naming and reserving names that would be important to the business. We had already discussed what we wanted to call the business so we made a list of the potential names and what the business would need reserved on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and domain. We soon discovered this was easier to talk about then do. We ran into a few road blocks but finally found a way forward.
The way forward consisted of reserving accounts for social media, a domain, and, what I consider the most important of all, reserving the name of our company here in Nebraska. We needed to verify first that it was not owned by anyone else, then had 6 months to purchase.
Since I knew almost nothing about business going into this, I decided to do a little more research on my own. Needless to say Google was an optimal choice in looking into starting your own business but at times this provided almost too much information and a bevy of opinions. So I turned to my tried and true For Dummies books. I love to read but sitting and reading about business isn’t the greatest thing for me so I turned to the audio books. Using some credits for my audible account I was able to listen to Small Business for Dummies, Limited Liability Companies for Dummies, and How to Start a Business. This allowed me to get a ton of information while working and during the commute. While listening to these books provided good information (some of it outdated, specifically the outside resources from LLC for Dummies), these brought a breadth and depth to allow for further research on my own and helped me develop a few opinions on the direction of actually forming a company.
