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I'm totally conflicted ! How did you guys obtain a DBA ? Who applied for the EIN ? Do you have a Business License ? I only stated, you should have a legal agreement w/ your partners ! Are you currently paying taxes ? Are you currently carrying tree liability & w/c insurance ? Are your vehicles commercialy insured ? All the earnings, just sitting in your account ? Good Luck or disaster at the beginning ?
 
I'm totally conflicted ! How did you guys obtain a DBA ? Who applied for the EIN ? Do you have a Business License ? I only stated, you should have a legal agreement w/ your partners ! Are you currently paying taxes ? Are you currently carrying tree liability & w/c insurance ? Are your vehicles commercialy insured ? All the earnings, just sitting in your account ? Good Luck or disaster at the beginning ?

Getting our DBA was easy. Just went, paid our 35 bucks, said we were a partnership and they gave us one. My other two partners applied for the EIN and we have it now. We don't have a business license but the small business admin. didn't even bring that up, perhaps we don't need one to operate here? We haven't filed our taxes yet and since we've made no money ( on paper ) thus far I don't think that's an issue. I'll obviously straighten all that out with my accountant when I meet them. No, we don't have insurance and probably won't get any till our ad hits the pages and we won't carry w/c because we have no employees. Our vehicles aren't yet commercially insured but we will be taking care of that now that I know our EIN and DBA is all we need ( so our advisor said ). And yes, everything we haven't sunk into equipment is just in a savings account in my name. That's what we want to put into a checking account.
 
This is where I'm confused. The small business administration said there was no need to form a corporation at this point, we don't have many assets to protect other than our business and having our DBA was sufficient enough. We're not looking for financing at this point and probably won't be anytime soon. He said with our DBA and EIN we'd be able to open a business checking account with all three of us on it. I agree with getting a lawyer, that's the plan, as well as an accountant but don't see any reason to kill our current DBA or EIN. Everything seemed to be in order so far.
A corporation can be very expensive and may not be what you need. I formed myself into an LLC which blends the limited liability of a corporation and the tax structure of a sole prop. Best to keep all business seperate from your personal. You may think you have limited assets, but one disaster and someone can come after EVERYTHING, including all personal assets, house, cars, lawnmower, everything. Talk to your attorney about how to form this partnership so all parties are covered and no personal property is involved.
 
In N.Y. I think you will need to go through the N.Y.S. Insurance Fund for your comp insurance. I think you will find you will need to provide workers comp certificates on jobs even if you aren't legally bound to carry the policy. It will be an expensive policy but I think you are going to need it. With no workers comp policy and you 3 are on a job and someone gets hurt WHO is going to pay the bill? Someone will need to pay the bill, whether its the homeowner(who hired someone without the proper insurance) or the partners and their families/homes/cars/lawnmowers/kids college funds etc...
 
I think getting any kind of workers comp ins right now is probably putting the carriage before the horse. I don't mind a little risk as long as we have some type of insurance to cover the homeowner. I'm looking into a small local company to for a $500,000 liability plan right now. I have yet to meet with an accountant but we did get our checking account set up and business debit cards should be arriving shortly. And our DBA, Slvr, is a "Doing Business As"; we simply applied for the business name we wanted. Seems to me it's basically a way for the gov't to keep track of who is operating a business under which name. Go to your county courthouse, pay your 35 bucks and apply for one if you haven't already.
 
Welp, here I go.

I decided to come clean with my boss the other day and let him know that I am starting a business. I told him I'd be willing to work around his schedule and that the trimmings and small removals we'll be doing wouldn't really be competing with him. I'd throw him the larger jobs etc. etc. etc... He said "Hit the road."

I was down at first but I think this will be good in the long run. It's given me the motivation to really get down to business. In the past few days I've placed an ad in the paper, set up meetings with accountants and lawyers, received quotes from insurance agents for commercial vehicles and liability. We are going to be completely legit by the end of the week.

I hope the ad pans out because our savings will not last too much longer with all the new costs we are incurring. We've got a decent amount of good jobs lined up and I have contacts with several other smaller tree services that I can climb for to at least put food on my table until our business can support a full time partner.

