California Business Startup Guides
Starting a Business in Susanville, California
Thinking about starting a business in Susanville, California? This step-by-step guide walks you through the major decisions you should consider before opening a new business in Susanville.
What Business to Start
An important decision is what kind of business you want to start. To help you decide on a business type, we encourage you to read Finding Your Niche in Life.
For in-depth how-to guides on how to start specific businesses, browse our Good Businesses to Start section of our site. For example, you might be interested in our Starting a Bar & Grill Restaurant guide or our Opening a Welding Fittings Business guide.
Remember that you are starting a business in Susanville. The business you want to start may already be well-represented in Susanville. Study Susanville demographics and do a competitive analysis as part of your startup planning process.
Susanville, California Demographic Information
Susanville has an active business community that includes small businesses, mid-sized businesses and large businesses.
To give you a better feel for Susanville demographics for small businesses, we have tabulated the small business sizes, based on number of employees, for business in Susanville.
Businesses
As a new Susanville entrepreneur, you may also be interested in the table below. It shows how many businesses there are in Susanville 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
What About Buying an Existing Susanville Business?
We've created a helpful website page for those who want to Buy a Business in California. Follow that link and you may find several good businesses for sale in Susanville.
For anybody who wants to buy a business, we recommend reading this useful article: Buying a Business.
Forming a Company in Susanville, California
It's very important that your business is formed as a legal entity that is separate from its owners. Doing so will shield you from personal liability for business debts and obligations.
The entity you form can be a traditional C-corporation, a Limited Liability Company (LLC), or an S-corporation.
Incorporation is a very common way to legally create a business entity. Of course, you have to decide which type of corporation to form and where to incorporate. If you are starting a business in California, you don't necessarily have to incorporate in California. As it turns out, you can incorporate wherever you want. However, if you do incorporate in another state, you'll have to register as a foreign corporation in your home state.
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 Avoiding Personal Liability in Business. You may also want to seek the advice of an lawyer. Finally, if you are starting a business in Susanville, California, our information on Incorporating in California may be a useful resource if you decide to incorporate in California.
Make Sure You Have a Business Plan
Having a business plan is vital to the health of your new business. Simply put, a business plan is a written description of the future you envision for your business. Failure to write a business plan makes you more prone to becoming a business failure statistic.
To learn more about business plans, read Business Plan Contests. You can also get free business counselors available to you through your local SCORE chapter in California.
How to Sell
Being able to sell is critical to your business success. Whether you are focused on selling local customers in Susanville or are selling to customers throughout California, the United States or even the world, you have to be able to sell.
Good selling involves demonstrating that your wares meet your customer's needs. Fortunately, we've got plenty of good advice to help you improve your selling skills.
Landing Big Customers is a good article to read, one of dozens in the Selling for Entrepreneurs section of our site.
Increase Your Entrepreneurial Knowledge
Good business owners recognize that they don't know everything.
Given that you are starting a business in Susanville, California, you will want to take advantage of the many programs available at nearby California universities, colleges and community colleges. It's also worthwhile to see if there are any networking organizations for Susanville entrepreneurs.
Next Steps
You have a dream -- starting a business in Susanville. To achieve your dream, you have to persevere, even when the odds are against you.
Owning your own business will be a daunting task, but you can do it.
Our goal here is to promote the vitality and growth of small businesses in Susanville and throughout the United States . We believe entrepreneurship is an amazing engine for job creation in Susanville, neighborhood development and overall economic health.
More Entrepreneurial Resources for Starting a Business in Susanville, California
Here are more links that we believe will help you be successful in starting a business in Susanville.
- Resources for Susanville, California Entrepreneurs - Browse a variety of resources we've collected to assist Susanville entrepreneurs.
- California Entrepreneurial Resources - We've gathered state-level entrepreneurial resources to help new entrepreneurs who are based in California.
- Fresno, California Small Business Development Center - The UC Merced SBDC Regional Network assists Central California entrepreneurs and small business owners through counseling, training and business information.
- Los Angeles, California Small Business Development Center - The Los Angeles Regional Small Business Development Center Network (LA SBDC Network) is part of the national, U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) effort to provide free one-on-one customized consulting services and low-cost training workshops to growing businesses and start-up businesses.
- Sacramento, California Small Business Development Center - As Northern California continues to grow demographically and economically, the Northeastern California Small Business Development Center (NECSBDC) at CSU, Chico is committed to helping communities prepare and plan for future growth.
- San Diego, California Small Business Development Center - The Small Business Development Center (SBDC) at Southwestern College serves entrepreneurs and small businesses in San Diego and Imperial Counties. The SBDC provides no-cost business assistance to start-up & existing businesses.
- San Francisco, California Small Business Development Center - The Northern California Network of Small Business Development Centers helps individuals start, manage and grow their businesses.
- Orange County Small Business Development Center - The Orange County SBDC is a leader in providing consulting, training, and technical assistance to the small business community.
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