Taking care of YOU- Taking care of BUSINESS

One important priority in my life has always been to take good care of myself.

I work out up to 5-7 days a week and I eat fairly healthy. I also take my vitamins and cod oil. I mean…I’ve never been one of those who insisted on reading the calorie content etc, in fact I love sweets and especially chocolate and vanilla ice cream with caramel and cut snickers chocolate on top. Yummy!

The point is; your body can take much more shit if you treat yourself fairly good most of the time. There are times when I push myself so hard I’m afraid recovery will take weeks, but it never does.

4 weeks ago I had a reconstructive surgery (rhino). When I came home from the hospital that day I felt like I was going to die. I had a lot of pain after the anesthesia started to fade, but the next day I didn’t have any pain whatsoever. In fact I was up at 9 am in the morning WORKING. Amazing ha? I thought it was pretty cool J

Most of my friends are people who want to do well. Some of them are doing extremely well. They work around the clock like machines.

Problem a lot of them have is that they never take time to take care of themselves. They always have an excuse for not going to the gym. ¨I work too much…or… the gym is closed when I leave the office…or I’m simply too tired¨.

One of my close friends, lets just call him Jon, is a 35 year old male who runs a multi million dollar business. He started out when he was about 23 years old. Jon has high cholesterol, high blood pressure and he has even had a weak heart attack. Nice! NOT.

Its not just all the health complications you will suffer, but your performance at work will decrease. You will have to push yourself even harder when your health is weaker, which again weakens your health. So it’s an evil circle.

Even though I do normally take good care of myself there was a short period of three months last autumn when I gained 13 kg. During those three months I was travelling a lot and eating and drinking like a truck driver and working like one of those machine friends of mine. I had just started 3^rd year at University and was also involved in a lot of projects outside of the University on top of doing research for my business. At this time I was 24 years old. Guess what? Not only had I gained weight, I had also too high cholesterol. I could not believe it, nor could my flat mates, because I looked totally normal on the outside. I found out that my dad had high cholesterol, and so we have high cholesterol in our family. Great…I just had to inherit those genes.

Good thing it was easy for me to get back on track. You see, muscles and even your lungs have memory. So if you stop working out for a while and throw yourself back; it won’t take that long before you are fit for fight, because your body remembers! Never forget that.

I got back inside the gym, cut down on cheese and egg…but I refused to cut down on my vanilla ice cream, so I just worked out harder instead. I have to admit…sometimes I push myself harder at the gym to be able to eat more. I LOVE FOOD.

My favorite workouts are: Spinning/cycling, cross country ski and Bikram Yoga. I also love working out my muscles in the studio with the boys.

In a world where you have to work hard to play hard and play hard to work hard taking care of yourself is def number ONE priority. 

How to register a company

When starting up it is important to consider risk and consequences. You don’t want to be in a situation where you have to sell your house, car, wife/husband and dog because the business is going downhill.
Now, there is a link between risk and return. Very often the higher the risk: the higher the return or LOSS. I guess that is how most things work, even in your everyday life.
To me love and business is almost the same. You take chances and you have no idea what is waiting around the corner and sometimes nothing can prepare you or protect you other than a positive attitude, and sometimes even that is not enough. You have to be willing to lose it all. It sounds weird, but think about it…

As a young and fairly inexperienced entrepreneur with little or no cash flow it can be hard, but at least you don’t have that much to loose…. IF you choose the right type of company entity that is. In the UK and the US different tax regulations and limitations around liabilities applies, so even if you went in with nothing, you can end up in minus even if you don’t have a house, car, wife/husband and dog to sell.
Good news is; you can protect yourself against this better than the heartache love ever has caused you.

I chose to register a Private limited company in the UK first, even though my main market is in the US. This has to do with work visa in the US. I don’t actually have to live there to do business there, but there are advantages when registering a company in the US (depends on the state) when having the US as the main market, but I will talk about this next week.

The main reason why I chose to register an Ltd (Private Limited company) was risk avoidance by limiting liability. This means that you as the owner are separated from the actual business.
In other words you can’t end up being personal bankrupted which you could if it was registered as a sole trader.
Check out this website for more info about this type of company: http://www.sfsgo.com/benefits-of-a-company.asp

Another great thing about running an Ltd is that it is easy to run and register. I know this because I used to have a company called the R.E.B.E.L Ltd when I was 20 years old. But at that time I hired a lawyer to do all the paperwork for me. This time I’ve done it alone, and trust me, its just laziness to hire a lawyer for this. It is vital to understand what you are doing and how in the introduction period. That’s why you are doing yourself a disservice by leaving this to a lawyer. Yes, it is a little bit boring and time consuming, but it’s cheaper and it increases your knowledge, and knowledge is power, OH YES!
To register a company, print the papers off The Companies House here: http://www.companieshouse.gov.uk/infoAndGuide/companyRegistration.shtml
If you are stuck and don’t understand, don’t worry. Drop The Companies House an email and you will get a respond within a day or two. They are very helpful.
Anything I can do, ask me as well! ☺ Always ask if you are stuck, even if it means asking 20 times in a row.

