Starting a business - Who can you trust?

[ThisisnotChad]

Originally Posted by Shizzah

Enjoy your 80 hour weeks. I wish you the best.

You've never spoken truer words...

OP, you don't need counseling or "guidance". Whatever you want to do, DO IT. Don't procrastinate.

[ERiC_DrAyViN]

Get to the patenting office...

But first write all your ideas on a piece of paper and then post it to yourself and the date will be evidence of when the idea was first created.

[colcot50]

Do a basic SWOT analysis. Strengths/weakness/Opportunities/ Threats, it will give you a starting point.

[dad61]

I've never gotten counseling for any biz that I started, that shits all bullshit if you ask me, I even took that course once, after I had started successful businesses.

It's like this, if you have a service, than you must have a demographic of people it's aimed at, you target them, it's that simple.

It takes money to make money, ask a millionaire how to make a million $$'s and his response will be, or should be "Start with 3 million", the point is, don't be discouraged when monies going out and none is coming in, if your "sure" about your idea.

Stick to your plan.

[Pure_Adrenaline]

Have your "mentors" sign a confidentiality agreement.

[Amkus]

You can't trust anyone. My brother's mom (different mothers) tried to fuck him over with his business.

[JumpinJack]

Unfortunately, despite what you may have heard from late night television, satellite radio commercials or snake oil salesmen, there is no effective way to protect an idea. Copyrights protect expression and patents protects inventions, and neither protect ideas. In both cases the idea is the first critical step, but without some identifiable embodiment of the idea there can be no intellectual property protection obtained and no exclusive rights will flow unto you. This does not mean that you should give up when you only have an idea, but it does mean that you will need to proceed to flesh out your idea to the point where it is concrete enough to be more than what the law would call a “mere idea.” The moral of the story is that ideas alone cannot be protected, so you need to think in terms of invention. Inventions can be patented.

http://www.ipwatchdog.com/2010/11/23...idea/id=13495/

[repost]

trust no one. you can work with people but never trust em

[seanjo]

Originally Posted by littlebuzz

I am interested in starting a business. According to the US Small Business Administration (and everybody else) I need to start by making a business plan. OK, that's a given.

Next I should look for counseling and training... but who can I trust?

My business idea is for a product and service that (as far as I can tell) is not being provided by anybody else at this time. How can I be sure that my mentor won't steal my idea?

(and yes I think my idea is that good)

Get out there and do it then, learn as you go... I don't know what your system is down there or what your tax rates are, but I always put away and save the tax percentage of my profits plus 15%, that way you have a bit left over every tax year.

[Vladimir]

You need to think about an important part of your busines model. How are you going to expand/distribute. For example, Walmart uses reverse hierarchical diffusion.