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Hey there, future business moguls! If you're ready to dive into the world of entrepreneurship but feel a bit lost on where to start, you're in the right place. I'm Dana Schulte, and today, I'm breaking down the essentials of starting your own business, from the nitty-gritty legal stuff to the fun branding bits.
First things first, let's talk about what you're offering. Is it a product or a service? This decision will shape your business model and investment needs. For instance, offering a service like branding and marketing (my personal jam) might have lower overhead compared to selling a product like jewelry, which requires materials and production time.
Next up, what's in a name? A lot, actually! Your business name is your first impression. Legally, you might register as "Dana Schulte Communications, LLC," but publicly, you can be as creative as you like. Just make sure to check with your state to ensure your chosen name is available.
First Now, I’m not a lawyer, but I can’t stress enough the importance of legal safety. Register your business with the state and get your EIN from the IRS. This protects your personal assets and makes life easier when it comes to things like online payments. Trust me, you don’t want to skip this step.
Before you get too deep into branding, secure your online presence. Register your domain name and set up a basic website. It doesn’t have to be fancy at first—just a landing page with your contact info and services. And don’t forget to grab your business name on all social media platforms, even if you’re not planning to use them right away.
Finally, the fun part—branding! Determine your brand’s personality. Are you quirky, professional, or somewhere in between? Your branding should reflect this. From your logo to your website colors, everything should be cohesive. And remember, your brand is more than just visuals; it’s your voice and how you connect with your audience.
Starting a business is a journey, and it’s okay to feel overwhelmed. Just take it one step at a time. If you’re ready to dive into the branding aspect, I’d love to help. You can schedule a fit call with me through the links below, and we’ll make sure your business shines.
Until next time, keep dreaming big and working hard. You've got this!
Ready to take the next step in your business journey? Schedule a fit call with me today and let's make your business dreams a reality!
#Business101 #Entrepreneurship #BrandingBasics #StartYourBusiness #DanaSchulte #SmallBusinessTips #LegalSteps #BrandingEssentials #BusinessGrowth #StartupJourney
Hello internet friends and welcome to the Dana show where we be us about business and branding. Today we are talking about business 101. If you're ready to start a business and you're like, I don't know where to start. I don't know how to do my branding. I don't know to do my marketing. I don't know anything. I'm here for you today. Okay. I'm going to walk you through step-by-step on how to set up your business in the easiest way possible. All right.
So obviously we're going to start with what are you selling? What is your business? have a service or a product? Obviously the investment between these two is going to be a little different. For me, starting a service, I do branding and marketing services, doesn't have the overhead of, for example, if I was selling jewelry, because I would have to have made that jewelry, which is a financial investment, also more of a time investment.
to make those things to make available to be sold. So those are considerations. Those are obviously one isn't necessarily better than the other. Those are just, that's just how it is. So then we got to figure out what are you calling your business? My business is simply Dana Schulte Communications, LLC.
That is not what I really publicly use. That is the legal end of my business. That is how I've chosen to register my business with my state and with the federal government. But when I present myself, it's just me as Dana Schulte. Right. So because I am the business, I am the brand. And then I also use brand alchemist. So like, here's my business card. So it's Dana Schulte brand alchemist. And so
Because of that, it doesn't really matter what my name is in the same way as it might if you're providing a product, if you are selling a product. So keep that in mind in your name. And the first thing you want to do is check with your state to make sure that name is available. So there's two kinds of names. There's one, it's your natural name, it's your legal name. So me.