My first step

When putting up a company there are a lot of things to think about before starting the actual process. A LOT!
First of all you don’t want people to steal your brilliant idea or the name of your company. You also don’t want to be sued for trading under someone else’s name, not even knowing that you are using someone else’s name or be taken to court for the law of passing off because you have caused damage to goodwill of that particular company. That can cost you A LOT.
You should always check that the name of the product/service you are using is not owned by someone else, and you would certainly like to own that name so that nobody can take it away from you.
Now, trademark registration and comprehensive trademark search can be fairly expensive. It is recommended that you hire a lawyer to do a comprehensive trademark search in the territory you would like to operate BEFORE you actually file the trademark registration. So already now you have a huge expense before even knowing if you can actually use this name. So now you see that there is ONE important thing you need when putting up a company and that is $$$$$$. Do not EVER underestimate cash. Never…ever! Even though I do think that money is not everything, money is certainly important in business. Money is something you realistically should have from day one. Yes, of course it depends on the type of business, the size of the business etc, but there are always expenses. Everything from your lunch during work hours to your SWOT-market analysis are all money that goes out, and not in.
So there you are with a great idea, but no money at all. What do you do? You could introduce the idea with a disclosure agreement so that the investor cannot steal it, but you are not 100%, safe, so if you really care and you really want to be on the safe side; a trademark registration is necessary. Well, then where do you get the money if you are not going to introduce it to an investor who might give you the finance you need? Tricky…tricky… You could as stated go to a lawyer even before you have registered the trademark, but if you don’t because you are just as paranoid as me you should ask your mom, friends or get funding to cover the initial costs such as a lawyer to do a comprehensive trade mark check so that you know that when you actually file the name you will get it… As stated I am quite paranoid when it comes to ideas, I’m also very good at keeping secrets, so I didn’t want to share it with anyone.
First thing I did was to google the name, then I bought all the domains of this website http://www.names.co.uk/, then I did my own comprehensive trademark search, then I filed the name straight to the The United States Patent and Trademark office (http://www.uspto.gov/). Reason why I did this without any legal help was because I didn’t have the money and I wanted the biggest territories (the more expensive), plus hiring a lawyer to do the job is more expensive than to actually file the name straight away. If the lawyer finds out that you can file the name you still have to pay USPTO the filing fee. So you actually save money either way when filing directly to the USPTO.

After 3 months I got an email from USPTO saying that the name was now mine. VERY HAPPY GIRL!
Then I went to ¨Madrid System for the International Registration of Marks¨, which is where you can register more than one name in more than one territory at the same time for a lower price (http://www.wipo.int/madrid/en/) so now I feel that I can relax with the paranoia! LOL!

I have to admit I spent a lot of time doing my own comprehensive research and understanding how intellectual property was different from territory to territory, however I can assure you that this is NOT rocket science. You just have to do it and be focused. Thats all!
So hang in there if you are dying from all the paperwork :)

Next time I will show you what kind of company form I have chosen, why and alternatives.
Dont stay up too long!

WELCOME TO MY BLOG!

My name is Yassmine Johansen, and I’m a 25-year-old girl from Oslo, Norway with a mixed background of Moroccan and Norwegian.
Ever since I was a kid I’ve had a thousand ideas in my head. When I was 3 years old I refused to go to kinder garden because the man who worked in my kinder garden had long hair. I don’t know what is the most disturbing factor; that I was scared of a man with long hair or the fact that my parents actually let me stay at home. You judge. However, because I didn’t go to kinder garden I spent most of my days as a kid watching the news, putting together muppet shows on my doorstep, drawing and painting. I remember my childhood very well. I can still hear the thoughts I had in my head when I was four years old. I had an amazing imagination and people around me listened even though they didn’t believe it. That’s what you do when a kid tells you a story. You don’t judge them; you just listen and let them dream. Anything else would be cruel, right?
But slowly everyone starts to become cruel to each other. We don’t believe in the dreams we once used to believe in because life doesn’t just give us shiny happy days. We have days of sickness, defeat and loss. Things don’t always go our way. We are growing up, losing faith and spreading fear. A fear that is poisoning our mind in a way which stops us from believing and taking chances like we used to do as kids. Fearless.
Personally I think kids are much smarter than us and that’s why I try not to grow up…not yet at least.

Growing up having all these ideas, sharing them enthusiastically sometimes put me in uncomfortable situations. Some people think my ambitions are too big; some people don’t take me seriously and wants to do other things with me than business…you get the picture, and some people simply insists it is impossible.
As a teenager that got to me a lot of times, leaving me quite depressed and sometimes resulted in me leaving that particular dream.
When I was 21 years old I started to study Music and Media Management in London, which is a business degree that specializes in the entertainment industry. This was the perfect choice for me as I learned equally just as much about business in general, finance and entrepreneurship as well as the different types of contracts in the music and TV/film industry in addition to the fast developing technology that has changed the media industry significantly. You know social media; illegal/legal downloads of music, video clips, movies etc.

Today I work within the social media and in the video game industry when I don’t do research for my business, which is almost always. I barely sleep cause I’m so eager. I think about it all the time. On my journey to succeed big I will take you with me wherever I go. This autumn is going to be very, very exciting. I will not yet reveal what exactly my idea is. Its not like I have invented the wheel, but I got the extra twist of lime…at least I think so…but do you think so? We will see.
I have a couple of interesting trips coming up to meet some very talented and bright people, so stay tuned… and again; WELCOME TO MY BLOG!