If you’re interested in growing your business without constantly taking on debt or scrambling to find extra money to pay off debt, review our guide to financial planning for Greensboro-based entrepreneurs:

The Basics of Financial Planning

A financial plan is a document that includes details and strategies for improving your current financial situation and meeting your short-term and long-term financial goals.

Creating a financial plan helps entrepreneurs:

• Pay bills on time
• Identify and set priorities
• Make a schedule to pay off debt
• Set aside money for emergencies
• Develop a plan for growing their business responsibly

3 Financial Planning Tips for Entrepreneurs in Greensboro, NC

Review our top three financial planning tips, especially for Greensboro entrepreneurs, below:

1. Understand Your Existing Finances and Create SMART Goals Based on Them

Start by listing your income, fixed monthly costs that don’t change (like rent), variable costs that do change (like supplies), any debt, your savings, and your business bank accounts. Next, calculate how much cash you spend each month and the minimum sales needed to pay bills.

Potential Actions to Take If You Find High or Unsustainable Expenses

As you list your expenses and income, you may find some costs that are too high to remain sustainable. Some common actions entrepreneurs take to reduce unnecessary expenses include:

• Refinance high-interest debt: If you have a loan with a high interest rate, consider taking a new loan with a lower rate to pay it off. This new loan can reduce your monthly costs and the total you pay over time. Refinancing also provides your business with the opportunity to adjust your payment frequency to one that better suits your needs.
• Reduce discretionary costs: Discretionary spending refers to nonessential costs that businesses can eliminate or adjust without directly affecting their core operations. Some common discretionary costs you might consider eliminating or scaling back include travel, investments unrelated to day-to-day operations, marketing, subscriptions for nonessential software, and entertainment-related spending.
• Create a conservative budget: In general, most small businesses need to stick to a more conservative budget that anticipates uneven income in the early stages. To create a conservative budget, it should be based on the expectations of low income and high expenses. This approach prepares your company for the worst and often leaves businesses with extra cash at the end of the month due to higher-than-expected income or lower-than-expected costs.

How to Create SMART Goals

Once you have a comprehensive understanding of your expenses and have an idea about some actions you could take to reduce them (if needed), you can begin to create SMART goals to help you achieve them.

To successfully create them, your business’s goals should be:

• Specific
• Measurable
• Achievable
• Relevant
• Time-bound

Example of a SMART Goal for Entrepreneurs

• Non-SMART Goal: I want my business to increase sales.
• SMART Goal: Over the next six months, I plan to increase sales by an average of $5,000 per month.

2. Include Core Financial Best Practices in Your Plan

Whether it’s building a contingency fund or monitoring cash flow, you set your business up for future success by adding a few implementable financial best practices to your plan. These best practices include the following tips:

Separate Personal and Business Money

Instead of using your personal checking account or credit card to pay for your business expenses, open a business checking account and a business credit card. These new accounts should be used exclusively for business expenses and never for personal purchases.

Keeping money separate makes bookkeeping and tax filing easier, while also helping to protect your personal assets if your company is an LLC or corporation.

Keep Your Compensation Reasonable

Unless you’re planning on not taking a salary for some time, you’ll need to decide on sustainable owner pay.

Generally, owner compensation should cover your personal budget (meaning it’s sufficient for you to live on) without being so high that it starts draining the cash your business needs for day-to-day bills.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce also offers a fairly detailed resource for calculating a business owner’s salary, which we recommend reviewing when determining your salary.

Build a Contingency Fund to Stay Resilient

Save an emergency fund for unexpected expenses, such as a broken machine or a slow month. Keep this money readily available, such as in cash or a savings account.

To build your contingency fund, allocate a percentage of your monthly revenue to be automatically transferred to the account each month.

Greensboro Chamber of Commerce Tip: Aim for at least three to six months of operating expenses when building your contingency fund. This buffer buys time to adapt during a challenging business period.

Create and Monitor Your Budget

Create a practical operating budget. List fixed costs like rent, payroll, and software, and variable costs like inventory and marketing.

Next, compare those costs to a realistic expectation of the revenue your business will generate each month and over the next year. Doing so will give you an idea of how much extra cash you can expect to have each month once all your expenses are covered.

Each week, compare what you planned to what you really spent and earned. Follow up on late payments, and try to buy big items when you have cash coming in.

Plan for Local, State, and Federal Taxes Year-Round

As a self-employed entrepreneur, you’ll need to pay quarterly payments to North Carolina and the federal government. While the penalties for missed quarterly payments are fairly low (under 1% currently), they can still be expensive if you have a lot of taxable income.

