Starting two new businesses in the fall... need some (non-legal) general advice?

For this type of small business, your are on the right track: LLC's are generally the best choice. They are simple and cheap to set up and maintain (compared to Inc's). If your two operations are intertwined, they can be in one LLC, but then their liabilities are not separate. That is, if one business get's into trouble the ets of the other can be claimed by creditors or plaintiffs. It's a trade off which depends on how interrelated they are.