As entrepreneurs, business setup done correctly is imperative. We’re constantly forced to play technology catch-up in an effort to stay connected, informed, and available (to our teams, vendors, and clients). It’s mind-spinning to know what we need, where to get it, and how to use it. So the first thing I’d recommend is to cut through all the clutter and focus first on the basics and build a solid foundation.
I’m a gadget freak; I grew up as a kid waiting for the future to arrive: it had always seemed just one more year away. My first cellphone [in 1986] cost $3,000 and $1 per minute, but I could envision everyone having the “communicator” like the crew aboard the U.S.S Enterprise had.
When PDAs were introduced I resisted the urge to buy a Palm — because I knew that a single unit with PDA, phone, and music was just a year away. O.K., so it took a little longer than I expected. But finally, practical, robust, and useful technology is finally here, and affordable — both in mobile apps and web cloud-based services.
Where to start?
Incorporation and business operating certificates
What type of incorporation you do depends on what sort of business you are: sole proprietorship, partnership, corporate structure, etc. Do you have investors, or not? These all have an impact on whether you set up your business as a C-corp, S-corp, Limited Liability Corp (LLC), Limited Liability Partnership (LLP), or a Non-Profit.
You also have to take into account where your clients are located, what type of clients they are (B2B, B2C, wholesale, and/or retail, and what your future plans are. For example, a local business may have big dreams of expanding to multiple locations, or setting up franchises, while a technology company might envision going public.
For more information, talk to your accountant or financial advisor, but first, make sure that they have the expertise required to guide you.
Did you know that you can incorporate in one state and operate in another? For years many have chosen to incorporate within the state of Deleware; it provides strong corporate liability and security protections. You can then set up a business license from the state you intend to operate from, whether it be New York City or any other.
This article in Entrepreneur Magazine addresses the pros and cons of Deleware incorporation. Miami and Nevada are also popular places to incorporate. If you need assistance determining how and where to incorporate, and identifying which, if any, additional business authority certificate you may need, talk to our business and CPA consultants.
The Needs you may have
No matter what type of entrepreneur you are, and regardless of whether you have lots of employees, or are a one-person company that only needs to communicate with contract agents vendors, and clients, you’re going to need a suite of basic tools:
video conferencing
document management
spreadsheet
telecommunications
calendars [for appointment and project workflows]
domain (URL), web hosting
a website
task management
social media presence
accounting and billing software
The more integrated your software is, the less cumbersome it is to manage all your applications and tools. When I set up a new company, I decided to take the time to look around and find the right bundle of tools to fulfill the needs of my business.
Price was certainly a consideration, and therefore I didn’t even look at costly offerings; I’m a grassroots bootstrap type of entrepreneur, so I needed something that was cost-effective, would help keep me organized, and that I could get up and running quickly.
After attending trade shows, talking to a lot of people, reading articles, and testing things, I settled into a few basic services that so far have met my needs. Perhaps they will serve yours.
BUILDING A WEB PRESENCE AND COMMUNICATION/MANAGEMENT SUITE
Business Set-Up – Stage II
1) Website presence: you’ll need a URL (domain name), and i2webservices.com is an easy-to-use domain management platform with 24/7 support. For website hosting the small business hosting package will suit almost any business, configured to be economically robust.
Don’t create an email account here as it will interfere with step 2 below.
For your website, there are many website builders out there, including WIX and others. But you don’t own those, you merely lease them on a monthly basis. Preferably, I’d recommend owning your site and using open-source software like WordPress, Joomla, or Drupal, Moreover, with these, you can modify them to your needs. Contact us for a free consultation.
2) Email and a suite of robust integrated tools. After looking around — a lot –, Incognito Worldwide zeroed in on Google Apps for business for several reasons that we explained in Stage One Business Set Up.: You’re charged per user (unique login). But each user can have limitless aliases, and the main account can have limitless URLS: for example, the emails for all of our sites operate out of our main Google Workspace, including i2mediainc.com, i2webservices.com, a2zbusiness.consiulting, dinevite.me, eventigram.com, and many others. . It also has tons of free integrated Google products, and a third-party marketplace loaded with other software tools that ‘plug into’ the Google system. And, if you’re a one-man show, you can still collaborate with outside third parties for no additional cost.
Before setting up your Google Workspace account, be sure to have an existing outside email account that doesn’t use your domain name — like @gmail, @yahoo.com, @Aol.com or @otherdomain.com, for example.