Do your research on how much you’ll owe each quarter, and set aside a percentage of every dollar you earn that matches the tax you’ll need to pay. Keep this taxed income in a separate account and ensure that you pay your taxes by the quarterly due date.

Greensboro Chamber of Commerce Tip: Don’t forget local taxes! You should check how much you owe to Greensboro, as the city taxes real property (e.g., commercial buildings and land) and personal property (e.g., equipment and machinery). You’ll also need to pay sales taxes to Guilford County.

3. Decide What Outside Assistance You Plan to Rely On

Any entrepreneur will eventually need outside assistance. Whether you’re raising capital, securing needed insurance, or finding a CFP, external partners and advisors can be essential to a new business’s success.

While looking for external help, follow these tips:

Choose Funding Sources Strategically, Not Emotionally
When looking for funding, start with low-risk money like savings, small grants, or help from friends and family. Raise only enough to reach your next goal, and understand the tradeoffs, such as giving up ownership or adhering to repayment rules.

Greensboro Chamber of Commerce Tip: If you’re unsure about raising capital, it can be well worth taking the time to join entrepreneurship programs in Greensboro that provide education on securing funding. Look for programs that also have opportunities for mentorships and networking.

Manage Risk With the Right Insurance
List the biggest things that could go wrong at work, and purchase insurance that protects your business from those risks.

Typically, most businesses will start with three common policies: General Liability (injury or damage claims), Property Insurance (damage to buildings, equipment, inventory), and Professional Liability for service businesses (claims that your advice or work caused a loss).

You may also need Cyber Liability or Business Interruption depending on your operations.

Work With a Fee-Only CFP and CPA Who Understands Entrepreneurs
Hire a fee-only Certified Financial Planner and a Certified Public Accountant who puts your interests first. They can help choose a business type, improve your financial plan, reduce taxes, and test big decisions. Meet twice a year to refresh your goals and plan.

Greensboro Chamber of Commerce Tip: Contact our team to receive recommendations for local CFPs and CPAs who have successfully worked with Greensboro entrepreneurs.

Connect With the Entrepreneur Center in Greensboro, NC, for Financial Planning Assistance

If you’re an entrepreneur ready to create your financial plan in Greensboro, the Greensboro Chamber of Commerce is ready to serve you. Our entrepreneur center in Greensboro, NC, is home to a variety of programs directed toward helping entrepreneurs. When you join one of our programs or contact us for assistance, a member of our staff can provide financial planning advice and connect you with trusted CFPs and CPAs.

Learn more about our Entrepreneur Center today!

If you own a small business in Greensboro, NC, getting your name out is essential for your business’s success. Whether you’re opening up a new bakery or launching a private practice, you need to have a plan for how to reach your target audience. As you focus on improving your advertising efforts, take a moment to review our top marketing tips for small businesses.

How to Market a Small Business: 5 Small Business Marketing Tips

From researching your competition and setting up a Google Business profile to partnering with local influencers and diversifying your marketing channels, you have lots of ways to improve your marketing strategy. If you want to learn more about how to market a small business, review our top five advertising tips for small businesses below:

1. Research Your Competition’s Marketing Efforts

Before you launch your marketing efforts, it can help to know what your competitors are doing to advertise their businesses and how they’re pricing their products or services. For instance, if you find that they’re selling their product for a higher price than you were planning on, you could make your lower prices a key part of your marketing efforts. You could also evaluate how effective a competitor’s marketing strategies have been, using that information to help you know what you should focus on.

Doing this research can also help you find gaps in your competitors’ marketing strategies. If they’re not advertising to consumers you think would actually benefit from your business, you can start focusing on addressing that gap and bringing in new customers. Alongside helping your marketing strategy, you can use competitor information to create a more successful business plan.

2. Set Up a Google Business Profile

Setting up a Google Business is free and one of the easiest ways you can get your business’s name out in your community. With a Google Business profile, you can make sure your business shows up on Google Maps and in search results.

This profile also allows Google users to immediately see your website, hours, location, and phone number, raising the chance they visit your business or browse your site. Make sure to verify ownership and optimize your My Business account to raise the chance your company shows up higher in local search results.

Since Google states that verified businesses are twice as likely to be considered reputable, an added bonus of a Google Business profile is that it helps you gain credibility quickly. Your Google Business profile also makes it possible to interact with customers who left reviews, showing future users that you care about your customers’ experience. Additionally, you can post photos that showcase your products or services to attract consumers to your business.

3. Make Sure You Diversify Your Marketing Efforts

While going through traditional marketing channels can still be effective, you don’t want to pigeonhole your business into a restrictive marketing strategy. For example, if you only promote your business with physical media, like signs, billboards, and print ads, you’ll miss out on reaching lots of customers who are more likely to be swayed via digital marketing efforts.

