Form a Corporation – Get the Right Business Vehicle

When a client comes to see us, to form a corporation, their most common perception of their need is simply, “I need a vehicle“. Running with this metaphor, let’s discuss the general process we take to decide which vehicle would best suit each client’s needs.

After some analysis and conversation, based upon the type of business that they have and their goals over the next few years, we conclude that they would be best served by, for example, creating a metaphorical ‘lightweight truck’ which has a very specific set of features.

Bear in mind that there are many ways to incorporate your company. There are many ‘vehicles’ you could make use of: a vehicle could be a smart car, a two-passenger car that will get you to and from the supermarket and work perfectly. A vehicle could be a four-passenger car that you could drive from Orange County to San Francisco and back and also carry a couple of suitcases. A vehicle could be an eighteen-wheel truck that allows you to safely transport all of your products across the country from California to New York.

So when our client says “I want a vehicle”, we are analyzing their ‘story’, their business story, and sorting through various options. To incorporate a company using the best possible type of corporate structure, we need to decide what they need the corporation to provide, what role corporation formation is to play.

Incorporate a Business – Designing Your Corporation

Incorporation Attorneys sit down with you and help you incorporate your company.  We design your corporation closely with you in a way that is intended to optimize and protect your company’s legal entity to give you every possible business advantage.  You gain the advantage of all of our and our client’s experiences and consequently the opportunity to be prepared for all the little nuances that come up through the life of your business as a corporation.

Incorporation Attorneys incorporate a business, create and manage articles of incorporation – incorporation forms, corporate records, and related documents and create them in such a way that they are specifically tailored to your particular business.  We do not simply provide a set of generic forms that may or may not serve your immediate and longer-term needs.

If you have access to a small business corporate lawyer who has incorporated companies, formed corporations for hundreds of other entrepreneurs, contractors, and business people, who have experience of all kinds of situations and problems that other clients have run into over the years, you are starting your business with leverage.  This is the leverage of knowing that you are benefiting from other people’s experiences.

Company Incorporation Business Advisory

Our Conversation…
For example, a client may come into our offices and say “What I want is a way to protect my business and my personal assets. We have a small business, we are primarily operating out of Orange County California, with a sales office in downtown Los Angeles, we have some independent contractors based in various locations including San Francisco and Santa Barbara, we have somebody part-time in the office, and this how much money we are making.”

We get into their story, we start to process what it is that they do in context to their goals, the potential legal ramifications, and how that might relate to all the different business incorporation vehicles that are potentially available to them.

This advisory process is what we at incorporation attorneys do.  We work with our clients to process the many options available and identify the business vehicle that not only fits their business but one that is going to offer them the protection and flexibility they need in order to meet their business goals.

What our Company Incorporation Advisory Process Is Not

We are NOT an internet company incorporation ‘Dollar Store’.  It is not simply a function of a client saying, “I need a ‘vehicle'” with a response from us of “Okay here is ‘a vehicle’ for $100 and good luck!”   We see this happening quite a bit and people end up out on the road in their shiny new articles of incorporation in a metaphorical two-passenger car.

Only later do they come to realize its shortcomings and they start asking questions like, “Where do I put all of my products? How do I cross the desert?”  By going to an internet ‘Dollar Store’ you’ll get the answer “We don’t know, you asked for a vehicle, we gave you a vehicle!”

Incorporation Services – More is Better

Our incorporation and business formation services packages include all the things that business owners need to incorporate a business, creating and maintaining the right corporate vehicle through the day-to-day course of running their business.  In addition, our clients have access to us when they have questions about their corporations and or to discuss business issues as they arise.  Sometimes it’s just a half-hour Q&A, sometimes it’s a lot more.

We understand that we are working with small businesses that are often working on tight budgets and therefore need to have predictable and manageable costs.  We understand that they cannot always fund legal costs in an ad hoc fashion just because they have a few extra questions or need some extra advice this month.

Business Risk Mitigation Guides – Business Incorporation

Most clients realize that forming a business is potentially risky, but many only have a vague idea of what the risks actually are.  They know that they are accumulating assets and that they could potentially lose those assets but not how or why.   In our experience, they have rarely thought about or even know what those risks actually are.  They do get a general idea, at the hundred thousand foot level, but they haven’t thought through what, in their particular business, the risks could be.

We encourage our clients to view us as company incorporation ‘risk mitigation guides’.   As they navigate the business world, hopefully successfully growing their business, we act as their guide.  We initially help them incorporate a company, starting with the right vehicle and then building it with all the right equipment to weather the storms and the nuances of the roads they plan to travel.

We travel with them helping to maintain their vehicles; we help keep them in good working order with our corporate records services, to keep it secure, to protect them from bandits, potholes and to successfully navigate the various terrains as they encounter them.

Incorporate a Company – Why Do People Incorporate? 

In our experience there are three main reasons why you might want to incorporate a business; these are to gain credibility by enhancing the perceived size of your company, to gain improved liability protection, and or for tax reasons. Learn more about the reasons to incorporate a company.