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As a multi-company entrepreneur, I personally found the system very convenient to manage multiple brands. The core Google system, for which there is 24/7 live support, came with Gmail (branded with my domain, i.e. [email protected]), Calendar(s), Docs (tools and storage for documents, spreadsheets, drawings, and presentations), task lists, text chat, video meets, 2 TB of storage (like a dropbox), and it integrates with pretty much every other platform — whether you use Hubspot CRM, or a host of other platforms: the Google marketplace has thousands of integrated online tools from productivity, to accounting, billing, marketing, and many more. Need help? Schedule a free consultation.
Automation is to your money what compound interest is to your money! –
Rory Valden
THIRD-PARTY PROGRAM INTEGRATION
You’re going to likely need a few additional management tools to run your business. Namely sales leads, project management, task management, and accounting/billing tools.
We can help with that, as we’ve experimented with most of them. You can integrate everything (40 modules including CRM, accounting, subscription management, projects, HR, video chat, booking, and more) with one.zoho.com. If you only need a project management system, there are many in the Google Marketplace, although https://todoist.com is easy, integrates with Google, and is only $5 a month. For something more robust, TeamWork.com is another very google and robust tool. Another is Bitrix, an industry-leading full work cycle platform, which also has a fairly robust free version in addition to paid versions.
Project Management: In addition to To-Do List, TeamWork, and Bitrix24, there are others in the Google Marketplace, such as DO and RapidTask. I tried AffinityLive but found it a bit cumbersome and geared more toward in-house project management, and it didn’t fully address how I needed to interact with third parties. Mavenlink is another paid app that is potent, but again, the free version DO might meet your needs. ViewPath is another.
CRM (Customer Relations Management): Again, ZoHo has a stand-alone CRM, as well as incorporating it into one.zoho.com (which has 40 modules from HR to billing, accounting, PM, and more), but there are others. If you only need a CRM for sales mining, the Cadilac of CRMs is still HubSpot. But there are others that may also fit your needs. Pipeline CRM I found to be incredibly well-designed, as was Nutshell.com. The only drawback of the latter two is that while they had trigger-induced tasks, they didn’t have auto-emailing (at least when I used them). Depending on whether you’re a one-man show or have multiple people using the CRM, there are many to choose from. MyERP.com is potent and an all-in-one app, but has virtually no support, so you have to do a lot of reading to figure it out. Other Google-integrated productivity tools including Solve360, SmartSheets, and GlassCubes, were all relatively easy to set up and populate.
Accounting/Billing: Accounting is one of the most important aspects of your business; yet many entrepreneurs overlook it, thinking that after they make money then they’ll look into it. BIG MISTAKE. You need to set up this foundation first. As mentioned, ZoHo Books is a stand-alone tool (or part of the one.zoho.com suite). But as a stand-alone, there are also others — such as QuickBooks and Freshbooks. Our CFO is a career CPA with an MBA in finance, so talk to our consulting team if you need help not only installing and setting up the software but also configuring the Chart of Accounts and other configurations.
Social Media. It is virtually impossible to run a business today without a social media presence. There are many, but the big leaders are Facebook, Linkedin, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube. And which you build your social media campaigns around depends on what you’re selling, and to whom. You’ll also need to research the best times of the day to post, as each has its own most frequented. Once you’ve made the determination of which to use, you need to make sure the business information on each is consistent. Thereafter, you have to also be sure that the content will build followers. Messaging is important! So here are some simple steps:
Build a brand bible. This includes your tagline, and your elevator pitch, which changes depending on B2B vs B2c. (Ask us how)
Develop the first set of post contents. These can be articles on your website, memes, surveys, and links to 3rd party links of interest for your customers. Funny works too.
Set up a social media management system. Hootsuite is popular, as well as many others, though we prefer eClincher. with a social media management system you can build all your posts for a month and schedule when to which social media platforms they’re sent (for the week, for the month, or multiple months.)
Post a minimum of three times to week, but better to post 5-7 days a week.
Engage: make sure to review the comments and respond. Reputation management is important, and even bad reviews you can turn around and use to your advantage. Build a relationship.
Make sure your sales posts are only about 1 in 7 posts. You want to establish yourself as an authority in your industry through education and content of interest.
Use A/B testing to try out social boost ads. See what your followers respond to and then drill down to righten the message.
Creating strong communications and operating systems is key to launching a successful business plan. If you do decide to try any of the things listed above, please be sure to come back and let us know how they worked — or didn’t work, for you. And if you have questions regarding anything above don’t hesitate to schedule a free consultation.
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