Entrepreneurship

Jeff Henderson’s love affair with food and cooking began in a most unlikely setting: a federal prison. At 24, Henderson was sentenced to 10 years for selling crack cocaine. Soon, he was trading his culinary creations (chicken-and-cinnamon rolls, for example) with other inmates for shirts and whatever else he needed.

To succeed as an entrepreneur after a successful career in corporate America, you have to grow a new skin — more precisely, a new way of looking at the world.

A lot of people — especially those who like to cook — are looking to get into the catering business these days. Here are some tips for getting off on the right foot:

Stories abound of bartering during the Great Depression.

Clearly, the past several months have not been kind to small businesses. There is a growing consensus that we are looking at “hard times” in the world economy for at least the next several business quarters and possibly longer. Here is a “checklist” of questions you should be asking yourself right now.

Generally, there are three ways that you can take money out of a business if you are one of the owners. Either the company pays you compensation for your labor; if you have loaned money to the company, the company repays your loan; or the company makes a distribution of profit to you (this is called a “dividend” for a corporation, or a “distribution” for a partnership or L.L.C.).