As a side note, Brian Lee looks a very nice person. You can watch the interview here: http://blog.legalzoom.com/small-business-tips/entrepreneur-interview-with-brian-lee-legalzoom-co-founder/

His new company sells shoes! It is not a website offering legal prepaid plans, compliance  services or Real Estate Closings, but shoes! LZ says they put the law on your side and now, they want to put fashion too!

It’s funny, and I immediately had the idea of making some fun of this situation by writing this post.

The reason is simple: Every day, a 30% of the phone calls we receive from potential customers have something in common: a question: “how do you guys compare with LegalZoom”?. This question is so common that we are waiting to receive it and, of course, we are  happy when it happens because it gives us an unique opportunity to establish a difference.

ActiveFilings is different from LegalZoon in many ways. Not only the price -we charge $69 for what they price at $139, or we get a Tax ID (EIN) for $49.00 when they do it for $79.00 and so on- but the services we include are more valuable.

For instance, our customer service and support have become legendary. After 9 years, our customers’ satisfaction rate is the highest in the market. Not because we just say it, but since we allow our customers to rate our services and this action is administered by an independent third party – RatePoint- we can prove it. LegalZoom can’t.

We also provide 1 year of Registered Agent Services at no charge. Even if you order our basic plan (the one priced at $69.00), you will get 1 year of RA services for free. We have developed some interesting guides, like the “Day-After Check List” or “The Corporate Compliance Guide”, or “How to Create a Company Name and get State Approval in one Shot” just to name a few of the products we offer at ActiveFilings.com. LegalZoom doesn’t.

But above all, we are specialists in business formation services. Period. LegalZoom does a little of everything: divorces, wills, trademarks, incorporation, etc.

However, not everything separates us. We have some similarities too.  ActiveFilings holds an A+ rating from the Better Business Bureau, as does LegalZoom and we both started almost at the same time, 9 years ago.

After having watched the interview, I know now that we have a new sales argument to share with those who ask: We don’t sell shoes!!!

Considering that LZ is much bigger than AF, perhaps we should start selling skirts… who knows!

Brian, congratulations for your new venture. We wish you the best and for those curious about the new website, here is the link: www.ShoeDazzle.com. I promise to tell my wife about it too.

Roberto Neuberger

Sometimes ago, because of budget restrictions, the state replaced the traditional postcard they used to send by mail directly to the business entities’ address for an email. A measure that sounded efficient at the beginning is turning to a nightmare, not only to the business owners that never receive the email, but to the incorporating companies that provided to the state their own email address at the time of incorporating the business of their clients.

In some way, the state is passing the cost to those incorporating companies because it is giving them the responsibility of informing their clients about the state intention. 

If the incorporating company is providing Registered Agent services to those companies, they could eventually find an opportunity to serve its customers by forwarding them the state email. However, as Nina Birnbach from ActiveFilings.com says, “our email is being literally bombarded by the state emails and it would require for us to implement a whole system to capture the information from this source, load it to our database and then email our clients. This is almost impossible to do in a short period of time”.

ActiveFiligns.com maintains a database of clients they have served. Some of them may be receiving Registered Agent services too, but we have no way to know if our clients have filed their annual reports unless we get this information from the state. However, individual emails force us to deploy resources that we don’t have or we may not want to develop.

For the state of Florida is also a problem because it may face a serious decrease in the renewal rate . What it seemed to be a source of reducing state expenses may turn in a bigger loss for all os us: state, incorporating companies and business entities.

We advice business owners to check their reporting duties. Corporate officers and LLC managing members are responsible of keeping their companies in good standing.

We just finished some programming and made available a free trial feature at our program. After filling out a short form (we are not asking credit card information at this time), anybody can try our program during 7 days or until having finished the first step.

After that, those who want to continue with the program, will be required to pay the membership fee. Fair enough?

This is a risk-free opportunity to test a program that worked for thousands of companies and, we are positive about it, it will work for yours too.

Start your free -no obligation- trial at http://www.activefilings.com/business-credit/credit-builder/trial/

(and you will soon agree that the ActiveFilings’ Business Credit Builder is, finally, a program that delivers).

What I don’t envy is the hard work of the future business owners, trying to find an incorporation company that will take care of their “babies”, their new ventures and stay away from fraud situations. Each day you can see new competitors in the market place and others giving up or just flying away with their customers’ money,.. Too bad…

Ok. Let’s go to this post. It is almost the end of March and a good time to recapitulate and see what we did.

First, we launched our Business Credit Builder program. We are so happy with this new service. It is so important that our customers can achieve success (so they can return and bring more business to us) that I don’t miss the opportunity to encourage them to sign up for the program. I call it “a business credit building program that delivers” (as the rest of our services) because the results are amazing.

Second, we launched another service, this time for foreign individuals wanting to be in the USA. I’m talking about our “Ready Made Companies”. Not more of the same old thing, but a new concept that will shorten their time to invest in our country.

Third, a cool toy. A few days ago I found an online application to create a company name, I shared the information with our readers. However, the idea of developing our own company name creator tool took off immediately. I said to myself: we have the technology so, why not to make the investment and develop something free that could help our visitors to create unique names for their business?

