When you start any kind of business, you need to plan out the details of your business, make a few challenging financial decisions, and make sure you understand all the legal requirements you need to fulfill. Once you have set up your business, you will then need to use B2B (business-to-business) services to help you run your business.
Let’s take a look at how to set up a business and what services you will need to run it.
3 Steps to Set Up Your Business
Here are some of the basic steps you will need to take to get your business off the ground:
First, you will begin by conducting thorough market research to see if your business idea is sound. If it isn’t, then come up with a few more ideas and research them. Don’t start your business until you find a product or service that will sell well. Based on what you’ve discovered, you can now flesh out your business plan. This will then be used to persuade lenders or investors to help you fund the business.
Next, you need to pick your business location, choose your business structure, and decide on a business name. If your business location is your home, you will need to get a business address. It is important to keep your business and home addresses separate to protect your privacy as well as make your business look more professional. Fortunately, you can solve this problem easily by using a digital mailing service, like iPostal1.com, that will provide you with a real street address as your business address.
Finally, you will need to register your business and obtain federal and state tax ids, apply for licenses, get permits, and open a business bank account.
4 Essential Services to Run your Business
1. Services to create an online presence.
You will need a website design business or learn how to build your own website using a website builder. You will need a website and a blog to begin marketing your business online. You will also benefit from hiring a blogger to create a regular stream of content and a social media manager to help build up relationships with customers on popular social media platforms. However, if you have the time, you can blog your own articles and take care of your own social media accounts.
2. Services to accept payments.
You will need a payment service provider (PSP) to accept electronic payments from customers buying from your website. Choose a PSP that allows you to accept a large variety of payment methods like credit cards, debit cards, and bank transfers. You will not need to establish connections with financial institutions or figure out how to deal with international financial transactions because the PSP will take care of all this for you. They have developed relationships with financial institutions, payment networks, and other external networks.
Besides these essential payment collection and processing services, if you choose a full-service PSP, you can also get the following services:
- A risk-management service for credit cards and bank-based payments.
- A transaction payment matching service.
- A remittance service.
- A fraud protection service.
- A multi-currency service.
There are also next-generation transactions that a PSP can help you with like e-check processing, prepaid cards, and e-wallets.
3. Services to manage your money.
You will need an accounting, bookkeeping, and tax preparation services to help you manage cash flow and keep track of your financial health. While you could do these yourself or get some high-quality software that will make it easier to do, it’s best to outsource these services as you need to focus on marketing and sales. You can’t afford to fall behind on keeping up with your books.
4. Service to help you with business legalities.
You will need to use business legal services to set up your business for success. You will need these services for your business formation. They are also useful for corporate compliance issues and will help you with other business services down the line when you no longer work from home because your business has grown into a full-scale, multiple-employee enterprise. At that time, you may need to deal with trademark registration, articles of amendment, and articles of dissolution.
Although starting your own business can be overwhelming, you just need to break everything down into manageable chunks. So, after you set up your business, decide what services you need. Naturally, your list of services will increase as your business grows.
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