Starting My Own Company - The Series: 001
"I never thought it would be so easy to just start something that could change my world"
A week ago I made a post on steemit about a company I wanted to start and it did really well. It did probably better than any post I have done so far so I started thinking that people may want to know what it's like to start a business from the ground up.
https://steemit.com/life/@kichen/starting-my-own-company-this-month-and-it-s-easier-than-i-expected
This is my first company so I will do this in a series going through all the specific task's I had complete in order to get my company off the ground. Maybe this will create a good step by step for somebody in my situation or demonstrate just how easy it is to chase the American Dream and work for yourself.
- Business Name
So as a consultant I would say anyone who is going to start a business first needs to make sure that they are using a unique name for their business that's not going to get confused with other similar businesses or be overshadowed by a search term with results you could never come close to. For example, I wouldn't use the name cheese for a business because a company like Kraft could easily trump my search results and steer traffic their direction. So instead I would name the company something unique like "cheeze & creme". Using a name like that it would be easier for me to be found as fewer people would be looking for those words together unless they were searching for my business. So the other thing is to make sure your name is catchy and tells a story. I ended up deciding to name my first company "Social & Cream". I thought ahead of time and decided cream was smooth, social was a poppy word that people focused on. So a smooth poppy name was what I was going for. I also thought of all the color pallets that work with the word cream and make sense. Design right now is pointing to a lot of pastels and off colors so the name and color relationship will work perfectly. I reached out to my favorite designer and we have a date set to get the logo and branding built and this gives me perfect theming ideas to go off of.
- Google my business
One of the first things you're going to want to do when starting a business is getting your business listed on google maps. So to do this you go to https://www.google.com/business/
It's really easy to do, you just have to sign up and they will ask you your address, email, and all that good stuff. They will mail you a postcard with a unique code on it and you will have to log back into the same account you ordered it from and put the code in. Google does this to verify legit businesses. Once you verify the code online from what you got in the mail you're going to want to make sure you start on your website, it will want to link your website, store hours, contact info and various other things. It helps to rush and get these things done so Google can crawl your website and start ranking it based on a number of factors. If you are not quick to get all this done you can leave your listing looking less than professional.
- Website construction
Your website is one of the most important things about your business. I have consulted with a ton of different unique business concepts from fundraisers to employment agencies, dry cleaners to seasonal manufacturing companies. They all need websites, period. If you're in business in 2017 and you don't have a place on the internet your business is already failing. Security on your website is also very important. Make sure you are using a ssl encrypted website which reads "https" at the beginning. Too common now are unsecured sites that get attacked with malicious javascript that in turn attacks users that connect to it. I can't think of a way to ruin your reputation quicker than causing people's computers to get infected or held ransom. I work with squarespace almost exclusively to do my own web development. They provide encryption and a very easy interface that actually is quite SEO friendly now. This allows me to cut the cost out of building a beautiful website that makes my business appear as if I have been funded at a crazy level and have a staff of really savvy design people. In Truth I just follow a lot of fashion, nightlife events and have spent a lot of time creating flyers that stand out, so naturally, I have practice at visual placement and what catches the eye.
- Domain Registration
This probably should have been 2nd after checking to make sure you are the only business with a specific name. However when you figure out the name of your company go a register your domain
(meaning your .com .org .gov or whatever, doubt you will make a .gov but you know) and make sure you reserve it as long as you can, people forget all the time to reserve their domain for future years and somebody comes in and grabs it up. I use godaddy.com for this but there are a ton of domain register sites and I believe squarespace.com builds the domain into the cost of some of their packages. Make sure your domain url is somewhat short and easy to remember. There are going to be countless times you will be in a crowded airport or bar and you will want somebody to remember your website, that won't happen if you register www.wesellreallylargerabbitsforaliving.com so make sure it's something short like www.socialandcream.com
You will thank me for this later. I have been a dj for 17 years and throughout that time I have changed DJ names a million times. The ones that were more successful were shorter and fewer syllables. DJ names like Crookers, Justice, Foamo, Dilpo, Switch, Sinden were always easier to remember than Sting Cheese Incident or a band name like Five Finger Death Punch. Plus think about your companies name being written out in logo form or across a business card, it won't have much room to stand out and be bold if there are too many characters.
So these are some of the things to consider when opening a new business. Mine by chance is ran out of my home office, my services handled through an outside office I contact and I don't have much overhead. So a digital advertising consultant company was perfect for my first company because I have very little to lose and so much to gain.
Believe it or not Steemit helped me gain a client this weekend. I walked into a vape shop and while checking out was told the shop attendant about steemit and how you make money on here. I was telling him about a post I made about $300 on talking about starting my business and a banker across the room overheard and asked what kind of business. When we started talking he openly said he wanted to give me an account to work with a client he had that was opening a new nail salon. He wants to hack the growth of this new business that the bank has an interest in. So, of course, I have him sign up for steemit, and shoot me an email. This is now my second client and my website and logo aren't even done yet. I highly suggest you find ways to talk about your business and steemit allowed me to do just that. If my business is successful enough I plan to be the first digital advertising agency to fully embrace steemit and use it as a case study for hacking the growth of any company or brand regardless of how new a social network or company are.
The next post will be a detailed breakdown of how I decided what my branding, logo type, and website should look like. Design is an important key element today and if you have a weak image it can result in low amounts of loyalty from target audiences. Take apple for example, imagine the amount of loyalty that came from the design community just because their product was beautiful.
Make sure to follow along on steemit as I grow my business.This should serve as a perfect case study for anyone looking to do that same.
Check out where this all started and follow me as I build the company.
https://steemit.com/life/@kichen/starting-my-own-company-this-month-and-it-s-easier-than-i-expected
good luck with your company!
crazy how steemit gave you basicly a head start :D
looking forward to the next post and what the logo will look like
Thank you. This is probably going to be a really long series that gets into the weeds a bit once I start working with clients. I'm going to show how I do everything. The next episode goes live today as well . Thanks for reading.