How to Start a Business in 24 Simple Steps

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Starting a business is one of the best things you can do to build wealth. Figuring out where to start can be a daunting proposition, though.

The good news is that millions of people before you, including me, have started successful businesses. You don’t need to reinvent the wheel or spend hours researching what needs to be done. You can use what we have done–and learned along the way–as a guide.

If you want to start a business, you’ll need a business formation service. Here’s the best options.

You can read our full reviews of each business formation service here.

Here are the steps to starting a business:

You wouldn’t want to take a long road trip without mapping out your journey. And you wouldn’t want to do the same to your business.

That’s why you need to start by answering two basic questions:

Don’t overthink this. Be realistic about what it’s going to take.

Do your research, know your numbers, and create a trajectory. Put it all to paper and the business plan will evolve into a useful tool that acts as a true north for at least the first 6–12 months.

You can use this business plan template from Rocket Lawyer or check out our guide to writing a business plan to get started.

This is a tricky step. Your name has to be good. It needs to be memorable and brandable. It doesn’t have to be perfect and it doesn’t have to be a fancy, made-up word like Google or Yahoo. But you will be saying this name a lot and it will likely be your URL, too.

I wrote an entire guide to How to Buy the RIGHT Domain Name, which you might want to check out. Generally speaking, here is what matters:

Here is a great process for coming up with a business name:

Here are more tips for coming up with a business name:

Your domain name is critical.

That means not being afraid to spend money on your domain. I use Domain.com to buy my domains — you can read more about why in our review of the best domain registrars.

Depending on your business, you might say the URL as much or as often as you say the actual name of your business. The more budget you have for your domain name, the more you’ll be able to do.

It’s tough enough to find a good name where buying the .com is possible. After all, the Internet is more than 30 years old. Many of the “good” domain names are taken.

And if you do find one that works, chances are, you won’t get exact match social media handles as well.

But you should do everything you can to get them, but if that fails — get creative. Your social media handles / URLs are much less important than your website, but they’re worth putting effort into.

You can choose how much effort to put into your social media right off the bat — you can simply get the name and hold them, you can populate them with a few images and pieces of information, or you can go all out. That’s up to you. For now, I just want you to make sure you have the handles.

Your brand identity is very important. These are the colors, images, and logos that customers associate with your brand.

It sounds like a lot of work—but you can always update your brand identity down the road, so the initial run just needs to be good enough. 99 Designs is a great option for a full brand identity package. You can run a design contest that allows you to pick from hundreds of options.

Unlike your business name, your brand identity isn’t locked in stone. It’s more than OK to go with a “starter approach” here — it doesn’t need to be perfect (or expensive); it just needs to get done. You can always come back around and do another design round — most businesses do.

Google Workspace (formerly G Suite) is the most important tool for our business. I do almost everything using Workspace. My team’s emails and calendars are all on Google, and we rely heavily on Google Drive and Docs.

You’ll need to get this set up as soon as you have your domain name. Then you can easily get your business accounts set up. A Basic account starts at $6 per user.

It puts you on a more professional footing to email from a domain you own (like you@yourdomain.com) rather than a free account. This is important for establishing relationships moving forward.

Going with Google Workspace gets you and your future team on a synced calendar and communication platform.

Your website can be as big or as small as you want. If you’re just a small solo operation like a freelance writer, you might need just a single page with links to your writing and maybe your contact information.

If you’re an ecommerce business selling products and services, you’ll need a bigger website.

For now, the focus here is simply on a basic, foundational website. You can scale for a bigger website later if needed.

It’s good to have a one-page site live with information about your company. Then you can build further from there.

You can be up and running in a matter of minutes with Squarespace. Once you’re ready to do a full feature website, it’s easy to switch over to WordPress, using our guide on how to create a website with WordPress.

Your brand identity package from 99 Designs will come with business card designs. You can use them to get business cards printed online by Vista Print.

This might seem like an antiquated idea to you, but believe me. Once you start your business, you’ll be talking about it and every person you talk to should be handed a card with your information on it. I like to keep my phone number off the card, and hand-write it on there for people who I would actually want to call me. It makes it easier to hand the cards out freely — and it lets the people who I do give my number to know that I really mean it.

This one is easy to put on the back burner — but you should actually do it sooner rather than later.

