The FuzzyBlog!
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Business 101: Making the Virtual Look Real
You may have noticed that my blog output has been a little slow recently. I've been dealing with making my consulting practice much more real. Here's some of the steps I have taken:
- Teamed up with a partner. Although we've been working together for a while, it's really come together in the past 2 weeks.
- Made the partnership solid and one that I think will not only work but work *very* well.
- Incorporated.
- Set up a business banking account.
- Setup a real address.
- Setup a voice mail system.
- Got business cards.
All of this has been hugely time consuming -- hence the relative lack of blog entries -- but also very rewarding. We both feel much better about the future. In this essay I'm going to talk about #s 3-7. Since there are so many of us working as consultants from home these days, I thought an essay about this was worth while. Each of these topics are short but I think quite useful.
Incorporation
I was all set to write a long essay about Inc versus LLC versus Sub S, etc, all the standard forms a business can take in the U.S. and then I found that www.bizfilings.com has not only done all that but actually made it easy. And I'm now even a customer -- we used them to handle our incorporation. It's still in process so I can't say for sure if it works or not but it was significantly easier and dramatically cheaper than when I have used attorneys in the past for this. If not recommended (since it's not complete yet) then at least worth a look.
Banking
We tried two different banks to set up the requisite small business bank account. At the first, Fleet in Boston, they told us that we couldn't open an account without a certificate from the town where our "office" was. They didn't seem to understand that we have two offices and they aren't offices -- they are our homes. Even with a $3,500+ check in hand, and all my personal banking at Fleet, they wouldn't budge. So we went over to Citizens Bank and what a difference! In about 20 minutes, we had done all the paperwork, met with the small business specialist and just plain done it all. She couldn't have been nicer or more helpful. Recommended.
Suggestion: Try to use smaller banks when you can. They often just plain want business and understand that small business can be funky.
Comment: Because of this, I'll be pulling all my personal banking from Fleet shortly and moving it to Citizens.
A Real Address
Since 1988, I've been a MailBoxes Etc customer. This is a third party mailing company that offers fixed addresses for small business (among other services). The great thing about Mail Boxes Etc is that you can have an address named "Suite" not "PO Box" so it looks more real to your customers. They will also receive packages for you and let you get your mail 24 hours per day (and even big packages can be retrieved after hours). So for about $160ish per year, we now have a fixed address so that if either of us needs to move (and I am hopefully selling my house shortly) then our business address stays the same.
You can now send us physical mail at:
The FuzzyGroup, Inc.
464 Common Street
Suite 338
Belmont, MA 02478
I'm a fan of MailBoxes Etc and probably always will be. They have a quality product for a great price.
Voice Mail
Of course an address without a phone system isn't very good. This is an area where the whole telecommunications boom has really aided the small business person. It seems like you can't walk out your door at times without tripping over some kind of phone related offer. With all that said, I once again turned to a company that I've used before -- www.jfax.com and www.j2.com. This is a company with a lot of different communications options including voice mail that is routed to your email inbox. They provide a small audio player and voice mails are digitized and sent to you as .GSM format audio files (basically an 8 bit mono audio file) that get downloaded as an attachment.
Here's the very cool thing: Whenever we need to share a message, all we do is forward the voice file to one another -- no writing notes or phone numbers down unless we need to or want to.
Tip: If you have multiple email accounts from your isp, set up an account voicemail@domain.com and then CC that account to person1@domain.com and person2@domain.com. This way you don't have to purchase a higher cost option (J2 offers multiple person voice systems too but they're more money so we just got the basic single mail box version).
Cost: About $12 - $15 per month
As I said, I've used JFax / J2 before and they've never lost a message. Of course this also gives us the ability to receive faxes to our inbox as well. Also very cool.
Business Cards
Ah yes... Business cards. You have to have them. Although you can certainly print them out from your PC, you really should get them done through a printer. They look better and appearance matters. I'm currently trying out Staples, a large office supply firm, and I will report back how they did. They were at least cheap -- about $10 - $20 for 500 cards if you provide the artwork. Check with the printing department at Staples.
Conclusion
For not very much money, you can make your small business look a lot more professional in about 1 - 2 days of running around and errands. It took us longer since we had to do all the research, look at vendors and such. Hopefully this essay saves you some of that work.