Learning how to business

Until my recent less-than-voluntary transition, my whole career was spent in the warm embrace of big organizations with professionals who know finance, legal, HR, IT., etc., etc., etc.The closest I’ve come to business operations work was doing the books for my parent’s sheep ranch. I taught a class at UNC on Formal Organizations, but that was more about the sociological theory of the firm than the practice of creating and running a business. I miss all of the people whose expertise meant I could stay in my comfort zone. 

KEI has been a real build-the-plane-in-the-air experience. I know all sorts of things I didn’t know a few months ago. I see lots of other folks walking this same road these days and wonder how might we all learn together.

So, acknowledging I’m no expert in this, I’m going to share what I’m doing on the organizational side. Maybe it’ll help someone else working through the same process. Maybe someone will point out something (likely many things) I haven’t thought about or could be doing differently.

Over the next while, I’ll talk about things that have come up, including

appearing to exist

the “tech” “stack”

people try to scam me (trying to scam all new businesses)

marketing and sales (ugh)

Today I’ll start at the start. Moving from a business in my own head to a business legible to the state. 

In the past, I’ve done a bit of sidework as a consultant and did it under my own name. I didn’t want to do that this time. KEI isn’t (just?) a temporary, desperate move to bring money in. I want it to feel and operate like it is going to stick around for a while. I want it to have the foundation and infrastructure to stick around for a long while.

I did a lot of reading and a bit of thinking and ended up with an LLC structure (for now). Over time an S-Corp may become a better fit, but came with more upfront work (and ongoing work) than made sense to commit to.

There are state operated websites in Virginia to help fools like me through the next procedural steps. One thing they were super helpful for was understanding the order of operations and the dependencies among the steps. Importantly, the way our system is organized, everything flows downhill from having a unique name.

This took a bit of monkeying around because I needed to determine–sort of simultaneously– that a name was 1) awesome, 2) had a plausibly accessible URL I could own, and 3) sufficiently unique among active corporate entities in Virgina, 4) unlikely to trigger a well-founded or frivolous infringement lawsuit, 5) didn’t abbreviate to something offensive.

After a few false starts, I landed on Key Evidence & Insights, LLC. I bought the domain (www.keyevidenceinsights.com) and registered the name with the state. One thing I’d do differently!  The ampersand looks neat in the official name. But now it is the official name and has to be used on official documents and forms. I’ve encountered at least 2 systems where the & caused problems. 

Virginia’s State Corporation Commission website makes it look like you need to have bylaws and articles of organization ready to go. In fact, you make them (for an LLC) in the SCC’s web form. It turned out to be super easy. But it also meant that I had to then figure out how to retrieve a copy for some other steps. An hour or so later, a fancy certificate arrived in my email authorizing KEI to do business in the State of Virginia.

The next step in my handy flowchart was getting right with the IRS and setting up an EIN. I nearly screwed this up! I lazily googled “IRS apply for EIN” and didn’t look closely enough at the URL. I legitimately thought I was on the IRS website for five or six screens. I said some unpleasant words. Then I went to IRS dot gov and getting the EIN took less than 10 minutes. 

I’m now done with the state and with the feds. Total investment so far is maybe 90 minutes and $150 (state filing fee + domain name registration). I’d talked to some friends who’ve done business consulting around here for years and they told me I was good to go.

But my handy state-produced flow charts urged me to check my county regs as well. It turns out that I needed both a county-issued Business License and Zoning Approval. The business license was quick and painless (website, sliding fee based on expected revenue). The zoning took a while (~2 weeks)  to certify I could occupy the corner of my living room I’m typing from. I had to swear up and down I would never (ever) actually bring anyone to my picturesque and useless farm in the course of business. So if you find yourselves here, it is as a friend and not a client. 

With all of my papers securely in a file folder on my computer and in hardcopy in a safe, I set about giving this fledgling some of the trappings of an established business.