What's up guys.
Are you considering setting up your business with anonymity?
Are you tempted to keep your information totally private
while setting up your business anonymously
Sounds great
I want to tell you, there's a hidden side you need to know.
In this video, I'll break down for you when you should not use
anonymity when creating your active business entity.
All right, let's get started.
Okay.
The first problem in using anonymity for an active business
is it's going to create problems in building your personal brand.
You know, for businesses
where the owners personal brand or reputation is crucial for success.
Say you're a consultant or you're an influencer.
Anonymity is going to be a hindrance because if you're trying to build up
your brand and you're saying, Hey, this is my company,
this is me, and then people go
and they look at your company and you're not associated with it.
It may call into question whether or not you're truly
speaking on behalf of your own business, or maybe you're just a shill
where somebody else is company.
So if you're trying to build a brand.
Anonymity is never going to be your friend.
Set up your business and make sure you're associated back to that company.
All right.
The second problem you have in using anonymity
with active businesses is building business credit.
You see, when you set up a business with anonymity,
what you're going to be doing is making sure
that your name doesn't appear anywhere on that business entity
and you're going to be using a virtual business address.
Now, these virtual business addresses that we use point to
an address that a lot of other people are using.
And when you're applying for business credit,
one of the things they're going to do is research your business entity
with the secretary of state to see if you're actually behind your business.
And they're going to look up your business address.
Now, when they don't see your name and they look up the business address
and they notice there are 7000 other businesses using that same address
that is going to take your ability to build business credit.
So if you're looking to build business credit,
you're going to want to keep your name on there
and you're going to want to use a verifiable address
that somehow points back to you.
Okay.
Third issue that you can come up with is banking issues.
You know,
when you're going to open up a bank account, when you have anonymity
on your business entity,
this can pose problems for many people in getting that account open.
Because one of the things
about being an active business is that those types of accounts, it's
just not about collecting rental income or holding cash.
You're actually out there doing things where you're going to be looking
at setting up a merchant account.
So you want to be working with a bank
that's going to be able to process those funds.
What makes banks really nervous when they start working with someone
who is taking credit cards and they can't verify
that you're actually
behind that business, or again, you're using that virtual business address
and they look that up and they see there's a ton of businesses using it.
They tend to think,
then possibly this is a scam and they may not open up your account.
So banking issues can become a problem for active businesses with anonymity.
The other thing that you're going to have is if you're working
with the federal government or state government,
you're going to need to receive increased scrutiny because that veil of anonymity
can sometimes be a red flag to regulatory bodies.
And this is going to lead to that enhanced scrutiny that they need to be looking at
when they're determining whether or not they're going to issue you a contract.
So if I'm involved in any type of federal or state
contracting, I'm going to stay away from anonymity.
Okay.
Another problem that comes up is complexity and management.
I mean, anonymity often means additional layers of management
or intermediary processes to maintain that anonymity, such as holding
or having a Wyoming holding company in place.
Now, when it comes to signing agreements and signing on behalf of that
that entity, that upper tier entity, which is your active business,
if they want the owners of the business to sign, well,
now it's not signing individually your name.
You're actually putting
another entity on there and which you're going to be signing
on behalf of that entity.
If you watch my videos where I talk about layering, having a Wyoming company
set up as a base entity, and then you have upper tier LLC on top of that.
That can get complex.
Now. It works great on the investing side, but when you're out there
running an active business and you have to sign agreements
all the time,
this can create problems for you and that's probably why
you should stay away from it.
The other thing is going to be potential trust issues.
So let's say you want to go into business or into a joint venture with other
another company or
potentially you want to bring in investors or customers are going to be wary
if they're looking at your business and they can't see you.
So I think if you're looking to raise money or go into joint ventures
with people, you're going to definitely want transparency because transparency
is often equated with trustworthiness in the business world.
So that really plays into that.
My last point is that raising capital.
Listen, investors want to know who they're investing in.
And an anonymous setup might make it harder to raise funds or attract venture
capital, because for all the other reasons I listed,
hey, you're saying this is my company, it's me.
I'm growing this business.
But when they look at your company, they don't see you.
That is going to be a potential red flag for someone
when it comes to investing in another person's business.
And if you think you need to raise capital,
you're definitely
not going to want to use anonymity in your business structure setup.
Hope this helps you out because I get a lot of questions
on whether or not someone should use anonymity for their business.
And if you got a regular business set up where the things that I mentioned
are not important.
Most definitely anonymity can help you.
Recently someone wrote in and said, Hey, can I set up a
anonymity structure for my online retail business?
Yeah, in that case, it makes sense to do that.
Or maybe it's a auto repair business.
You don't want people to know that you own it.
Yeah, it makes sense there.
But in certain situations, like I just raise it does not make sense.
And I would highly encourage you to avoid using
those anonymous type structures that I recommend
in my other videos when you're setting up one of those types of businesses.
You know what?
If you want to learn more about creating the right types of structures for your
your business, I'd love to invite you to my Tax and Asset Protection Live event.
It's completely free to attend.
There's a link below in the show notes.
When you come to that event, I'm going to be teaching you all about entity setups,
how to set up entities the right way, who the members are, who the managers are.
When to build an anonymity structure.
How to set up your business so you can attract funding.
And more importantly, we're going to talk about estate planning and tax planning
when it comes to structuring out your entire affairs.
Now, the best part about coming to this live tax and asset protection event,
other than the fact
that I'm going to be teaching you these concepts in more detail,
is that you're going to be able
to get your questions answered, because I'll be bringing a team of CPAs
and attorneys with me on all these live stream events
where they answer up to 12 to 1500 questions from the viewers.
Every time we do one of these events.
Hey, if you want to learn more, definitely go to the shownotes.
Click on the link, get registered now and I look forward to seeing you at my
next event.