Posts filed under ‘New business’
How to Start Your Own Business Without Wasting Time and Money, Part II: Your Office and Tools
There are a number of things to consider when equipping your new business: in particular, quality, comfort and cost. Anything that’s going to touch a customer or be part of how you portray your brand should be the very best. You also want to make sure your workspace is comfortable and inviting — you’re going to be spending a lot of time there, and it should help you feel professionally energized. But you don’t have to spend a fortune.
(This is the second installment of a three-part series.)
My Office Setup
Rather than try to share space with my husband in our existing home office, I’ve set up my office in the family room on the basement level of our house. This is a great room that we’ve never used much, with sliding glass doors out to a private deck and my backyard. It’s big enough to accommodate both my office setup and a separate area for a sofa, chairs and TV. Plus it has a fireplace. Nice. The only downside was the corner I chose to set up my desk is the one spot where our wireless doesn’t reach, so my husband (bless him) ran an ethernet cable down from upstairs.
Your office setup should be both functional and inviting
I looked at lots of catalogs and stores for a desk. The ones that appealed to me from Pottery Barn and similar outlets were going to run me around $1,500. Instead I found a great large desk ($300) and matching file cabinet and drawer unit ($160) at Ikea (the Galant series). It’s perfectly functional and I love the way it looks.
One caveat, however; if I didn’t have an eager-to-be-helpful, very handy husband, I would have thought twice about the put-it-together-yourself file cabinet.Good ergonomic desk chairs are widely available these days. Ikea and Staples have good selections in a range of prices, and you can usually get used Herman Miller chairs on eBay. Make sure yours has good lumbar support, lets you raise and lower the height, and can recline to different settings. Being able to raise and lower the arm rests is important too.
While I already had a good laptop, I had to buy a monitor and keyboard. I went with a 22″ HD widescreen Gateway monitor from Best Buy for just under $200 (great for watching Hulu). My lightweight Logitech wireless keyboard and mouse came from the local Radio Shack. My most important tech purchase, however, was a Toshiba 500GB portable hard drive for backing up my system.
I’ve had a CardScan business card scanner for years and consider it a critical piece of equipment. Right now I’m making do with an old Epson Stylus printer I bought for my kids years ago. I have a better HP OfficeJet printer, scanner and fax machine upstairs if I need better quality.
Still on my to-buy list:
- a label maker to print waterproof labels for envelopes and make my files look neater
- a keyboard tray that raises and tilts.
The Bose Companion 2 speakers (not terribly expensive, but still a luxury) will have to wait until my business takes off.
Business Cards, Letterhead and Logos
A tagline helps to define your business
One of the first things I did was hire a designer to create a logo for me to use for letterhead and business cards. While you can build your own business cards at Staples.com Copy and Print or FedEx Office, I wanted a more unique professional logo, and I’m happy I spent the money on that.
Owen was easy to work with, and he did a wonderful job. He provided me with a PDF of the business card (which I e-mail to Staples for printing), a Word template for letterhead (from which I’ve created my own fax cover sheet and invoice templates), and a variety of jpegs of the card and the logo itself to use in presentations and whatever else comes along.
Master Your Domain
Starting my own blog was easy; WordPress is very intuitive, and I had a website up and running in just a couple of hours. If you’re starting your own business, it’s important to register and use your own domain name rather than use the default url of yourname.wordpress.com. However, I wanted to have my site up before I’d settled on a company name, so I started with the domain name abbielundberg.com and then switched it over once I registered Lundberg Media as a business in Massachusetts.
WordPress has excellent instructions for how to map your domain to your blog in the support section of its site, whether you purchase the domain from them or from another site like GoDaddy.com (which is what I did) — in either case, the domain costs just $10/a year.
E-Mail, Contacts, Calendars and More
The biggest technology challenge I’ve faced so far was figuring out which e-mail client, contact database, calendar and task list to use. I’d been using Gmail as my personal e-mail for a while and was really happy with it — especially given some of the past year’s developments in Labs. But I didn’t want to have a gmail.com address, and I wanted my mail to integrate with my calendar and contact database — as well as to sync up with my BlackBerry. In the beginning, all of this was leading me toward Outlook, but while I’ve stuck with Office for documents (Google’s got a long way to go on that front), I’m just not wild about the Outlook interface.
I’m happy to say it’s all worked out beautifully. First, I opened a new Gmail account for Lundberg Media through Google Apps and set it up using my lundbergmedia.com domain. This is free for up to 7308 MB of data, or $50/per user a year for up to 25GB.
Since people were still sending business mail to my personal Gmail account, I had the new account “fetch” mail from there for the first month or so to make sure I didn’t miss anything important, and to be able to file business correspondence in one mailbox. I am also able to send mail from my personal account as if it were coming from lundbergmedia.com (you do this in Gmail under “Settings/Accounts”).
Similarly, I’ve set both calendars to display all my appointments, no matter which calendar I create them in — my personal appointments display in green; my professional ones in blue.
I knew I could use Gmail Mobile on my Blackberry; I’d been doing that for my personal e-mail for years. What I didn’t know and was delighted to discover was how easy it was to …
a) sync my calendar using Google Sync (with our without touching my address book — you control this through a check box), and
b) access my two accounts through the one interface (by selecting “Accounts” in the Gmail for Blackberry drop-down menu).
