If you want to start a business in New York City, there are numerous free services to get your idea off the ground if you know where to look.
That’s what local entrepreneurs Kerri Ford and Rylee Card found. After establishing careers as stage performers, the two friends were fed up with needing a “day job,” like waiting tables, to make ends meet. So they decided to put their talents into their own business.
Launched in early 2010, Dance.Laugh.Learn. is a for-hire performance arts program that provides dance, music and drama classes to kids in schools, summer camps and at birthday parties in and around New York City.
As performance artists, writing a business proposal and navigating legal documents wasn’t in their skillset. So to figure out where to start, Ford and Card searched “how to write a business plan” in Google and found NYC Business Solutions, a city-run program that offers help for budding small businesses.
Photo credit: Art Altman