2010 July | Tips for Student Designers and the Small Businesses Who Love Them: OrangeSlyce Life

1,2,3 DIY LLC: How to file an LLC in Arizona

Posted on July 7th, 2010 in Small Business | 13 Comments »

Every company starts somewhere. It’s usually with paperwork.

Two things before we start:

You cannot file a Limited Liability Company (LLC) in Arizona online. Seems a bit ridiculous, but it’s true.

You’re do-it-yourself budget for the whole process will probably be $100-$200 depending on the options you choose.

Let’s get you set up.

1-Doing the Paperwork

Choosing a name is often both the easiest and hardest step. Assuming you have one in mind for your business, first check its availability in the Arizona Corporation Commission’s (ACC) database. After a search deems your name available, you can reserve it for 120 days electronically for $45 or by snail mail for $10.

Next, head over to the Arizona Corporation Commission’s Corporate Filings webpage. Under the section titled “New Domestic Limited Liability Companies,” you can find the three forms you need.

Download and fill out forms LL0004 and CFCVLR.

Form LL0004 is the Articles of Organization form and easily the best place to start. You will fill out all the important information like the name of the company and the office address. It has a fantastic checklist as well as links to Arizona laws regarding LLCs and instructions on what to do once your LLC filing is approved.

2-Filing the Forms

After filing everything out, you can mail your forms to

Arizona Corporation Commission OR Arizona Corporation Commission

1300 W. Washington St. 1^st Floor 400 W. Congress Ste #221

Phoenix, AZ 85007 Tucson, AZ 85701

Be sure to include your $50 filing fee ($85 for expedited filing) for LL0004. In our experience, expedited is the way to go. It takes about a week as opposed to the estimate of two months with normal filing.

They take cash, check, or money order made out to Arizona Corporation Commission. If you go down to the office in person to file the forms you can use Visa, MasterCard, and American Express as well.

3-Notice of Publication

Finally, you have to provide a “Notice of Publication” using form LL0001 within 60 days of the date your forms were filed with the ACC. Notice must be provided for 3 consecutive publications in a newspaper with general circulation in the county of Arizona listed as the LLC’s know place of business in section 2 of LL0004.

The ACC provides a list of publications by county. Fees for legal publication vary, but if you’re in Maricopa County you should probably budget about $50-$100 for this step.

Two pieces of advice:

Be sure to call and verify that the publication you end up using provides a notarized Affidavit of Publication to the ACC on your behalf. If they don’t, don’t use them.

Though there is a ticking clock, in general you want to wait to file the notice until after your application has been approved by the ACC. Once it is approved though, complete this step ASAP. Both considerations will help you avoid wasting time and money going through the process again.

Legal Help in LLC Filing

These steps can be done entirely on your own, but we have to remind you that we are not lawyers and if you’re in doubt about anything, you should consult a lawyer. A specialist in organizational law can typically get all the necessary forms completed as well as draft up custom agreements between members in order to protect everyone’s interests. Depending on the complexity, fees can go upwards of $1000, though it’s not unheard of to find a lawyer to form your LLC in under a week for $300 in addition to the filing and publication fees.

But really, an entrepreneur like yourself can get it done in a day. Better yet, hire a student using OrangeSlyce, point them to this post, and be done with it in a matter of minutes. Spend your money on entrepreneurship, not lawyers.

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LLC or El-el-else?

Posted on July 5th, 2010 in Small Business | 1 Comment »

There is a handful of organizational structures that the business savvy can choose from when starting out. Hands down though, the Limited Liability Company is near the top of the list here in Arizona.

Advantages of an Arizona LLC

Limited Liability: As the name suggests, the owners, usually referred to as “members,” of an LLC have the limited liability protection of a corporation. This is meant to–and in large part does–protect the members from some or all liability for acts and debts incurred by the LLC.
Flexible Profit Distribution: LLCs have tremendous flexibility in choosing profit distributions, unlike partnerships for example where there is typically a 50-50 split.
No Minutes: Corporate structures are required to have meetings, keep records of minutes, and record resolutions as well as file annual reports. All expenses of time or cash, all not necessary with an LLC.
Tax Structures: All business losses, profits, and expenses of the company flow to the individual members. There is no double taxation where one pays a corporate tax and an individual tax. In most cases, this will be a tax advantage though there are some circumstances where having a corporate tax structure can be favorable.

