Georgia Business Startup Guides
Open a Business in La Fayette, Georgia
Need help starting a business in La Fayette, Georgia? We've got the information you need to open a business in La Fayette.
Do You Have What It Takes?
Running your own business is difficult, much harder than working as an employee. Are you sure you have the stamina and skills to succeed on your own?
Before you move forward with starting a business, be sure to do these three things:
- Reach out to other entrepreneurs in La Fayette. Get their candid feedback on what it takes to start a successful business.
- Peruse Characteristics of Successful Entrepreneurs. This is one of our more popular articles for folks who want to go into business for themselves.
- Seek the advice of somebody who knows you well. A support network of family and friends can be a great sounding board for good advice before you decide for sure to go into business.
La Fayette, Georgia Demographic Information
La Fayette has an active business community that includes small businesses, mid-sized businesses and large businesses.
To give you a better feel for La Fayette demographics for small businesses, we have tabulated the small business sizes, based on number of employees, for business in La Fayette.
Businesses
As a new La Fayette entrepreneur, you may also be interested in the table below. It shows how many businesses there are in La Fayette for each business category. By looking at this chart, you can get a general sense for how much competition there is in the business niche that you are pursuing.
Businesses
Forming a Company in La Fayette, Georgia
A critical step is ensuring that you choose the right legal structure for your new entity. The main advantage of forming your new business as a legal entity is that it separates your business liabilities from your personal liabilities.
The entity you form can be a corporation, LLC, sole proprietorship, partnership or other structure.
Incorporating is a very popular way to form a business. A key decision is whether to form and S-Corp or a C-Corp, and you also must decide in which state you will incorporate. If you are starting a business in Georgia, you don't necessarily have to incorporate in Georgia. In fact, you can incorporate wherever you want. For example, it's very popular to incorporate in Delaware, and incorporating in Nevada has become very trendy as well. Don't forget, though, that you will have to register as a foreign entity in all states that you do business in.
There are many nuances to forming a company. We recommend you read some of the educational articles about company formation that are availabe on our site, such as C Corp Versus S Corp. You should also consider getting professional assistance from your business lawyer. Finally, if you are starting a business in La Fayette, Georgia, our information on Incorporating in Georgia may be a useful resource if you decide to incorporate in Georgia.
Raising Money for Your New Venture
Finding the funds to fuel the growth of your La Fayette business is very difficult due to the ongoing business credit crunch. Bootstrapping, which means growing the business without outside funding, is the best alternative, but that's not a viable option for many startup plans.
Take advantage of our many articles on raising capital, such as 504 Loans.
For La Fayette entrepreneurs with great ambition but a shortage of investment capital, check out our List of Georgia Angel Investors and our List of Georgia Venture Capital Firms.
Getting the Word Out About Your New Company
Whether your goal is to attract La Fayette customers or you plan on selling elsewhere, you'll need to have a good marketing plan.
There are myriad resources on this site to help you with your marketing plan. Direct Mail Costs is an article that will stimulate a few thoughts on your marketing plan. There are many more articles on marketing on our site. Visit our Small Business Marketing resource section to see them all.
Bring in Revenues
Do you know how to sell? In order to attract customers to your new La Fayette business, you need to focus on sales.
Clever sales techniques can transform any business from good to great. The good news is we can help you to make selling a big competitve advantage for your new firm.
Mastering the Complex Sale is a good article to read, one of dozens in the Selling for Entrepreneurs section of our site.
Now It's Up To You
As an entrepreneur in La Fayette, you won't be working for the boss anymore. You are the boss.
From this point on, you control your own destiny.
This site is all about helping entrepreneurs in La Fayette and elsewhere to achieve real success. We believe entrepreneurship is an amazing engine for job creation in La Fayette, neighborhood development and overall economic health.
More Entrepreneurial Resources for Starting a Business in La Fayette, Georgia
Here are more links that we believe will help you be successful in starting a business in La Fayette.
- Resources for La Fayette, Georgia Entrepreneurs - Browse a variety of resources we've collected to assist La Fayette entrepreneurs.
- Georgia Entrepreneurial Resources - We've gathered state-level entrepreneurial resources to help new entrepreneurs who are based in Georgia.
- Georgia Small Business Development Center - The Georgia SBDC program helps Georgia entrepreneurs with developing business plans, providing financial analysis, identifying sources of capital, and assessing marketing strategies.
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