start a business

How To Start A Business Guide

Stephanie

Start A Business and Get Started Quick Guide

First, you’ll want to recognize the solution you can meet with your drive, skill, and passion. The next step is easy, just begin. Every day you will need to do the next right thing to stay on course. The first few months are probably the most administratively intensive but that’s where this handy-dandy “Get Started” Quick Guide comes in.

  1. Name Your Business: Don’t overcomplicate things but do your due diligence and research (google) the name ideas you come up with. Here’s a great article by Inc.com to help: Choose The Best Name For Your Business

  2. Get A Business Address: It’s best to find a virtual office solution or rent from a business office space. Here in our local area, we have spaces that are intended for business incubators, desk sharing, and remote workers like My Office & More, Lean Spaces, Catapult, The Well, etc. 

  3. Apply For Your LLC: Start a Business – Division of Corporations – Florida Department of State

  4. Get Your Florida Certified Business Enterprises Certification, if you are a minority-owned (MBE), woman-owned (WBE), and Veteran-owned (VBE), you may be eligible for a CBE. Get the full requirements and follow the certification process at the Office of Supplier Diversity.

  5. Register for a DUNS number: We wouldn’t say this is the highest on your to-do list but if you need funding or you’re able to invest in a lot of upfront business administration, it’s good to go ahead and start this process.

  6. Hire A Professional To Design Your Brand Assets & Logo: Please stay away from FIVRR or Canva for this one. We actually have a graphic designer available and on-call for your branding needs. Give us a call or email to start your design.

  7. Get Business Telephone Number: https://www.freedomvoice.com/cloudnumber

  8. List Your Business Name, Address & Phone (commonly known as NAP in our SEO world) across 1,000’s of online business directories quickly and affordably. We actually specialize in Local SEO and we can provide a free listing audit for you. Or you can do it the old-fashioned way and start one-by-one… Start with Google, Bing & Yelp first.

  9. Get Your Domain Name and Business Email … Yes, we can help you navigate and build your website from scratch. Having a functional website that is fast and secure is paramount to supporting our customers.

  10. Make Your Social Media Accounts: Start with the channel you’re most comfortable with. We actually think this should be last on the list but then the owner talked to the team and they agreed she’s too hard on the social media game, so coming in at #9 is you guessed it, Facebook. Don’t forget LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, & TikTok… they’re all relevant. And NO, we don’t believe you have to be on all of them nor do you have to post 50 times a week.

  11. Open A Business Bank Account: We really like local institutions. Our recommendation is to think about your friends or acquaintances in banking. A small private banker will want to build a relationship with you to meet your lending or credit needs far more than the big banks.

  12. Freeze Personal Credit: this one is optional but if you’re looking for a business line of credit, it can impact your personal credit score.

    • https://www.experian.com/freeze/center.html

    • https://www.equifax.com/personal/credit-report-services/credit-freeze/

    • https://www.transunion.com/credit-freeze

There’s a lot of info here and there will be more along the way but getting started and checking things off a list feels nice. We hope this helps you to build a substantial business, one that not only is built foundationally strong but sustainable for today’s technologies. We’re in the business of helping others to engage, inspire, and grow. If this quick start guide helps you, please let us know We would love to hear from you!

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