The Showroom Startup

[SDRonEbay]

I used to think getting started took thousands of dollars. After reading up on it, from different sources including the e-books I placed on the other post, I found out that the initial start up requires and investment in proportion to the amount of money you plan to make. For instance, my original business plan involved a shop, inventory, employees, travel expenses, promotional expenses, renting of facilities for car shows and events, merchandising and several other things that got cropped along with the big business dream. What was left is a very modest website, licensing, a few computer upgrades, a few accounts with shipping companies, and misc. items I need to work with.

Currently my monthly expenses are under a couple hundred dollars. Of course my income is....well, nevermind. But getting this idea to become a reality didn't take much at all. Here's a shopping list of some things you'll need to start a similar business or any at-home business:

1. Computer - A computer is a must whether you're doing a website or a bakery. Brothers and sisters let me tell you, invest the $600-$1200 it takes to get a computer. Less if you know someone that can build it for you. With the computer you can keep easy, accessible files, you can make shipping and receiving as easy a task as blowing your nose and it'll be your #1 reference and source of information if you all invest in internet or dialup. (Since you're reading this, I can assume you already have both.)With the computer, go the whole nine and get a printer. Mine doubles as a scanner. And, preferably one that prints photo quality. You'll be amazed how much money you can save with this printer if you can print your own materials which brings up must have #2...

#2 Software - Get yourself some appropriate software. If you don't already have one, go get yourself a firewall or some sort of security. No one likes to be hacked. You especially don't want to be hacked if you have sensitive documents on your computer which I'll get to in a minute. You'll also want to get some software that can assist you in keeping your business professional, creating invoices or reports if necessary. Lastly, I've got some of the old Nissan discs left over from Trophy that I need to dl into my computer. I try to do this by memory or knowledge or run searches online. But if I go ahead and dl those discs it means that I can instantly look up a vehicle by it's VIN and it'll tell me what part numbers are and give me nice little pics. Software that works directly with your field is an asset and a very big help in keeping up with your time managment. I said I was gonna get back to those sensitive documents. Things like bank statements or electronic transfer receipts...time for #3.

#3 Bank Account - Some people can tell you the active ingredients in rocket fuel right down to the molecular composition but they can't tell you how much money is in their bank account. They can calculate down to the millisecond the true speed of their Altima in a quarter mile, compensating for drag and all that, but they can't balance their checkbooks. As you might remember, I took a temporary job with a bank because I was able to take an Introductory to Banking course. It helped me understand a lot (including why I wasn't getting approved for a loan.) It did teach me the basics of banking and also gave me insight on small business banking, fees applied, interest earned, etc. etc. More important than learning why I wouldn't get approved, I learned what was need to get approved. It was very valuable information. I don't recommend everyone take the course but for those of you in college or going to college soon, think about taking two courses; Introductory to Business Management and Introductory to Banking. They are instrumental to what is needed to insure that you aren't a worker ant the rest of your life. With that said, you ever wonder how ants march in a line like they do? Even if theirs a gap, the ants can pick up that same line again, no problem. It's by smell. A smell communicates to the other ants where the line is. Communication brings us to #4...

#4 Phone and Fax lines - Today there are more phone companies around than at any other point in history. You can throw a rock, hit a phone company and that rock will bounce and hit three other phone companies before it hits the ground. It's important that you can communicate with your customers, vendors or employees at all times. I would like to think that I can communicate with the world with my computer but I still have this phone sitting right beside me right now. It's a 900 MHz AT&T cordless. Starting out, the phone is gonna be your best friend because you'll soon find that even companies based on the web require you to call in for one reason or another. And, having also worked for a phone company and a telecommunications company, I've learned a lot about communications. Just some basic stuff; All telephone lines won't support a fax or modem. It's important to know this and let your phone company know you will need a line that will support fax and modem (sorry I can't remember what it's called. I'm hypnotized by the smell of red beans cooking). If you are going to have a toll free number know that you can customize that number. Aside from choosing your own number if it's available, you can also choose who can call that number. It can be filtered by the callers area code, prefix, lata or state. This is very important because you pay for the use of that toll free number. You might not want Joe down the street calling your toll free number causing you extra bills. You can make it so that no one in your lata (local area transport area) can call your toll free number. Basically a lata is an area in which calls are made. There are 194 latas in the US. This guy Natan has defied big business and posted a lata map online. The reason I say that is because you can typically pay over $120 for a lata map.

Those four things are musts in the small business world but without the fifth, there is no business.

#5 Contacts - My working in so many different fields over the years has given me some inside, hands on knowledge of corporate structure, but dig this. I can pick up the phone right now and call former co-workers from every job I've ever had. In fact, I spoke to Romeo from Trophy, Nathan from Orr, Cindy and Vanessa from TECNet, Alex from Hibernia, Vinnie and Shasta from CenturyTel and Tonya from J.C. Penny's in the past four days alone. Not to mention old customers I continue to call and run into on the streets. When I send out my e-mailers (Not Spam) I don't forget to include some of my NICO brethren, family, friends...people that know me who might now buy from me but who might tell someone they know about me. Hell, my ex-wife has even passed out my cards at her job. Contacts, rather business-social contacts are key to any business but moreso, small business. I was only able to get good prices on my products by contacting my old supplier from Trophy who was more than glad to work with me. Good customer service is so vital to whatever it is you do because you never know who will be helping you out when you need it. And by customers, I don't just mean those buying from you. I mean vendors, prospects, even partners. You have to rely on the Golden Rule whether you sale high performance aftermarket parts or paper clips.

That's it people. Without advertising for somebody's company, I'll give a reference to that Nathan guy I was telling you about (not Nathan from Orr). He's been so good as to post a lata map online. Check it out and you'll understand a little better what I mean.

http://www.robotics.net/clec/LATA_Map.html

[PalmerWMD]

Great write-up as always.So those lata maps are also interesting, never heard of them before..

Fred...

[SDRonEbay]

Yeah, I didn't know if it made me a geek or not when I worked for TECNet, I routed toll free numbers. I'm the person that told the number where to ring to and who could call it. It was really fun. Unfortunately with the telekaboom I lost my job. The scariest thing was that I was very close to moving to NY shortly before 9/11 to work for one of our clients. At the time I was trying to work out some issues so I opted to wait. This is only important because the main office was in Building 2 of the WTC. My friends and I were talking about that for weeks because a couple of them thought I had already taken the job.