I can imagine some of our friends-competitors (we also have enemies-competitors) telling me: “Are you going to give this for free?!!. The answer of course is YES. Free. Try it. Play with our Company Name Creator and once you have found a good one, order your incorporation plan from us!

Well my friends, that’s all for today. Just one favor: if you have a chance, please recommend us to your friends and follow us on Twitter and become our friend at Facebook!

Now, time to play tennis!

R. Neuberger

You should consider the legal benefits of the state of formation before deciding where to incorporate your business. A report from ResourceNation.com offers future business owners some tips on choosing where to incorporate.

To start, you should  ask yourself  where you want to operate. The state of business incorporation is generally the same in which a company expects to conduct the majority of its business. However, if you plan to operate in more than one state, it might be best to consider the unique tax benefits offered by each one.

Different states have different laws regarding personal liabilities, legal rights of creditors, tax rates and more.

Resource Nation suggests that Nevada and Delaware are two of the states most amenable to business formation. They offer lower tax rates and many other incentives. For instance, in Nevada corporate officers need not be state residents and the Delaware General Corporation of Law is one of the most flexible in the nation.

Regardless of where you want to do business, you should take the time to learn more about how to incorporate it by visiting our main website.

It might be beneficial to adopt a “global mindset” when developing business plans. There are now online tools available in a series called “Culture-Guides-to-Go” that help with cross-cultural training. This resource might help entrepreneurs without other resources or finances to expand their enterprises.

“Whether a multinational [corporation] or a startup business out of a garage, everybody is global these days,” Dean Foster, president of international consulting firm Dean Foster Associates, told the source.

In order to gain respect in local and international markets, you really need to consider business incorporation as a first step to success.

Additionally, customers might be linked to potential business partners. Prospective business partners – like potential clients – might more readily do business with companies recommended by trusted friends.

Besides increasing patrons and partners, businesses might consider developing new services to expand their ventures. In a digital age, it may be wise to consider which kinds of mobile or internet applications can be developed around existing products and services.

It’s also important to have company representatives know about new and longstanding products so they can easily explain them to customers. This will help develop trust in a brand.

In addition to these tips, entrepreneurs who have not already might consider incorporating their businesses should realize that  business incorporation makes enterprises seem more legitimate, in the minds of business partners, prospective clients and lenders whose funds may be necessary for growing a company.

Limited liabilities, on the other hand, have only become popular within the past 15 years. The source calls this a “flexible business entity” somewhere between a corporation and a sole proprietorship. As the name suggests, this business type limits the personal liability of founders and shareholders.

The source advises small business owners to do their homework on how these entities have developed, and the advantages they offer in the current economic climate before incorporating.

Entrepreneurs can seek the guidance of professionals at an incorporation service to learn more about the protection offered to business owners through these different business types. Additionally, choosing inexpensive, online incorporation might offer the immediate benefit of cash savings on necessary filings.

This is not the first time the new visa has been discussed among legislators; back in January, Congress began its debate over the bill which would help “foreigners with good ideas” stay in America and start companies to help rebuild the U.S. economy.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the bill allows immigrant entrepreneurs looking to embark on ventures of all business types to stay in the U.S. if they can obtain $100,000 from a sponsoring angel investor or at least $250,000 from a venture capital firm. The proposed legislation also says that a startup would need to generate five new jobs and $1 million in revenue within two years.

These parameters are much looser than current legislation in which immigrants who undergo business formation are required to invest at least $1 million and create 10 full-time jobs.

While supporters of the bill are hopeful since a reported 0.1 percent of all legislative ideas make it this far in Congress, the Industry Standard points out that only 1 percent of bills that get this far actually turn into laws.

If the legislation does pass, entrepreneurs might find their ranks growing and business formation increasing this year. We, at Active Filings are ready to assist them.

They suggest the following rules:

1. Give it sense. A visual or a meaningful noun that is relevant to your domain of work. This can make you company name more memorable to your public, than using terms like Inc., Limited, Associates, and others.

2. Don’t mix it to much. Avoid creating new words like Tesco, Asiban, or others, because you need to bring feeling and weight to you brand name. These names suit better larger companies that have an already made identity.

3. Surprising Connections. Along the noun that defies you field of expertise you can put an memorable or grand noun which will add prestige to your name, like: Diamond Motors.

4. Keep it simple. Having to many words in your company name will make it hard to remember so keep it short.

5. Make it poetic. Try to make it easily to slide of your tongue. Think of combinations that sound nice and in the same time make sense. You can use many figures of speech to create this name.

6. Search your name on an search engine. If you want to stand out of the crowd than make sure the competition is smaller in number. If you see on Google that you have 2 more million search results then you have a problem. So choose carefully.

7. Avoid famous trademarks. You can register a famous trademark with something slightly different, but in a few days you will be receiving a citation from the legal department of the corporation that you inspired from. So don’t.

8. Don’t share common things. You can use a noun from you field of activities, but you got to combine it with something catchy that will make you different.

9. Use a top-level domain for your URL so your company name will be well searched on the web. The .com extension is preferred.

We found their tool very useful. Check it by yourself here: http://www.company-name-generator.com