8 Things you must do BEFORE launching your business

What's up beautiful people!

Today, we are talking about owning our business and by that I mean the administrative tasks that need to be in place before you even launch. Now I know, girl, we can get real excited before we launch the business about our idea and how we're going to present it and all of these things, but really the longevity of a business is in the systems that you have in place. A lot of the foundational work that you do before you even launch.

So, let's get into it!

                                             Source: Erin on Demand

If you are interested in the admin side of business, more of the operational things that need to be in place that keep the bones of your business standing then stay tuned.

You might even want to grab a pen and some paper or get the notes out on your phone, because I'm going to pack the one with some good information.

Once you've got your business all flushed out, you know what type of business you're creating you want to go ahead and

Register your Business

register your business name, now rather you do that as an LLC or corporation, however you want to register your business, you need to do that! That is very important.

An LLC is generally the easiest, most cost-effective, and just the most common way that a lot of small businesses register their business. You register your business through your state. Every state's LLC rules and pricing and all of that stuff is slightly different so you do want to do a little bit of research on that, but it takes all of like 10-15 minutes to fill out the form. So that is step one, register your business. Don't just be out here saying that you got a business on instagram and you change your instagram name and you think that's your business name - that ain't your business name boo boo.

Register with IRS

Second thing you need to do, once you have your LLC or your corporation or whatever you need to then register that with the IRS, okay honey. Because they're going to take your taxes and you need to register your business for tax purposes. That will also generate your EIN number or your Federal tax id number whatever you want to call it. It's basically like your social security number for your business. Whenever you fill out a w9, when you do your taxes they will require your EIN number.

Open a Business Bank Account

The third thing to do, you want to get your coins okay! You don't want your coins just going through your personal savings or personal checking account so you need to create a business bank account. Now you can only do this once you have your business registered as an LLC as a corporation, whatever and you have that EIN number, so you got to go in the steps, honey ok?

So, go get your bank account. Now what I do recommend is going to a credit union. Because credit unions they love us small businesses okay! They don't require you to have large minimum balances in your account. A lot of larger banks do require larger minimum balances. So, I personally, have my business account with a credit union here in Michigan called Michigan First Credit Union they have an amazing business account. So I get all of my checks and any money I get from Erin on Demand, rather it's youtube or rather it's a client or rather it's consultations I get everything sent to my business account and I track it - which we're going to get to soon.

Track your Expenses

Fourth thing, staying on the finance track. Tracking your expenses, tracking your income, tracking what you're spending, everything needs to be tracked; mileage, if you go on a lunch meeting, if you go on a coffee meeting, if you go out of town for a meeting all of those things need to be tracked. They are very important for your taxes, come tax season - which you don't want to slip up on tracking things because you will lose money during tax season when it's time to write off all that good stuff.

What I use to track is Quickbooks, now my mom does all of my bookkeeping - my mother is a bookkeeper and she's actually about to launch a business where she helps small businesses to keep their books really tight. A lot of small businesses doesn't have time to be keeping track of our books and doing youtube videos and doing client work and doing whatever else that your business requires. So one big thing that will be helpful once your business does start to get a little bit of momentum is to have somebody in place to make sure the finances are on point. The last thing you want is the IRS coming for you honey and so my mom makes sure that everything is sealed tight from my mileage to the food I buy when I'm out to clothes that I wear for youtube videos or for speaking engagements. All of those incomes and expenses must be tracked and Quickbooks is an amazing tool to use to track that. I also put all of my invoices through quickbooks and the good thing about that is it keeps your books pretty much for you, so it's a great resource. This is not sponsored by quickbooks, it's just what I use.

Once my mom launches her business, I will link all of her information in the description so you guys can contact her if you do need help bookkeeping, you do not have to be in the metro Detroit area, it's something that can be done from anywhere.

Setup Business Email

The fifth thing you want to do is pretty simple - set up a business email, but this is something that is really important because you want to make sure that all of your business stuff is just completely separate from anything personal. I don't care how professional your personal email is, it needs to all be separated.

So just pop on and create your business email, you don't have to have the domain, you know info@erinondemand.com, I mean if you do want to pay extra for that then that's totally fine, but for the first year I've been using gmail and I just upgraded to a personalized domain, but you really don't have to do that immediately, just make sure it's not personal and you have all of your business stuff going into one place.

Create Content Marketing Plan

The sixth thing is your content/marketing plan, okay this is very important because you do want to have an idea of how you about to market and sell your business to people. Rather it's a t-shirt company or a coaching company or a facebook ads company, whatever it is you do need to have some kind of content strategy in place so that you know how you're going to sell this to people. I do have a video on rather or not you should start a blog or a vlog for your business and I did that with my sister. I will link it in the cards and in the description, but it is a very helpful video if you're kind of trying to decide what type of content to create for your business. If you want to do a sales funnel or traditional marketing, are you going to have youtube ads or facebook ads - kind of map out briefly what you envision for how you want to pitch out your business and the type of ongoing content to keep those people funneling into your business and hopefully your sales.

Build a Website

The seventh thing is a website now, social media does not count as your website, okay. So now that we got that together, you need a website - you need somewhere to house your content in its' entirety. Okay it's fine to have social media, even if it's just a landing page that you have up first, when you first launch and you don't have time to build out a whole website or if you get on wix or weebly or squarespace, there are a thousand super easy and intuitive website builders that you can pretty much just plug and chug pictures and type in what you need to type in until you are able to hire an actually web designer. I recently, I literally just hired a webdesigner to revamp my entire website - his name is Justin Dunn, fantastic web designer, like seriously amazing. It is an investment that is well worth the cost, so if you guys are interested in that I will leave his information in the description as well. But yeah, having a website is just so important for search engine optimization purposes - that's just enough of a reason to have a website, but for so many reasons to have your stuff in one space.

Get Trademarked

The eight thing is to have your business' name trademarked, especially if it's something that is relatively unique or you think it's gone blow up or you don't want anybody to steal it. I would recommend getting it trademarked, we got black and goald, which is my other business, we got that trademarked because we didn't want nobody taking that and so that is just a very important step that you don't necessarily have to do before you launch which is why I'm making it the last tip. That is something that is costly, so when you start getting legal services involved it can be hundreds or thousands of dollars, but it is a cost upfront that will pay off so much in the future like you'd rather pay it now than for someone to steal your brand and make millions of dollars off of it so, I would say that is something that you definitely do in the beginning stages although you don't need to do that before launching.

Summary

Those are the eight things that I would say will help you really get started in the backend of your business, so important to have all of that stuff really tightly done and I just don't think a lot of people talk about some of those really practical things that you need to do to just get your business rolling and they don't have to take a long time guys this is stuff that filing your LLC can take 10 to 15 minutes, setting up your email that takes 5 minutes, going to get the bank account that takes 30 minutes - maybe an hour. These are things that don't really take long so you guys just make sure that you're not wasting  time even if you are in school and you have a busy schedule and you have a lot going on - just make sure that you understand that you don't get this time back and just do it, okay? Just do it

That is all for this video, if you guys have any other tips, if you guys are further along in business or if you encountered some hiccups an you want to share them in the comments. Please do so y'all this is a community, we are all sharing the wealth. I am here to share and receive just as much as I'm sharing. So on that note, I am going to see you guys on the next one. Make sure you like, comment, share and subscribe y'all, all of that good stuff and I will see you on the next one.