After you have formed your idea using the techniques I described in the previous post, its time to get legal. If you are selling a service, you can begin selling right away and simply pay taxes on the money you receive. If, however, if you will be selling products (even if you are reselling small products as part of your service), you have to get a vendor's license. In order to get a vendor's license, you have to have a "real company". In any case, I recommend forming your company legally right away because it keeps things clean, and provides you with some extra motivation.

The first phase in developing a business is the idea phase. Of course every business begins with an idea, but the idea has to have some meat on it before you can even think about starting a businesses. So, first things first, here are five steps to help you get your idea together. Before beginning these steps, make sure you are going to be in a comfortable environment, free from distractions for as long as it takes.

At some point in life, most people have what they think is a good product or business idea. The idea could be a new invention, an improvement on something, a new way to do something, or even great new restaurant. What happens to all those great ideas? The truth is, most people never act on the idea at all. When they finally see a product similar to their idea, they say, “Hey! I came up with that three years ago!” They will then have to live with the fact that even though the idea was good enough to be put in the stores, they lacked the ambition and spirit to make it happen.

Why? One reason may be some intimidating statistics. Out of the 1,000,000 or so businesses started on any given year, only 40,000 will be in business 10 years later. A 4% chance of success does not give a potential entrepreneur a lot of hope. On top of that, many of the businesses that do survive the first 10 years will still struggle to make ends meet with less than five employees.