# Absolute Entrepreneurship Part 1: Starting a Business - review & insight | Gareth B. Davies Source: https://garethbdavies.com/course-insights/absolute-entrepreneurship-part-1-starting-a-business/ [← All courses](https://garethbdavies.com/course-insights/) Business & Marketing · Solid intro · Rated 6 /10 # Absolute Entrepreneurship Part 1: Starting a Business Updated September 2026 J. Anthony Allen · Music Producer, Composer, PhD, Professor Beginner · 188 min A friendly, meandering primer on why to start a business, light on the actual paperwork it promises to deliver. [Get a Free Month on Skillshare](https://skillshare.eqcm.net/c/3155494/298081/4650?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.skillshare.com%2Fclasses%2Fabsolute-entrepreneurship-part-1-starting-a-business%2F1213176078) New to Skillshare? Your first month is free, enough to take this course at no cost. ## What the course actually covers This first installment of a planned seven-part series spends its 188 minutes on exactly what the title promises: the earliest steps of starting a business, before any product exists or any money changes hands. The arc runs in three movements. The opening third makes the case for entrepreneurship itself, covering why now is a good time to start something small, why age and formal education are not prerequisites, and why the instructor is skeptical of patents and outside investors. The middle third is a tour of business structures, from sole proprietorships through partnerships, LLCs, S-Corps, C-Corps, and the less common LLP. The final third walks through actually registering a business and drafting the operating agreement that governs how owners interact. The structural comparisons are the strongest material. The explanation of why an S-Corp avoids double taxation but caps out at 100 members, contrasted with the heavier paperwork of a C-Corp, is clear and grounded in specifics rather than jargon. The section on operating agreements is similarly concrete: it walks through how to split distributions by percentage ownership, how to structure voluntary versus involuntary member termination, and what happens to leftover equipment and debt when a company closes. ## Where it thrives and where it thins out The single most useful stretch is the live demonstration of applying for an EIN through the IRS website, question by question, including how to answer the oddities in that form when the business has one owner and no employees yet. Few beginner business courses bother to show this level of procedural detail, and it alone justifies sitting through the earlier material for someone who has never registered anything with a government agency before. The opening section, by contrast, is heavy on personal anecdote and motivational framing relative to the actionable content it delivers. The story about losing an invention idea to a colleague is memorable but stretches on for a while to make a single point: write ideas down early. Listeners looking purely for mechanics may find the first several lessons slower going than the registration-and-agreement sections that follow. The course also leans heavily on the instructor's own companies, particularly a music education business, for its examples. That grounding gives the material a lived-in feel and the S-Corp and LLC explanations don't suffer for it, but a listener starting a retail or service business may need to translate the framing rather than following it directly. The four-objectives framework (service, profit, social, growth) is a genuinely useful way to organize a business plan, though the growth objective section, with its percentage math example, moves quickly and would benefit from a worksheet accompanying it. Because this is explicitly part one of a longer series, funding, management, and ethics are reserved for future installments, so this course alone will not carry a business past its registration paperwork. Anyone who finishes it will have a filed entity and a workable draft operating agreement, which is a fair and honest deliverable for what is billed as a beginner-level starting point. It does not overpromise, and it does not oversell get-rich-quick thinking, which matches its stated intent. The standout The step-by-step, screen-by-screen walkthrough of filing for an EIN on the IRS website, including how to answer each of its odd questions, is the single most immediately usable segment. ## What you will learn - · The legal definitions of small business and entrepreneur, and why both terms are deliberately fuzzy - · How to frame a company around four objectives: service, profit, social, and growth - · The practical differences between proprietorships, partnerships, LLCs, S-Corps, C-Corps, and LLPs, including double taxation and member caps - · How to actually file for an EIN through the IRS website, walked through screen by screen - · What belongs in an operating agreement, including buyout formulas, member termination clauses, and dissolution procedures - · Why the instructor advises against seeking patents or investors early, and what to do instead Best for: A complete beginner who has a business idea but no legal or financial vocabulary and wants a plain-English map of formation options before talking to a lawyer or accountant. Skip it if: Anyone who already knows the difference between an LLC and an S-Corp, wants hard numbers or worksheets, or needs state-specific filing guidance beyond Minnesota. Helpful Examples Organization of Lessons Actionable Steps Engaging Teacher [Get a Free Month on Skillshare](https://skillshare.eqcm.net/c/3155494/298081/4650?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.skillshare.com%2Fclasses%2Fabsolute-entrepreneurship-part-1-starting-a-business%2F1213176078)