Rather than go into a whole lot of detail about how to do these things, I’ll just refer you to the Google mobile help center, which has all the information you’ll need.
I wasn’t sure how I was going to get CardScan to sync with Google, but it turned out I didn’t have to, directly. There is now a CardScan connector for Blackberry available for $30 that is easy to install and use. Sure, I’m stuck with a two-step process (sync CardScan and my BlackBerry through the BlackBerry desktop, then use Google Sync between the Blackberry and Gmail), but I only have to do this every couple of weeks, and I now have all my contacts current and accessible when and where I need them.
Google still needs to work on its task manager; in the meantime, I’m very happy with Todoist, a free online task manager that I can configure to support the “Getting Things Done” framework I’m used to working with.
(In part III of the series, I’ll cover how to build your identity and brand, effective networking and more.)
How to Start Your Own Business Without Wasting Time and Money, Part I
Starting your own business is a blast. There’s so much to learn and try out, without the benefit (or buffer) of a team of people to help execute. I haven’t had this much fun in years! It requires resourcefulness, resolve and resilience — all great characteristics to develop no matter what your situation. It helps to be completely open to opportunity as well.
A few weeks ago, Computerworld ran an article titled, “Becoming an IT consultant: Do’s, don’ts and disasters to avoid” for executives thinking of striking out on their own (or who find themselves there regardless of intention). It provides a great overview and shares the real-life experiences of some former CIOs, but it left me wanting more in the way of nuts and bolts.
Then today a CIO friend and blogger sent me a note suggesting I write about my own experience starting out and “all those details that make a difference.”
So I’ve decided to do a short series on how to start your own business pretty much on a shoestring. Installments will include how to get started; identity and branding; setting up a great home office; setting up your website and company e-mail; writing proposals, etc. By the time I finish those pieces, I hope I’ll also be able to share how to close business!
Getting Started
The first thing I did was go see my accountant, who also runs seminars for entrepreneurs. Based on what I was setting out to do, he advised me to set up as an LLC (limited liability company) versus incorporating or “doing business as.” Registering as an LLC in Massachusetts costs $500 a year, but it has many advantages. (Here’s a comparison chart very similar to the one my accountant sketched out for me on the differences between LLC, C Corp. and S Corp.; Mass.gov also offers a step-by-step guide to forming a business.) I saved the estimated $1,000 I would have spent to have a lawyer handle it by registering online (my lawyer’s secretary even gave me the URL and walked me through it!), which was quite simple. (Note: some parts of the process didn’t display properly with Firefox so I had to switch over to Internet Explorer.) I did wait a few days, however, before filing, as I wanted to make sure I was really happy with the company name I’d chosen. This is not easy to change once you start opening bank accounts, registering domain names, designing business cards, etc.
Once I had registered Lundberg Media LLC, I needed an employer identification number (EIN), also known as a Federal tax ID (FID) to use in place of my social security number on invoices. My accountant did this for me, but you can also do it yourself online at the IRS website.
Business Banking
Once you have a registered business name and FID, you can apply for a business checking account and credit card to keep your business expenses separate from your personal finances. This will make things easier at tax time — not to mention make it possible to see if you’re running a profitable business!
Your bank will show you all sorts of fancy ledgers and checkbooks; I went with a simplest model — the same kind I use for my personal account. And the accounting program you’ll need (e.g., QuickBooks) also lets you print and write checks, among other things.
I looked at lots of different credit cards and went with American Express (not their charge card, which has an annual fee and requires full payment each month, but the credit card). In addition to offering a free rewards program, their Open Savings program offers discounts at some of my favorite travel and service providers such as JetBlue, Marriott Courtyard, FedEx and Kinkos.
Quicken v. QuickBooks
When I asked the people in my network whether I should go with Quicken or QuickBooks, the response was fairly unanimous for QuickBooks. This article from Web Developer’s Journal has a pretty good explanation of why as does this older article, but the gist is that Quicken functions more as a checkbook while QuickBooks provides general ledger, with double entry bookkeeping. Once you make the QuickBooks decision, you still need to decide whether to go with the Simple Start version (similar to Quicken, but unlike Quicken, easy to transfer your data to QuickBook Pro if you later decide you need to go there), QuickBooks Pro or QuickBooks Premier. Intuit offers a helpful comparison chart. And they’re making the decision to go with Pro an easy one right now with a huge discount, from the usual $199.95 to $119.95 for a single user (Simple Start usually sells for not much less than that) when you order from the website.
Tracking Expenses
But don’t wait to make this purchase before you start tracking your expenses. The first file folder I created was for my expense receipts; the second spreadsheet was one for tracking mileage (at 55 cents a mile, this adds up fast!). My expenses so far have included an hour with the accountant, registering the business, buying a new monitor and keyboard, various office supplies and a new desk and file cabinet. In a future installment of this series, I’ll write about setting up my home office — deals to look for, where you can cut corners and where you need to splurge.
This is the first in a series. In Part two, we’ll talk about setting up your home office, registering your domain and more.
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How to Get Started
- Name your business
- Meet with your accountant
- Decide what kind of company to form and register it
- Get a federal tax ID
- Open a bank account and get a business credit card
- Pick an accounting software program and learn how to use it
- Track your expenses and file all your receipts
