How do I Keep My Personal Life Private from My Business Life and My LLC?

This is a question we hear a lot from clients - I run an online business, and I don’t my personal info, name, phone number, email, and home address to appear all over the internet.

This feeling is very real - you can start a new business, hit it off on a new idea, and then, all of a sudden, your name is everywhere, and you’re dealing with unwanted attention and publicity while trying to scale your new website or new d2c Shopify store.

If you operate a business in your personal name without setting up an LLC, it’s very likely that all of your personal information (name, home address, email, phone number) will be available to anyone who wants to see it.

Nobody wants an unhappy customer showing up at your door in the middle of the night, or a business rival doxing you because they’re jealous or trying to get some competitive edge on your intellectual property.

Keep reading to learn more.

Luckily, in Alabama, the owners of an LLC can largely keep their identity out of public view.

The records publicly available will list the company’s name, its Registered Agent, and the RA’s address. If set up properly, the public record doesn’t have to list the LLC’s actual owners and managers.

Because a lawyer may serve as Registered Agent on behalf of clients, the client can keep their name out of the record. We can create a contract to make this happen,

If someone were to look up the public information on a well-setup LLC, all they would see is the company’s name and their attorney’s address. Nothing else is in the public record.

Other Alabama entities are not as private as an LLC.

In contrast, DBAs, sole proprietorships, corporations, and new nonprofits do not offer this level of protection and privacy for their owners and management.

This amount of privacy is one of the many reasons we consider LLCs the preferred entity structure for new businesses operating in Alabama.

All of this means that when privacy is a concern and when your new business may become successful overnight, Alabama LLCs are the way to go.

While setting up a new LLC creates some record-keeping obligations, the burden is low and manageable. Setting up an LLC allows the owners to maintain their privacy and separateness from the company while running the business the way they want.

This leads to a win for everyone involved. We are happy to discuss further with you.