30 Tips in 30 Days: Day 1 — Setting up your New Business
This is Day 1 of the 30 Marketing and Business Tips Holiday Series…
First, some general housekeeping:
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- Feel free to comment and add to each blog post.
So, let’s get started….
Day 1: Setting Up Your New Business
You’ve decided to start a network marketing home business. You’ve chosen your company, paid your money and opened the doors of your new, sparkling, home business.
What now?
Well, in terms of setting up your home office for maximum efficiency, there are a few things you’ll want to do:
- Set up your home office. You will need an area of your home or apartment that is dedicated to your business. Ideally, it will be a physically separate area so as to minimize distractions around the house. Even if you have a one room studio apartment, try to figure out a way, using book shelves or whatever, that you can physically distinguish your home office from the rest of the house.
- I recommend to my team members that they should invest in a good, unlimited long distance phone plan. You will be calling prospects, discussing your opportunity. You’ll also most likely be attending training calls weekly. You’ll save money in the long run if you shop around now and find an inexpensive long distance carrier.
- While we’re talking about phones, let’s discuss voice mail messages. Ideally, you want to have a dedicated phone line just for your business. But if this is not possible (and for many new home based business owners it is not a practical expense), then be sure that you’ve recorded a professional sounding voice mail message that will handle calls when you are not available. The last thing you want is to have a prospect call you and hear your kids and 2 dogs singing their favorite song as your voice message. Again, professionalism is what you are trying to project in every aspect of your business. After all, this is your business and NOT your hobby.
- If you will be doing a lot of online marketing, or if your company provides most of their training information on it’s website (which I hope they do), then you’ll want to upgrade to a high speed Internet Service Provider. Nothing is more frustrating than trying to follow a webinar or watch an online video using a dial up internet connection.
- You may or may not want to invest in business cards at this time. It will depend on how you will be marketing your products. If you will be doing a lot of face-to-face marketing, than you’ll definitely want to invest in your company’s business cards with your name and contact information. If your company doesn’t offer business cards as a service, there are a multitude of businesses that advertise their services fairly cheaply on the Internet.
- Establish a separate bank checking account and credit card for your business. Do yourself a favor. As much as is humanly possible, separate your business from your personal finances. Do not use your personal credit card to purchase items for your business. And whatever you do, never purchase personal items using funds in a business checking account or using a business credit card. It will come back to haunt you come tax time.
- Keep meticulous records, again for tax time. You can purchase software such as Quick Books to organize your business records, but when you are first starting it is really just as easy to open up an Excel spreadsheet and carefully record your business income and expenditures. You’ll be really glad you did when you visit your accountant.
- Do yourself a favor. If you have a funky email address like hotlady7000@hotmail.com or something equally as unprofessional, get yourself a gmail account with a professionally sounding prefix. Nothing says “amateur” like an unprofessional email address.
- If you have some extra cash, you many want to invest in a Blackberry or a similar phone that can receive email. I purchased one recently and have the phone set up so that, when I get a business lead online, the phone will chime and I will be able to contact that prospect almost immediately. It’s a great resource and your prospects will be impressed, as well.
What other business start up tips can YOU think of? Help me add to this list!
Day 1 is a wrap. Stay tuned tomorrow for Day 2…
To your massive success in business and life,
Bob
December 1, 2008; Cresskill, NJDon’t forget to subscribe to the blog!
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Great advice Bob! I’m looking forward to the new series. I might also add that staying organized from the start will help tremendously. Whether that is utilizing paper files, or electronic files – putting things “in their place” will help with time management in the future.
Janet Giacoma
I would like to subscribe to your Blog ! Very Informative !
Welcome aboard, Myrtle. You can subscribe easily either by clicking on the orange RSS feed button on the top right of the blog, or by clicking on the Subscribe button on the right sidebar towards the bottom.
Thanks for the comment!
Bob Clarke