Dana Schulte Communications, LLC. That's my name. That's what I've called my business. But if I wanted to call it like, if I wanted to call it Brand Alchemist, LLC, right, then that's called a fictitious name. And I would have to register separately with the state. have, there's in Pennsylvania, there's legal requirements that include publishing that to let the public know in the newspaper.
and things like that. So those are other things to consider. There should not be roadblocks, but those are, you know, you need to make sure I know so many people who just start a business and they name it and they never register it. And that is not a good idea. You want to make sure you're protected safety first. And in this case, we're talking about legal safety. We want you to be protected. And the first thing to do that is to register with
government. And then also make it easy to understand if you are especially using a fictitious name it should make sense with what you're doing. So I chose not to use a fictitious name so Dana Schulte communication still makes sense to anyone I'm working with. When you see that when you sign my contract you're not like wait who is this? You're like oh I'm working with Dana oh that's the name of her business okay great it makes sense for my clients they're not confused.
So all things to take into consideration. And then we get into the legal parts. Now, I am not a lawyer. I have no legal credentials. I'm not an accountant. I am not credentialed in any of those areas. This is my based on my experience in registering my business and talking to other small business owners. You.
need to make an educated decision on how you want to proceed with the legal part of registering your business. You may find it fine to do it yourself. You can use a service like LegalZoom where you pay them to do it and make sure everything's done. You can hire a local legal lawyer who can do that. In my opinion and in my opinion only, the bigger your service is,
the more legal overhead you should have on it. And what I mean by that, if you're going into someone's home and providing a service like a handyman service, a lawn care service, you want to make sure that you're protected and they're protected. We want to make sure everyone is safe. Whereas I...
When I meet with clients, I either rent a space or I meet in a public space or we do it virtually. I do not have clients in my home. I don't go to their homes usually. Every once in a while we'll meet in someone's home, but I'm just literally sitting there. I'm not doing repairs on their home. I'm not engaging with structure of their home or anything like that. So those are different legal considerations you need to make.
I always recommend you look into the different types of corporations there are with the government. So I chose an LLC for my business that is a limited liability company. Most businesses who I work with are also either LLCs or nonprofits, which is basically just, it's very similar, except it's the business type is a not-for-profit. So there are some differences.
but the protections are pretty similar. But there are different kinds of business structures and it all has to do with how it's organized, how you do your financials. So, and again, this is not my area of expertise, so I cannot give you an educated description on any of those beyond that. But you do want to register as an LLC or some type of organization
corporation with your state and then you want to register your employee information number or your EIN with the IRS. This makes your life so much easier. So this all of this protects you from any kind of issues personally. So let's just say I had a client who was so unhappy with me that even though in my contract I have you know we
do mediation, but let's just say we did that, we didn't come to a resolution and they sued me. Any of my personal assets are now protected because I'm in LLC. They are not suing me, Dana, they are suing Dana Schulte Communications, LLC. And that is a separate entity with separate assets. So it protects me, it protects my family and my personal assets by registering as an LLC.
And then with your EIN number, also makes it a lot easier to do things like collect online payments. You don't have to then use your personal social security number if you're setting up an account with, with say Stripe. You use your EIN number. Your EIN number essentially is your business's, it's like your social security number for your business and that it identifies you. And then also check your local laws. So for example,
If you are making some type of edible consumable item, if you're making cupcakes, let's say, and you have to make sure that you're meeting local regulations around food safety. So when I, my kids were younger and they were involved with scouts and were looking for fundraisers and these were things that I had done as a scout or in band or in something else, they're not allowed to do anymore because
If you want to do a spaghetti dinner, you now have to make sure that it is done in a specific kind of kitchen. It has to be passed by the health board as a professional kitchen. You have to have someone who is a certified food safety supervisor. So there's these things that exist for the safety of the public, right? You want to make sure you're not violating any of those and that you are
Following all of those things so you don't find yourself in in legal hot water So again the bigger your services and products are the bigger your legal Liabilities are and the more likely you are to need a lawyer again in my opinion not a lawyer not a lawyer
So then we get into some of the more technical end. So you've registered, you know what you're calling it, what you're doing, and now we need to figure out what your website is going to be. And when you're coming up with your name, I do recommend that you check and make sure your website that you want is available because it's just going to make your life so much easier. So my website is my name. I did make sure that was available before I registered my business.