Disadvantages of an Arizona LLC

Limited Life: Unlike a corporation which lives forever, an LLC is dissolved when a member dies or goes into bankruptcy. If you are not the sole member of the LLC, you should probably supplement the organization with a buy-sell agreement to cover such circumstances. Otherwise, you could find the deceased or bankrupt member’s interest going into an estate or being handled by their creditors.
The Public Option: If you plan on taking your company public in the near future or issuing employee shares, you will be better served by choosing a corporate structure.
Added Complexity: Running a sole-proprietorship or partnership will have less paperwork and complexity than an LLC.

In general, you’ll be well served by the LLC structure, but remember to look into the other organizational structures before making a decision. And, if at the end of the day you’re still unsure, talk to a lawyer. They’ll tell you what to do. They always seem ready to do that.

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A Lesson in Customer Service OR The Importance of Being Earnest

Posted on July 2nd, 2010 in Small Business | No Comments »

We just had an experience that illustrates just how important good customer service was. Here's the short version: We (that's the editorial "we" there, not the whole OS team) are on our way to Columbus today to visit our grandmother on her 80th birthday. Due to some unforeseen circumstance, our airline had to use a different (smaller) plane and, in the process, cut 30 people off the flight–and bump them to a flight that wasn't leaving for another 28 hours.

This, as you might imagine, was unacceptable for a lot of people. Your typical angry mob descended on the gate agents, and what happened next is where our lesson lies. One agent (whose name we don't know) dealt with one customer at a time, did what he could (which usually wasn't much) and called for the next person. He wasn't lazy, he wasn't rude, but that didn't matter: the customers felt screwed, and we're certain that more than a few of them will write nasty letters, blog about their experiences, boycott the airline, etc. The airline will lose customers and suffer (at least) a minor hit to their reputation.

The other agent didn't accomplish that much that the first agent didn't (although she did seem to solve a few more problems) but the feeling on her line was overwhelmingly positive. Why? Because she cared. When you have a throng of furious people who are blaming your reps for something that's not their fault, there's no faking empathy. Trained lines ("maam, I understand your upset and I'll do everything I can to take care of this") are worthless if the person delivering them is clearly just restraining himself from saying "so calm the hell down because you're seriously being irrational." The first guy was being "polite" because it was professional and because he was being paid to be polite. This agent was being caring because she obviously cared that people were being inconvenienced. Some of the things she did you could train–like noting the personal problems people had ("I'm missing a family reunion") and trying to tailor solutions around those problems–but most of them you couldn't. You can't "train" a tone of voice or a facial expression or body language (at least not efficiently).

What's the lesson? Well, first of all, there's no substitute for a customer service rep who actually cares about people. Empathy is a heck of a motivator when you're trying to solve other people's problems, and it makes people a lot more grateful when you solve their problems (and a lot more understanding when you can't) if they feel like you tried to help them because you cared and not because you had to. If you're hiring a customer service rep, try to find people who have a demonstrated sense of empathy–for example, try to find people who do volunteer work extensively. Ask questions that will give you a sense of how the person reacts to other people's hardship (eg "Talk about a time something bad happened to someone you know, how did you help?" And don't listen to what they say, watch how they say it.

Oh, and if you're just looking for one really awesome rep, maybe try to steal away Jenn H. from Gate A29 at Sky Harbor.

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Things You Should Know and Possibly Don’t: Polishing Your Shoes

Posted on July 1st, 2010 in Small Business | No Comments »

Few things can kill your prospects in an interview like showing up looking like a slob. That's why (hopefully) you're combing your hair carefully, wearing nice (clean, ironed) clothes, shaving. It's also why, on the way to your interview, you'll find yourself constantly checking your reflection like you belong on the cast of Jersey Shore (no link for Jersey Shore, we refuse). It's funny then that for all that preparation, job candidates sometimes miss one glaring problem in their appearance: their shoes (and we apologize to all of the ladies reading, because this is a much less useful post for you). Let's put this in no uncertain terms you need to shine your shoes before you go to a job interview. Unless the interviewer is just dead-set against formality and flat-out tells you not to wear dress shoes (and even then, part of us would be thinking "It's a trap") your shoes need to look nice, and that means that you need to polish them up.