All I can say is I'm hopeful but I'm sick of being on the phone already. Thanks to everyone for their advice and I'm certain I'll be asking many questions as the next few weeks/months begin to pan out. Wish me luck!
 
"Hit the road" huh. Kinda like what I would have told you.

It's not that I'm surprised. It's just the way a lot of guy's minds work, his especially, and I was prepared to walk away. It's just sad that he couldn't get past the pride deal and look at me simply as a worker trading his time for money. Yeah well, when his 55 yr old climber can't get up a tree in a few years I'm sure I'll hear back from him.
 
It's not that I'm surprised. It's just the way a lot of guy's minds work, his especially, and I was prepared to walk away. It's just sad that he couldn't get past the pride deal and look at me simply as a worker trading his time for money. Yeah well, when his 55 yr old climber can't get up a tree in a few years I'm sure I'll hear back from him.


No! when his 55yr old climber cant get up the tree thats when you & your biz will take the leep forward!! alot of guys in my area had things sewed up for years, now they`re a little older & unable to go at the pace they did in their younger days which is why most are leaving the biz!!

My day will come as will yours, but till then make as much as you can, do a good job, treat people fair & invest wisely!!

Good luck..Blake & congrats!

LXT..............
 
Best wishes to your new venture Blakesmaster! LXT couldn't have spelled it out more clearly. Work hard and stay safe!-Kevin
 
I started out in business with college classmate of mine. He ran the tree work part of our company while I did the landscaping. It was a DBA ('doing business as...' partnership. We had 3-4 employees at that time and were fully insured for liability, equipment and labor. We did not have work comp on ourselves but did have disability and life insurance for each of us with each of us being the beneficiary for the other in the case of the life insurance (we were both single with no dependents).

Eventually, I 'bought my partner out' because we had different visions for the company (I wanted to grow - he liked working only 40 hours a week). The snag we ran into is that the business, after only 3 years, didn't have any purchase value built into it yet. In other words, he thought I should pay him several thousand dollars for the effort he put into building the business the first three years and took little pay to do it. I agreed but, had no money to pay him and still owed a great deal of debt to our bank. Upon advice from our accountant, I bought him out for $1. He wasn't thrilled about it but agreed and moved on.

I wish we would have had a 'pre-nup' for the business before we got heavily into it so that each partner knew how a buyout would be handled if that should occur. Just something to consider even if you think today that you 3 will always be in business together. People change and mindsets change. As you just told us, job status changes too!

I agree with everyone about getting an accountant or bookkeeper set up. Try to find one that uses Quickbooks and can set you up to do the majority of your bookkeeping yourself. I only use my accountant for taxes and equipment depreciation. All bills, invoicing, payroll, etc is pretty easy to do youself once you know how to use the software.

Also, do you guys have an agreement set up as to who will do the bookkeeping, who will do the equipment maintenance and who will do the sales? I suggest you each take on one of these responsibilities rather than everyone trying to do everything. JMO.

Good luck.
 
I started out in business with college classmate of mine. He ran the tree work part of our company while I did the landscaping. It was a DBA ('doing business as...' partnership. We had 3-4 employees at that time and were fully insured for liability, equipment and labor. We did not have work comp on ourselves but did have disability and life insurance for each of us with each of us being the beneficiary for the other in the case of the life insurance (we were both single with no dependents).

Eventually, I 'bought my partner out' because we had different visions for the company (I wanted to grow - he liked working only 40 hours a week). The snag we ran into is that the business, after only 3 years, didn't have any purchase value built into it yet. In other words, he thought I should pay him several thousand dollars for the effort he put into building the business the first three years and took little pay to do it. I agreed but, had no money to pay him and still owed a great deal of debt to our bank. Upon advice from our accountant, I bought him out for $1. He wasn't thrilled about it but agreed and moved on.

I wish we would have had a 'pre-nup' for the business before we got heavily into it so that each partner knew how a buyout would be handled if that should occur. Just something to consider even if you think today that you 3 will always be in business together. People change and mindsets change. As you just told us, job status changes too!

I agree with everyone about getting an accountant or bookkeeper set up. Try to find one that uses Quickbooks and can set you up to do the majority of your bookkeeping yourself. I only use my accountant for taxes and equipment depreciation. All bills, invoicing, payroll, etc is pretty easy to do youself once you know how to use the software.