I didn't want to do DanaShulteCommunications.com. I feel like that's too long. Not that there's anything wrong with picking that, but I just wanted to use my name. Make it easier. So when you register your website URL or domain name, you want to... I suggested .com. It doesn't have to be a .com, but that is what most people will type in. And then if they don't find it, if they're looking for you, then they're like,
this person. So I do recommend a dot-com. People are still used to that, although other endings, if you're a dot-org is the other one if you're a non-profit, but even then I recommend you do the dot-com as well if it's available. And then when you're registering you want to select this option for privacy because if you don't
Legally, every website registered in the United States is required to publicly list an administrative contact and a technical contact and some other information. And when you do that, because it's publicly available, you, if you put in your phone number, you will be spammed into oblivion. Ask me how I know. It was a nightmare when I did, when I made this mistake.
several years ago. Never again. A lot of places where you register for your domain name, for I'm going to use Namecheap as an example, that is the one I use, they provide this service for free. Some others charge for it. But what this does is it allows you to meet that requirement, but it uses the company's name that you're registering with. So if you were to go to, it's called Whois,
If you do a who is look up on my website, you will not see my personal information or my business information on there. You will see name cheats information on there and that protects your privacy and you are billion percent want to do that. It is an absolute nightmare. Nightmare. When you just you are, like I said, spammed into oblivion and please do not do that to yourself. You.
your piece is worth however I would pay $100 a year for that for that piece at this point but it was free with with my registration and then you want to think about your email so since my website is my name DanaShulti.com I chose Dana at DanaShulti.com because that's my name so that's easy for people to remember it makes sense
If you want to have a generic one, a lot of people use info. I prefer hello. I think that's a little more friendly and a little more fun, but also easy to remember. But you want to register a dot com email address and you do this with your provider. And then there's a number of ways you can access it. One way is you can use Gmail. If you pay for workspace, you pay like 10 bucks a month. I don't remember what it is anymore. And you get the Gmail.
email but it's at your dot com address and the reason you want to do this is it makes it so much more professional than using a gmail and it costs i think i paid like 15 a year for my email it's it's so worth it to just give that a little bit of extra credibility so register your email address with your company and then you can set up
how to do that later. And then you want to set up your website. what I'm literally is like a landing page where you just want to have something existing where you do not use under construction that is 20 years old. But we want to use just like, you know, welcome to whatever and just have a basic page. And there's three ways you can do this at no charge if you're not ready to do that step yet.
One is using a Facebook page and you can redirect your website to go to your Facebook page. That is the easiest to do, the one people are most familiar with because you are probably already familiar with Facebook. The other one is Canva. If you have a professional Canva account, you can use their hosting, which is where your website lives, and create a website right in Canva.
It's a little trickier if you're not used to Canva. Another option is HubSpot, and this is a free option. This is actually where I have my website hosted because it's like all in one. It is my CRM. It does all of my forms. It does my email. It does everything together. So I love that. And that's what I recommend my clients do now. So those are three easy options.
that don't cost a whole lot that you can do to create a website, just a quick landing page, register your website, create a quick landing page that's literally like, this is your name, your email, your phone number, maybe a list of services. And that's it for right now. We're not worried about the rest. We're just getting the information established at this point. This is not your branding yet.
And then you want to make sure you have a phone number and you want to use Google Voice. Unless you want to purchase a phone number with your cell phone provider. But in the beginning, I what I do is I publicly use a Google Voice. And then when I'm working one on one with someone, I give them my personal phone number. But this protects you from spammers as well. So getting that number with Google Voice, it's free.
It costs nothing. can download the app on your phone. have an iPhone. I have Google Voice app and anyone can call or text me and it filters it through that but sends it to my phone. It's just a layer of protection that I recommend that you do.
