Episode 8 of the Circle Legal Business Fix-It Show teaches you how to become a business! Hosts Kelley Keller and Susan Gunelius discuss the 10 key steps you need to take to turn your hobby or idea into an actual business entity.

The first five step include legal, financial, and tax steps while the second five steps focus on branding and marketing:

Form an entity with the Secretary of State.
Obtain an Employer Identification Number (EIN) with the IRS.
Prepare an operating agreement or bylaws as well as initial organizational resolutions.
Open bank accounts and file any special tax election, and obtain any licenses you might need.
Set up your company record book, add future deadlines to your calendar, and establish a procedure for maintaining corporate shields.
Get your domain name (and similar domain names) and social media URLs to protect your brand and business.
Decide how you're going to represent your business in the online space (i.e., will you promote your business brand or your personal brand).
Consider how the business name that you've registered and trademarked will live alongside any product brands you might need to create in the future.
Start to identify the factors that define your brand.
Understand when you need to use Inc. or LLC in your name and when you don't.

These are steps you don't want to skip or do incorrectly, so listen and learn!

Scroll to the end of the article to listen now or read the full transcript below.
Transcript and Audio of Episode #8
Announcer: It’s time to LIFT your business and your life on the Circle Legal Business Fix-It Show with your hosts Kelley Keller and Susan Gunelius. Learn how to build a business you love on a solid foundation that delivers the future you want for you and your family. Here are your hosts, Kelley and Susan.

Kelley Keller: Innovative companies, business owners, and families welcome to the Circle Legal Business Fix-It Show where you’ll learn to LIFT your business and your life with help from recognized legal and business experts that you can trust. I’m your host, Kelley Keller, I’m in the iHeartMedia studios in Harrisburg, and with me is my co-host Susan Gunelius who is joining us remotely via video conference. Hi Susan.

Susan: Hi Kelley. Looking forward to this week’s show as always.

Kelley: As always, exactly. Well, since we have a number of new listeners based on the feedback that we got back last week through the website CircleLegalRadio.com, we’d like to do just a quick recap of who we are, what the show is about and the kinds of conversations that we’re having.

Well, I’m Kelley Keller. I’m an Intellectual Property attorney serving small and mid-sized business through the law firm Circle Legal right here in Central PA. And my co-host, Susan Gunelius, is a 20-year marketing communications expert who is also a seasoned corporate professional who now brings her experience developing and executing marketing programs for global and national organizations directly to small and mid-sized businesses like you. Susan is also Circle Legal’s Chief Marketing Officer.

Susan: And we teamed up to do the Circle Legal Business Fix-It Show so startups and small businesses and mid-sized business owners can learn how to build businesses that they love and that can support themselves, can support their families, for years to come without making these big mistakes that we so often see happening or getting into big trouble that can be so expensive it can destroy their businesses and even sometimes destroy their lives.

So the Circle Legal Business Fix-It Show is all about building and maintaining a solid LIFT foundation. LIFT stands for your essential Legal, Insurance, Finance, and Tax building blocks of your business. Without a strong LIFT foundation, even the most innovative companies will fail. There’s no way around it.

Since our show launched in mid-September, we’ve been mining the topic of how to build a LIFT foundation,