So, how do you do it? It's pretty easy. You'll need:

3 (three) soft cloths. At least one should be cotton
1 (one) thing of shoe polish
2 (two) shoes in need of a-polishin'
1 (one) spray bottle of water
1 (one) sufficient amount of time before your interview (you should be doing this the night before)

Okay, so first: take one cloth, dampen it (it shouldn't be dripping wet) and lightly dust off the shoes.
Next, use the other cloth to polish the shoe. As an important note, you need to keep the polish damp as you apply it. You should be moving in circles a-la Daniel-San in Karate kid (wax-on, wax-off).
Leave the shoe sitting for a few minutes, then use the spray bottle to lightly mist the shoe.
Repeat all of this (except the dusting step) until your shoes have reached a suitable level of shine. After that, buff with another cloth (or use a damp cottonball if you must).
After that, put your shoes in their box and leave them someplace cool and safe

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How Much Am I Worth? A (Short) Guide to Freelance Rates For Students

Posted on July 1st, 2010 in Small Business | No Comments »

One of the tough things about starting up as a freelance worker is figuring out how much you’re worth. Our site gives some good starting guides for freelance design work, but, sometimes, it’s nice to know what your worth. For college students, it’s especially difficult because the data on what comparable workers charge is difficult to find.

We’ve done a little (okay, a lot) of legwork for you to try to determine some (very) rough estimates by pouring through data from multiple sources*, collecting a small amount of our own survey data, and applying several reasonable assumptions. Now, having said that, we’re going to offer two important caveats.

(1) At the end of the day, you should take a job if the employer is offering more money than the minimum amount you’d be willing to work for.
What a worker like you is “worth” (on average) is often much, much less important to a business (especially a small business) than what the business is willing or able to pay you. If a business is offering 300 dollars to do a project that would take you about 20 hours–and if you’d be willing to work 20 hours for 300 dollars–then the fact that a worker like you would normally make 30 bucks an hour should not be a deal-breaker.

(2) These numbers are extremely loose estimates
Not every college-aged freelancer is created equally. The nature of the data we analyzed is to be biased towards experienced freelancers who also happen to be in college (most of the data sets suffer a self-selection problem insofar as an experienced freelancer is more likely to use the services than a relative “newcomer”) and so these figures are ALL probably on the high-end, unless you already have 2+ years of experience in your chosen field.

On top of that, a lot of this data was gathered before the recession hit full force, which further biases the numbers upwards.

On top of THAT, the very nature of making different data sets work together (and linking them with assumptions) makes everything unreliable. Having conducted (or assisted) in a few legitimate Economics studies, we have no qualms about saying that this study would get torn apart in peer review.

Does that mean that the numbers are useless? No, they’re still something and should be considered at least a decent starting point when setting your rates. But we issue this warning as a way of saying “don’t assume that these rates are perfect” and, quite frankly “don’t expect to make this much (or, in some cases, even near this much) until you get a fair amount of experience under your belt.” Now, with those caveats out of the way, here they are (rates are hourly in USD):

Web Design: 35
Graphic Design: 42
Programmer: 42
Writer: 26
Illustrator: 35
Video Editor: 40
Photographer: 45

Again, these rates aren’t perfect. If you’re a relatively inexperienced writer and a business offers you 10 bucks an hour to write, our experience tells you you should almost certainly take it (the experience alone makes it worth it). If you’re a photographer still trying to build a portfolio and a business offers you fifteen bucks an hour, you very well may want to take that job too even if it is well below “average.”

*We don’t want to bore you with all of the sites we viewed for something unscientific, but in the interest of giving credit where it’s due, the following sites helped us in, at least, an abstract sense:

Freelanceswitch’s Freelance Statistics Report

Media Bistro’s Salary Survey

Writing Assistance’s Rate Chart

The Bureau of Labor Statistics

Simply Hired