And then we want to go into social media. So we want to register your name on all social media, even if you're not sure you're going to use it. So you want your Facebook page, which is different than your profile, your personal profile, a Facebook page. That's for a business. Instagram, want a LinkedIn page, again, separate from your profile for a business. YouTube, TikTok, ex formerly known as Twitter and Blue Sky.
Those are the ones I recommend you register because you want to make sure that you have that presence there in case you ever want to use it, but also to make sure no one else uses it instead of you. You don't want to get in a situation where one of these channels you determined through your research, your, you know, through everything you're doing, you don't want to find out, you don't...
want to be in a situation where you find out your audience is on Instagram and you really want to focus on Instagram, but you didn't register your name on it and now someone else has it. And then you're, that's not the situation you want to be in. So register it everywhere, even if you're not going to use it everywhere.
Then we get into branding. See how many steps we've gotten into before we get into your branding. And this is where you want to determine your brand's personality. What's the voice? What's your messaging? What's the look? Your fonts, your colors, your logos, get headshots or other types of professional photography, depending on what you're doing. But I do recommend headshots because we're all people and we're working with other people. And I think that helps people get to know you.
So you want to make sure all of these fit together, right? If you go to my website and you look at my headshots, they fit in with my branding that is intentional. That was not an accident. So those are all the things. And when we talk about personality and voice, like for example, my branding personality is I want to be, I'm a little on the quirky side, so I'll be quirky, relatable.
fun, also creative, and I want to show my expertise. Those are like my brand personality. And I show that through the way I do my voicing, my messaging, and then through the look, through the colors, the fonts, the logos, and then my headshots. It all works together. So this is where you really get down into that. And this is really a point where I would love to work with you.
to help you determine what those things are. Because the sooner you do that and then the more consistent you are, the better off you're going to be in the long run. And then we get to your brand assets. So this is a point where you actually want to focus on your website. What does your website say? What is going to be on it? What services are there? Are you set up?
someone to sign up for emails. You want someone to be able to see maybe before and after photos. know, whatever it is, make sure it's branded, make sure it makes sense. You know, the messaging is right, all of those kinds of things. And then you move into social media.
What's your bio? What's your about? What's your profile pic? What's your header image? Again, making sure all of these assets match your overall branding. And then you're going to also want to get into other things like your business card. I showed you this earlier. My business card is this is what I hand out. This is what I leave with people. So I want to make sure it matches my branding. But if you go to my website and any of my social media, you're going to see this branding on it as well. Right. Even right here, I like to have this little sparkle like this little
kind of glitter thing and in my presentation here I have that in the background. I like to do presentation on a white background I think it's easier to read but I add that gold little sparkle that's intentional that's my branding that wasn't an accident right so those are your brand assets so those are the things we want to think about getting together at that point.
And again, notice how many steps into this process that is, but most people start here.
logo is brand asset, all of those things people want to start here and that's the last step. That's the last thing we do is our assets. Right? So when you're starting your business, so many things that need to happen before you get to that point. And I'm not saying you can't be inspired if that's what you really like. Maybe you use that for inspiration, but
we need to start with the registration, with the legal parts to make sure that you're all in line and you're doing it right. We want you to do it right because we want you to be successful and we want you to be protected. Then you get into the more fun stuff, you know, setting up your website, doing your social media, figuring out all of those branding elements of it. So I hope this really helped you.
if you're thinking of starting a business or maybe you have one and you haven't done any of all of these things and you're like, oh shoot, do I need an EIN? Do I need to be an LLC? Most likely you do or you need to have some type of formal organization registered with the government. So again, those are things you want to go through a lawyer with or just do some research on your own and make sure that you're protecting yourself and your family.
If you're ready to get down into the branding aspect of it, I would love to help you. It is my favorite thing to do with my clients. You can go in the links below in the notes and schedule a fit call with me and we can talk about what you need and what your expectations are and then make sure that I'm a good fit to help you reach your goals. And until next time, see you later. Bye.