When you market your business on social media, make sure you have a diverse marketing strategy as well. Don’t get stuck only using one social media platform or one type of content. Since short video content is very popular right now, you wouldn’t want to just produce written content (e.g., blogs, how-to articles, etc.). Instead, you’d want to pair your written content with video content on TikTok, YouTube Shorts, Facebook Stories, and Instagram Reels.

4. Collaborate With Local Influencers and Media Outlets

Unless you’re a national brand, it’s probably not worth paying a celebrity or influencer to advertise your products or services. However, collaborating with local influencers can be well worth it, as they’ll give your business credibility with followers who actually live in your city. Before you collaborate with an influencer, make sure their audience matches your target demographic and that the influencer matches your brand values.

Even though legacy media outlets aren’t as popular as they once were, it can still be worth engaging with them. Whether you take out an ad in your local newspaper, do an interview with your news station, or have your CEO appear on a local radio station, reaching out to local media makes sure more people start to notice your business. Additionally, many local media options can be free or low-cost, meaning you won’t be taking much of a financial risk, if any.

5. Put Quality Ahead of Quantity Online

When you’re working on your online marketing strategy, you might be tempted to try to create as many blogs as you can to start getting your business to rank higher. While it’s great to have a strong web presence, many businesses try to off-source their articles and other types of content to LLMs, like ChatGPT, or they try to have one person write more blogs than they can handle a day.

Both options often lead to low-quality work, inaccurate information, and lost trust from potential clients or customers. Search engines like Google also penalize sites that publish low-quality content and have spammy practices, causing these sites to rank lower in search results.

As you drive traffic to your website with original content, focus more on producing a few high-quality, well-researched blogs or articles every month rather than multiple blogs a day. You’ll usually want to stick to blog topics that relate to your business, and it can pay to work with SEO experts who can find the right keywords to target and help you develop a more effective online marketing strategy.

Turn to the Greensboro Chamber of Commerce for Small Business Marketing Advice

If you’re looking for more small business marketing advice in Greensboro, the Greensboro Chamber of Commerce can help. We regularly host networking events where new business owners can connect with marketing professionals and other business owners to pick their brains about advertising. Launch Greensboro also includes multiple programs designed to help small business owners develop an effective marketing strategy. With our many resources and network of local entrepreneurs, we’re confident we can support your business’s growth.

Learn more about Launch Greensboro today. If you have any questions about the ways we can help you improve your marketing efforts, please contact us.

If you’d like to start a business in North Carolina, it can be overwhelming to think about, especially if you’re not even sure what type of business you want to start. Once you know what steps to follow, however, starting a business in North Carolina isn’t all that difficult, with the state very friendly to entrepreneurs (NC has a 2.5% corporate tax rate, the lowest in the country!).

Whether you’re looking for a new business idea or want to know what you should do to launch your business, review our guide to starting a business in North Carolina.

What Is a Good Business to Start in North Carolina?

Small business entrepreneurs have lots of exciting opportunities in North Carolina. If you’re still trying to decide what your business should do, review the following business types that are perfect for entrepreneurs early in their careers:

• Moving Company
• Professional Services (e.g., doctors, architects, engineers, dentists, geologists, and social workers can all start a Professional Limited Liability Company).
• Bed & Breakfast
• Recruiting Agency
• Virtual Assistant Business

Regardless of the type of business you start, you’ll be in the right state to do it, as CNBC has named North Carolina one of the top three states to do business in for five years straight.

Do You Need a Business Plan to Start a Business in North Carolina?

Small business entrepreneurs need a business plan before they launch their company in North Carolina. This type of plan will give your business a direction to follow, guiding your business’s growth and helping you meet challenges. A detailed business and financial plan should include the following information:

• The product or service your business plans to offer
• The amount of funding you have, where that funding is coming from, and how much it’ll cost to launch and run your business
• Your business’s primary competitors
• The target audience of your business and how large that audience is

Does a New Business in North Carolina Need a Business Name?

Before you register your business, you need a name for it. The best business names will let customers know what your business does while also being unique enough that the name doesn’t get lost in the crowd. You’ll also want to look up competitor names to get a sense of naming conventions in your industry and how professional-sounding your business’s name needs to be.

Once you have a name, you need to do a business name search to make sure someone else doesn’t already have the same name. You can conduct your search here.

Where Can You Receive Funding From a New Business?

