It should go without saying that maintaining a steady, positive cash flow is critical to keeping your business afloat. After all, if you don’t have the cash, you can’t pay your bills. And, if you can’t pay your bills, you won’t be able to stay in business for long.

As a business owner, you may consider distributing bonuses to employees as a show of appreciation for their passion and dedication to the business and/or to reward employees for exceptional performance and/or achievements. It’s important to remember that bonuses should be treated as taxable income and reported accordingly.

As a business owner, receivables (accounts receivable or A/R) are a vital part of your business. If you are not billing or invoicing clients and subsequently, collecting those receivables in a timely fashion, your business will be unable to sustain itself.

When you make the shift from being an employee to a business owner, you’ll want to gain an understanding of how compensation and health insurance will differ as a business owner versus that of an employee, as well as familiarize yourself with something called imputed income.

As a business owner, it’s vital to stay away from using monies from your business to pay for personal expenses even if you intend to reimburse the company later. You run the risk of piercing the corporate veil and getting into serious trouble with the IRS and other tax agencies should you and/or your business undergo an audit (ex: claiming business deductions for non-legitimate business expenses, failure to report and pay taxes on taxable income).

A business credit or charge card can be helpful for business owners when it comes to making purchases and paying expenses on behalf of your business. However, it’s extremely important to develop best practices when it comes to managing and using these cards.

If you decide to go into business for yourself, you’ll eventually want to form a legal business entity. A common type of entity structure for startups and small businesses is the Limited Liability Company or LLC. LLCs are established at the state level and are generally easy to form and don’t have as many requirements as Corporations.

As you get started with your new business, there may come a time when you will need to seek professional counsel from a good business law firm and/or CPA firm. Even if your circumstances may not warrant professional counsel at the onset of your new business, you may eventually need to seek counsel as your business grows.

Now that you’re ready and committed to starting a business, you need to put together a game plan. There are a lot of moving parts when it comes to starting a business so it’s important to be organized, detail-oriented and have all your ducks lined up. You’ll first want to take a “view from 10,000 feet” and then drill-down into the specific details.

So why do you want to start your own business? Time for a REALITY CHECK!

Part of starting, owning and running a business is LEARNING and rest assured, there will be a lot of learning! Look, you’re not going to know everything on day one.

So, you’ve reached a point in your life and career where you want to take a leap outside of your comfort zone and are considering starting your own business.