Business Setup — Stage II

For entrepreneurs, a correctly done business setup is imperative. We’re constantly forced to play technology catch-up 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, I’d first recommend cutting through all the clutter, focusing on the basics, and building 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. Okay, so it took a little longer than I expected. But finally, practical, robust, and useful technology is here and affordable in mobile apps and web cloud-based services. 

Where to start? 

Incorporation and business operating certificates 

What type of incorporation you do depends on your business: sole proprietorship, partnership, corporate structure, etc. Do you have investors, or not? These all impact 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 consider where your clients are located, what type of clients they are (B2B, B2C, wholesale, and/or retail), and your plans. For example, a local business may dream 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, ensure they have the expertise required to guide you.

Did you know that you can incorporate it in one state and operate it in another? For years, many have chosen to incorporate within Delaware; it provides strong corporate liability and security protections.  You can then set up a business license from the state you intend to operate in, whether New York City or any other.

This article in Entrepreneur Magazine addresses the Pros and Cons of incorporating in Miami, Delaware, or Nevada. If you need assistance determining how and where to incorporate and identifying which additional business authority certificate you may need, talk to our business 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:

• email
• 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 my business’s needs.  

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 cost-effective that would help me stay organized and that I could get up and running quickly.  

After attending trade shows, talking to many people, reading articles, and testing things, I settled into a few basic services that have met my needs so far. 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. The small business hosting package, configured to be economically robust, will suit almost any business for website hosting.

Please don’t create an email account here; it will interfere with step 2 below.

Many website builders are out there, including WIX and others, for your website. But you don’t own those, you merely lease them monthly. 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. Book a free online consultation.

2) Email and a suite of robust, integrated tools. After looking around, Incognito Worldwide zeroed in on Google Apps for Business for several reasons, as we explained in Stage One Business Set Up: You’re charged per user (unique login). However, each user can have limitless aliases, and the primary account can have limitless URLS. For example, all our sites’ emails operate outside our main Google Workspace, including i2mediainc.com, i2webservices.com, and 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 that you can add into the Google admin as your recovery email

As a multi-company entrepreneur, I found the system very convenient for managing 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). It integrates with almost every other platform — whether you use Hubspot CRM, or a host of different CRM 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’ll likely need a few additional management tools to run your business, such as 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 robust Google tool. Another is Bitrix, an industry-leading full work cycle platform with reasonably robust free and paid versions. Ask us about integrated support task boxes that operate right into your Gmail. Contact Bruce for a free consultation to see what is right for your operations. 

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. 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 of 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 Cadillac of CRMs is still HubSpot. But others 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 a potent and all-in-one app, but it has virtually no support, so you must 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 critical aspects of your business; yet many entrepreneurs overlook it, thinking that they’ll look into it after they make money. 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). However, as a stand-alone, there are 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 installing and setting up the software and configuring the Chart of Accounts and other configurations.

Social Media. Running a business today without a social media presence is virtually impossible. There are many, but the prominent leaders are Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube. 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 time. Once you’ve determined which to use, you must ensure the business information is consistent. Thereafter, you also have to ensure the content will build followers. Messaging is important! So here are some simple steps:

• Build a brand bible. This includes your tagline and 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 third-party sites that interest your customers. Funny works, too.
• Set up a social media management system. Hootsuite is popular, as are 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 a 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 can be turned around and used to your advantage. Build a relationship.
• Make sure your sales posts are only about 1 in 7. You want to establish yourself as an authority in your industry through education and interesting content.
• Use A/B testing to try out social boost ads. See what your followers respond to, then drill down to refine the message.

Reputation Management

For almost any type of business, online reviews matter. More and more people research online and use reviews to help determine which stores they will shop at or which restaurants to patronize. And while responding to bad reviews, you should also turn a negative into a positive. But how to do that is not for the reason most people think. Nor is the approach that most business owners take — when they respond — the correct one. If you would like a simple and easy single platform to manage all your reviews from over a dozen leading platforms, please feel free to talk to us and get a quick demo. This is a must-have, ranging from $50 to $100 a month (depending on whether you manage it yourself or we manage it for you).

Creating strong communications and operating systems is key to launching a successful business plan. If you decide to try any of the above things, please come back and let us know how they worked or didn’t work. If you have questions regarding anything above, don’t hesitate to schedule a free consultation.

Did you miss Part One? Click here.