Fortyseven ╚'s Profile

appoint a registered agent, an entity that any legal requests or correspondence will be sent to

don’t skimp on the legal protection of your company—retain an attorney

While you can get some of these things from books or software, ultimately the advice of a person who is local to your area and knowledgeable about the law and small businesses like yours can add tremendous value beyond just provision of generic forms. Expect to pay a retainer—prepayment for future services, the way most attorneys do business—between $1,500 and $5,000.

You will probably never work harder than when you are trying to get started, established and settled.

If you’re not willing to throw all of yourself into making this happen, chances are the business is not viable.

In most cases, you could probably run a small company without other partners. However, working with other partners can really accelerate your growth, not to mention make work more enjoyable.

Once you’ve got your management team together, you need to all sit down (most likely many times, at least sometimes over food and drink) and figure out what your company is, and what you are trying to achieve.

This might sound like a complicated and difficult process, but it’s really just a matter of loosely thinking about—and ultimately agreeing on—a basic plan for scaling and changing over time.

People will make judgments on the perceived quality of your company, products and services based on the quality of your identity and collateral materials. Take these seriously. Get them right.

Selling services is hard, especially if your company does not have a portfolio or proof of past work. It’s best to start as an informal independent consultancy with a nice stream of clients and later scale up into a more formal company. Take the time to gather some clients, then make the larger investments in building the infrastructure of a formal company. It is extremely difficult to sell services with no clients and no portfolio.