Reddit reviews Start Your Own Business, Fifth Edition: The Only Start-Up Book You'll Ever Need

• Get books on starting a business. There are plenty of them and you don't have to read them back to back. Get them as a reference and reference them often. The Small Business Start-Up Kit and Start Your Own Business, Fifth Edition are good ones.
  
• Accountants and lawyers will be very helpful to getting you guys get setup. Seek them out and bring them on board early.
  
• Form a corporation. Either an LLC or S-Corp. If someone sues your business for a million dollars and wins, they can only take what the business owns, not what you own personally (your car, your house, etc.).
  
• Create a business bank account and business credit cards. This will be critical for bookkeeping purposes and for keeping track of expenses.
  
• Are you forming a partnership with your friends? How will you work out the percentage each person owns? Will it be based off how much capital each person contributes? Be VERY careful with partnerships.. treat it as if you are marrying someone. Because that's what it is. Your business partner can drastically affect your life positively or they can destroy your life. Even if you like each other now, money can change things. Be future minded and write up an operating agreement to protect all of yourselves. What if 10 years down the line you want to quit? Or a business partner wants to move to another state and wants to quit? Who gets what? Don't leave this to chance or goodwill or you will regret it.
  
• Learn accounting software. Your accountant will likely have a say in this but it is ultimately your decision. Most accountants are familiar with Quickbooks or Quickbooks Online. There are alternatives like Xero. This will help you track your expenses and be critical to filing taxes.
  
• Get CRM software to keep track and manage your clients. ShootQ is one of the best in the wedding realm, although it can take time to learn and get it set up.
  
• Get project management software (Basecamp or Apollo). This will help everyone in the business stay up to date on to do task lists and deadlines. Apollo has time tracking software which is helpful in knowing how many hours you spend on a project. Historical data will be useful in knowing how much to charge for future projects.
  
• Be wary of taking out any loans. It's often better to bootstrap yourself off the ground.
  
• If you don't take a loan, you all may need to work side jobs to pay the bills until you are ready to go full time. Don't expect to have enough cashflow to pay full time salaries for a few years. This is just being realistic.
  
• Weddings have a low barrier to entry. Do your first or two for free to build up a portfolio. Then charge very little. If you're not charging a lot, don't create a million hour long edits for them. Charge little and promise little so you're not stuck with them. Same principle applies to commercial and corporate. Seek out the type of work that you want to do, approach businesses and offer to do it for very cheap or for free. Do a killer job so that it looks like they paid you a million bucks. This will open doors.
  
• It is very easy to get bogged down with wedding edits. Consider yourself warned. Sifting through hours of footage and piecing edits together is a lot of work. Do not underestimate it.
  
• Only market the work you want to attract. Don't post all your work on your blog.
  
• Contracts are important to look professional, and more importantly, to protect yourself. A lawyer will be helpful here. Many books on filmmaking also have sample contracts.
  
• You are essentially a start up business. Be prepared for long work weeks, very little pay, and high stress. Not everyone is cut out for being a business owner. Don't think it will be like a 9-5 job.. you don't go home and tune the business out.. it will be very much a part of your life. I'm not saying that it should take OVER your life since you should do everything you can to maintain some sort of work-life balance. If any of you are married, you will need supportive spouses who are willing to make sacrifices.
  
• Read The E-Myth. It reads like a story but will teach you very important business concepts and how to think like a businessman. This is very important as you start to grow.
  
  This just scratches the surface. It's not rocket science, but it's a lot.. it will take time. CONSTANTLY evaluate and look for things that can be improved.
  
  Source: Started a few businesses, the current one being a filmmaking one.

I felt the same way, so I went and found a bunch. Here they are:

Start Your Business is the single greatest book on starting a business. It is a pretty comprehensive overview of all aspects. I would definitely recommend it.

Finance:

Financial Accounting is a decent text. The usefulness of financial accounting in general is quite limited for an entrepreneur though. The techniques are mainly used by outside parties to evaluate companies, whether for investing or lending. But it can be useful in that it gives a metric for how your company is doing.

Managerial Accounting is a good book. The subject matter is extremely important and should definitely be learned. Get a book on managerial accounting.

Marketing:

Marketing Management is a really good text for an overview of marketing. One of the best.

Most marketing texts are smaller and not textbooks like you're looking for. There are some detailed texts that go into complicated calculations related to marketing decisions. Go check them out. It's like marketing science or something like that.

Business Law:

Business law is not really worth going into extreme detail. So a good book is The Entrepreneur's Guide to Business Law .


Final Note: It's important to note that it makes way more sense to just get into business and learn as you go. You could spend years learning from every text possible and get nowhere.

Often non profits help the world. I read social startup success and https://www.amazon.com/Start-Your-Own-Business-Fifth/dp/1599183870/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1540837976&sr=8-1&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=how+to+start+your+business+the+only+book&dpPl=1&dpID=51gHiS5TjtL&ref=plSrch

Pick a niche you want to change in the world. If you're into doing this we can learn better together. Msg me

Start Your Own Business, Fifth Edition: The Only Start-Up Book You'll Ever Need

Amazon also sells startup businesses for $25

when i started my business i wrote a few professors at stanford, harvard and penn state and i was informed to read this book: http://www.amazon.com/Start-Your-Business-Fifth-Edition/dp/1599183870

People have recommended "Start Your Own Business, Fifth Edition: The Only Start-Up Book You'll Ever Need". I've never read it, anyone know if it's any good?

http://www.amazon.com/Start-Your-Business-Fifth-Edition/dp/1599183870/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1370970468&sr=8-2&keywords=how+to+start+a+business

http://www.amazon.com/Start-Your-Business-Fifth-Edition/dp/1599183870/ref=reg_hu-rd_add_1_dp

What the heck is a pecksniffian?!?