Also, do you guys have an agreement set up as to who will do the bookkeeping, who will do the equipment maintenance and who will do the sales? I suggest you each take on one of these responsibilities rather than everyone trying to do everything. JMO.

Good luck.


You've brought up some good points arbor pro. The accountant we decided on is going to be setting me up with quickbooks for my home computer and I will be handling all of the paper stuff. This works well for right now because I'm the only one without a full time job. So I log my daytime hours and get compensated from there. The maintenance and sales we're all doing at this point depending mainly on scheduling. It's not the best plan but for now, it works. Eventually we'll be hiring my father part time to handle our maintenance but I don't ever see sales falling on only one person.

We're speaking with an attorney next week who brought up the life insurance and disability issues and I'm sure he'll bring up some more. He'll also be writing up an exit strategy for us to hopefully avoid any problems if we decide to part ways.

On another note, I just signed our million dollar liability policy today. "Fully insured" is a good feeling. Now I can ***** about the uninsured hacks out there!
 
Oh noes! I need more info guys.

Comp and licensing. Here's the deal. Some friends of mine took the initiative to hook me up with the local news channel for a little "spotlight on small business" segment. While this is very exciting that people will learn about my business this is scary as hell because I think ( from what the local small business admin and my acct. has told me ) that I have all my ducks in a row as far as operating legitimately but comp and licensing are things that I do not have. Is a license to run a tree service a necessity? Are they needed everywhere? Do I need just a contractors license? And then there's comp. We have no employees. Only the partners ( 3 of us ) work. I know for bidding municipal and commercial comp is sometimes required on all working partners but is this an across the board, if you don't have it you shouldn't be working thing? I'm not talking about whether or not it is "smart" to work without it...I just need to know if it's legal. My main fear is with this kind of public exposure I could seriously p*** off my competition and end up having my a** handed to me if anyone decides to dig up my info.

Now, if I ABSOLUTELY NEED these things, where do I get them, how fast can I get them, and how much is this bs gonna cost me? Any help?
 
Comp and licensing. Here's the deal. Some friends of mine took the initiative to hook me up with the local news channel for a little "spotlight on small business" segment. While this is very exciting that people will learn about my business this is scary as hell because I think ( from what the local small business admin and my acct. has told me ) that I have all my ducks in a row as far as operating legitimately but comp and licensing are things that I do not have. Is a license to run a tree service a necessity? Are they needed everywhere? Do I need just a contractors license? And then there's comp. We have no employees. Only the partners ( 3 of us ) work. I know for bidding municipal and commercial comp is sometimes required on all working partners but is this an across the board, if you don't have it you shouldn't be working thing? I'm not talking about whether or not it is "smart" to work without it...I just need to know if it's legal. My main fear is with this kind of public exposure I could seriously p*** off my competition and end up having my a** handed to me if anyone decides to dig up my info.

Now, if I ABSOLUTELY NEED these things, where do I get them, how fast can I get them, and how much is this bs gonna cost me? Any help?

As much as I hate to send someone to a lawyer, I think you better spend a few hundred on one and get yourself together. And think long and hard about media exposure, they will usually make even the best operation look silly since 'dirty laundry' sells better.
 
As much as I hate to send someone to a lawyer, I think you better spend a few hundred on one and get yourself together. And think long and hard about media exposure, they will usually make even the best operation look silly since 'dirty laundry' sells better.

I actually spoke with one a few months back and the only advice he offered was to think about incorporating instead of just a DBA to offer more protection of my personal assets. Maybe he wasn't a good lawyer. That's what I'm here to find out.
 
I actually spoke with one a few months back and the only advice he offered was to think about incorporating instead of just a DBA to offer more protection of my personal assets. Maybe he wasn't a good lawyer. That's what I'm here to find out.
Probably need to talk to an accountant to figure what is best on setting up the business.
 
Probably need to talk to an accountant to figure what is best on setting up the business.

I already have an accountant. He assures me that all is well. Says I don't NEED workers comp, or a license but I keep hearing those terms thrown around on AS and from other local tree guys and I'm afraid that I'm missing something.
 
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