Starting a small business is a wacky idea.  Starting a small business in the middle of global financial meltdown is a wackier idea. Some would say medication is needed.

But Terry and I are wacky people.  We’ve taken 60+ people across Turkey to visit cotton fields and mills, we’ve organized conferences in India, attended by several hundred people from around the world, we’ve talked to big corporations into changing from conventional to organics.  We can certainly do this, at least it’s local and we speak the language.

If you think starting a baking company is all about baking, you’ll think differently once you meet with your accountant/lawyer/business guru.  Terry and I were not blind going into this.  We knew we’d be spending a majority of our time thumbing through Nolo business books rather than recipe books. But today when we went in to talk with our accountant, Eva, I felt like I was sitting in a black and white foreign flick, with no subtitles.

I woke up this morning excited from the meeting.  Eva is fabulous about explaining complicated accounting terminology to the non-accounting mind.  That would be me. So today when I woke up, it felt like going to the first day of school.  No searching the bottom of my bag for something to write with.  My shiny new notebook and my freshly sharpened pencils were organized in my bag. Think pencil/pen holder.

Terry and I arrived.  We sat down around her desk, pulled out our notebooks and our pencils.  Eva started talking and drawing diagrams about S-corps, partnerships, LLC agreements, state, local and federal taxes…At about 2 minutes into the discussion, Terry and I both – at the exact same time – quietly put down our pencils.

“Can we have that piece of paper when you’re done?” we asked.

One hour later, we walked out of the office with pages of notes and a list of what we need to do to start a small baking company:

• File the partnership with the state
• Get a business license
• Call the Department of Public Health
• Get liability and product insurance
• Get a bank account
• Get a PO Box
• Use Quicken
• Write up a partnership agreement

Great.  Sounds simple enough. I sat down to draft up our partnership agreement.  It’s like a prenup.  You don’t think you’ll need it because everything is groovy and cool right now, but what if?  What if this adventure that we started on, with great ideas and enthusiasm, becomes painful and a big buzz kill?  I guess only time will tell, open communication and a good prenup, I mean partnership agreement.