Starting and Operating a Business in Virginia: A Step-By-Step Guide (SMARTSTART YOUR BUSINESS IN)

Business book author and Harvard Law grad Michael D. Jenkins has a wide-ranging background as an advisor to businesses. Before practicing as a CPA and as a tax and business attorney, he first worked as a financial and economics consultant with Economics Research Associates in L.A. and D.C. after graduating from law school. There he did projects that ranged from economic feasibility studies for hotel development in downtown Philadelphia, to creating a long-term diversification program for Conoco Oil Corporation, to performing the original site selection study for the Nixon Presidential Library.

After several years, he got his CPA license and became a tax supervisor at the "Big 8" CPA firm of Peat, Marwick in L.A. There, and later as a senior tax attorney with the large San Francisco law firm of Cooley, Godward, Castro, Huddleson and Tatum, he specialized in advising small and large businesses on legal and tax matters.

After publishing his first book, Starting and Operating a Business in California, in 1980, he returned to CPA practice as a tax partner in a large regional Bay Area CPA firm in Alameda, California. He eventually authored a series of 51 "Starting and Operating a Business" books for all 50 states and  D.C., with over 1.2 million copies sold in bookstores and Costco from 1981 until publication ceased in 1999. The book series achieved national recognition by being featured as one of only a few worthwhile small business books, in cover articles in both Forbes and Inc. magazines.

Since 2001, he has published this book series in ebook format until the present, with Kindle editions first released in 2011.

An incorrigible bachelor, Mr. Jenkins resides in a scenic area of Southern Utah, near Zion and Bryce Canyons and engages regularly in adrenalin-secreting, slightly insane activities such as sea kayaking, white-water rafting, mountain biking, and the occasional parachute jump or paragliding misadventure, for relaxation, terror, and inspiration.