Shore Things

Let me tell you the most expensive shortcut in small business: falling in love with a name before you check whether you can actually use it. I know this one personally. I’m not going to pretend otherwise. Picking a name, building around it, and then discovering someone else already has a claim to it is a special kind of frustrating — and it’s entirely avoidable with about five minutes of looking. Before you order anything, register anything, or design a single logo, do these

Later is doing a lot of heavy lifting in small business land. Later I’ll set up a real business bank account. Later I’ll get the LLC sorted. Later I’ll figure out what I’m actually supposed to be paying in taxes. Later, once things slow down a little, once I have more clients, once I have more time. Here’s the problem with later: the IRS doesn’t care about your timeline. And neither do the fees, the fines, the personal liability exposure, or the accountant who’s going to char

One of the quiet reasons people put off setting up their business: they’re convinced step one is hiring a lawyer, and that sounds expensive and serious and like a thing you do once you’re a “real” business. So let me take some pressure off. For most small businesses, the core setup doesn’t require a lawyer at all. Forming an LLC in South Carolina is filing Articles of Organization with the Secretary of State and paying the fee. Getting an EIN is a free ten-minute form on IRS.

Let me start by saying something important: none of these are stupid mistakes. They’re incredibly common, completely understandable, and almost always the result of nobody ever explaining how travel agency finances actually work — because the travel industry has its own financial rhythm that generic business advice doesn’t account for. Here are the five I see most often. 1. Treating commission income like regular income. This is the big one. When you book a trip, you don’t ge

There’s a lot of advice out there about starting a business, and a frustrating amount of it is vibes. Follow your passion. Build your brand. Show up authentically. All lovely. None of it tells you what to actually do on a Tuesday when you’ve decided you’re really doing this. So here’s the un-vibey version: what you actually need to handle in your first 30 days, roughly in order, so that the foundation is solid before you build anything fun on top of it. Week 1: Decide and nam

Let me save you some time: if you want to work with me, you’re going to be in QuickBooks Online. That’s not negotiable, and I want to explain why — because “my bookkeeper requires it” is not a great reason to pay a monthly subscription fee, and you deserve an actual answer. First, what it is. QuickBooks Online is cloud-based accounting software. It connects to your bank accounts, tracks your income and expenses, generates reports, and keeps everything in one place. Your bookk

Nobody talks about this part, so I’m going to. When small business owners avoid their books — and most of them do, at some point — it’s rarely because they’re lazy or irresponsible. It’s because looking at the numbers feels like a verdict. And if you’re not sure the verdict is going to be good, it’s easier to just not look. I get it. I run my own business. I know what it feels like to be afraid of your own bank account. But here’s what I’ve learned from working with a lot of