If you have enough personal savings to launch your business and fund operations for a stretch of time, you’ll likely want to stick to those funds so that you can retain full ownership and control of your business. However, most small business entrepreneurs will need funding from outside sources. Besides personal funds, you can receive funding from the following sources:

• Family and Friends
• Small Business Loans
• Small Business Grants
• Outside Investors (e.g., other entrepreneurs and venture capitalists)

How to Register a Business in North Carolina

Once you’ve decided on a small business idea, have a name, and know your funding sources, it’s time to register it. During registration, you’ll need to decide whether your business is a Sole Proprietorship, Limited Liability Company (LLC), a C corporation, a Nonprofit, or a Doing Business As (DBA). Each option has different benefits and requirements, so do your research first and talk to other business owners before deciding.

Next, you’ll officially register the business with the North Carolina Secretary of State. When you register your business, you’ll need to file paperwork that contains information about basic business details, the business’s name, and the registered agent.

How to Start a Business in North Carolina After You Finish Registering

Once you’ve finished registering your business, you’ll need to follow the rest of North Carolina’s requirements for launching a business. Based on nc.gov’s page on starting a business, new businesses must do the following after registering:

• Obtain necessary licenses and permits
• If applicable, apply for sales and use tax number
• Apply for an Employer Identification Number
• Prepare for any applicable taxes
• Obtain insurance
• Comply with regulations (E.g., OSHA, ADA, and Environmental Regulations)
• Arrange for business financing
• Open a business bank account
• Protect your business’s intellectual property

What Should You Do After You’ve Launched Your Business?

Once you’ve launched your business and have started its operations, one of the best ways you can continue to improve is by working with your local Chamber of Commerce. For instance, the Greensboro Chamber of Commerce is dedicated to serving small business entrepreneurs in Greensboro, NC. Some of the ways the Greensboro Chamber of Commerce helps business owners include:

• Small business classes
• Networking events
• Mentorship opportunities
• Small business advocacy
• Talent development resources

FAQs About Starting a Small Business in North Carolina

Do I Need A General Business License In North Carolina?

North Carolina has no statewide “general” license. Requirements vary by industry and locality.

Most businesses check state/occupational licensing and any city or county permits before opening. NCBOLD lists state-level licenses.

How Do I Check If My Business Name Is Available in NC?

Search the NC Secretary of State’s Business Registry to confirm your name is unique before you file.

From there, you can reserve or proceed to formation, reducing the risk of rejections, delays, and costly rebranding. Search your name here.

What Is An Assumed Business Name (DBA) And Where Do I File?

File an assumed business name (DBA) with your county Register of Deeds. After, it will appear in a statewide database.

Because filings are searchable across counties, you can operate under your chosen name in multiple counties without duplicate paperwork.

Does a Business Need A Registered Agent in North Carolina, And Can I Be My Own?

Every LLC or corporation must keep a North Carolina registered agent, but you may serve as your own.

The agent must have a physical NC street address and be available during business hours to receive legal documents.

How Do I Get A Free Federal EIN?

Apply for a free EIN at IRS.gov only, and avoid third-party sites that charge fees.

After you apply for an EIN and receive approval, you can use the EIN to open bank accounts, hire employees, and handle federal and state tax registrations.

When Do I Register For Sales & Use Tax Or Withholding?

Register with NCDOR if you will collect sales tax or if you have employees for state withholding.

After you finish registering with NCDOR, you can collect and remit sales tax properly and withhold payroll taxes, helping you avoid penalties and interest.

What Are NC Annual Report Deadlines And Fees?

LLC reports are due April 15. Corporations file on the 15th day of the fourth month after fiscal year end.

Building a reminder system helps you avoid late fees and potential administrative dissolution for missed filings.

When Do I Need to Pay For Unemployment Taxes?

Businesses must pay for unemployment taxes if you pay $1,500+ in a quarter or employ 1+ worker for 20 weeks.

If you need to pay for unemployment taxes, you’ll file quarterly wage reports and pay contributions through the state’s employer system.

Do I Need Workers’ Compensation Insurance?

Most employers must carry workers’ compensation when they have three or more employees, with limited exceptions.

Coverage helps protect your team and your business by paying for work-related injuries and complying with state law.

Join the Greensboro Chamber of Commerce

Launching a business is incredibly rewarding, but it can also be stressful if you do it alone. The Greensboro Chamber of Commerce understands the pressures on small business entrepreneurs, and we have a lot of resources to help. Whether you’re interested in taking a small business class or are looking for entrepreneurs near you in Greensboro to network with, we have you covered.

Learn more about our entrepreneurship programs and other entrepreneurship resources today. If you have any questions, you can call us at (336) 387-8301.