Business Startup: To-Do Checklist
As promised, I’ll be keeping you up to date on all the tasks and processes that goes into creating my new business - {radiiate}. I’m sure you’ll agree with me, that there’s a whole bunch of things that needs to be put into place when creating a new business; and even though it is a very exciting experience, it also requires a lot of time (and patience if admin tasks aren’t your thing).
So here’s a progress report:
Creating an identity
The first thing I did was to decide on a name and create a logo for the new business venture. In my opinion, it is very important to get this out of the way first, as you need to be able to visualize your dream business and without a name / logo, that’ll never happen.
Business Cards
Many people will argue that business cards is not needed for online professionals, as their website / blog / online portfolio becomes their “business card”. Even though I might tend to agree with that argument, a lot of corporates still prefer exchanging business cards - so it is better to be prepared (and have your business card ready) when go to a project pitch with the big-wig corporates…
Anyway, this means that I had a 1000 cards printed for {radiiate} (will still post photos of them, when I find the inspiration to photograph them 
) and they’ve already been pretty valuable on a few occassions.
Registering a company
This is super, super important - you have got to distinguish between your own, personal finances and that of the company. So I’ve registered a Closed Corporation (CC) in South Africa - basically a Limited Liability Company - to allow me to have a separate legal entity to work with. Since I bought a shelf company (I needed to have a company that was already registered on 1 March this year for tax purposes), I’ve filed for the changes to the name and members’ details - which should take about 2 / 3 weeks to be approved.
Hiring!?
Since I don’t have offices yet (I’m still living the freelance life and working from home), I haven’t been able (or interested really) to employ anyone full-time. I have however established relationships with a bunch other freelancers, to whom I can outsource work on-demand. In addition, I have found a local designer / coder to basically work for me on a freelance basis, whereby I send him work on a daily basis and he bills me per hour (as I’m booking out 90% of his time at the moment, he is almost an employee, except for the fact that his remuneration is not part of any of my overheads).
Remaining To-Do’s
I’ve still got quite a bit to do, before I can say that I’m running a new business… Here’s the most important things that still needs some attention:
- Bank Accounts. I’ve already got a meeting at the bank later this week and I need to get my business accounts sorted out ASAP, as all of my current income is going straight into my personal account. On the other side, I’m not overly keen on getting more bank accounts, as all it means is that I have to pay more monthly bank charges…
- Office Space. I don’t even want to talk about this, as it has been a real mission finding office space in my area! I’m not keen on driving more than 10 minutes to work every day and I can’t afford a massive place - which means that it has been difficult finding something appropriate. But I’d really like to move out to an office by the end of July to allow me to collaborate more efficiently and have a dedicated meeting space to meet with clients.
So what do you make of all of this? Got any experience in this regard?
(Image by ~dontvu219)
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