You’ll save yourself a lot of hassle and potentially save your business altogether by getting ahead here. Line up the legal and tax pros ahead of time. There are lots of great options and your accountant and attorney can both be remote.

I haven’t personally used it, but I’ve heard a lot of good things about UpCounsel.

There are two ways to do this:

No matter which you choose, setting up an LLC is simple. It’s a good spot to save some money by using a service like ZenBusiness.

Getting your Employer Identification Number is something you can take care of along with the LLC. They usually occur during the same process.

You’ll need that to do just about everything, including business banking. You’ll also be using it to file your taxes — so definitely make note of it!

Even if it’s just you, an operating agreement is needed. Unless you have other people involved with your business, you can definitely get away with LegalNature here.

Chances are, things will evolve and you will update your operating agreement down the road anyway. If you do have other people involved, have your attorney help out here.

If you’re using a lawyer, they can do all of this for you. Otherwise, you’ll need to do some research into the requirements in your state, which also vary depending on the type of business you’re starting.

Pro tip: If you need help, be sure to check out our article on the best online legal resources.

You’ll need that EIN. It’s typically most convenient to go with the same bank you’re already using for your personal accounts.

One thing to watch out for is the upselling that many of the bigger banks do. For example, with Bank of America, I went ahead and took them up on an offer for Intuit Payroll.

It ended up being a terrible user experience.

The people at Intuit recommended that I sign up for a new account directly with Intuit because they couldn’t figure out how to solve some of the problems we were having. They put the blame on Bank of America.

This ended up working out because instead of signing up for Intuit Payroll, I researched other options and found Gusto, which is much better.

The point here is to use your bank account for a bank account and be wary of using them for other offers or services.

As I said, I really like Gusto. They offer such a intuitive and — dare I say — fun payroll experieince.

(After all, what’s more fun than getting paid?)

I use them and find the service to be superior to Intuit Payroll.

You won’t need to worry about this until you start paying employees or contractors. It’s good to have it ready and on deck though. Not only will the service automate your payroll, but it will also take care of taxes and forms that need to be filed.

A QuickBooks account is essential from day one. This is how you’ll manage your books and ensure you always have good records.

Going back and importing historical data isn’t fun. The sooner you get it set up the better. Do it now.

The best bet here is to work closely with your accountant. A good approach is to ask your accountant what you need to be doing throughout the year to make things easier when tax season comes and to make sure all quarterly obligations are met.

QuickBooks does all of the heavy lifting, but there are still things you’ll need to stay on top of. There is some crossover with what’s already been outlined here, but Shopify put together a good guide on small business accounting.

If you don’t have an accountant, then spend some time understanding the basics. QuickBooks is a great tool for staying organized, but you need to be able to interpret what the numbers each month mean for your business.

Don’t wait until tax time to try and figure everything out. You won’t regret the time you took to set up your accounting system intelligently.

The most important thing: track all of your work. Even if you are the only person in your company, you should operate like an organization because someday you will have no choice.

The other benefit besides creating good habits is the historical information and data that will come from working like this starting day one. You’ll know where you’ve been, so you can see where you’re going.

It’s very valuable for new people to come into your organization and be able to look back at what work has been done in the past. It’s context that will help them (and your business) be successful going forward.

It doesn’t matter what tool you use. You’ll likely change it a bunch of times anyway. We use Trello. There are dozens of great tools.

Just as you should use a project management tool from the very early stages, it’s extremely valuable to start documenting everything right away.

If you ever want to scale your startup, you’ll need your brain to scale too. Your internal wiki is like your brain. Giving your future team instant access to your brain is huge. If you already have a disciplined approach to documenting things in the wiki, your team will follow suit.

It’s not fun figuring out the value of a wiki system 3 years down the road, 50 people deep. You’ll think of an endless number of documents you wish you’d have written out as you went along.

We use Confluence. It keeps all our business processes transparent. As a business owner, you’re going to have to make tough calls and handle touchy situations. When problems fall into a gray area, it’s really nice to be able to appeal to processes that have always been available to everyone.

Everyone loves Slack. It just works. Mobile communication is key. There is a Free plan that’s a good place to start. It’s about $7 per user per month for the next plan up, which grants you controls like guest access to different channels, and more storage and app connections.

Many businesses will need to do conference calling at one point or another, and GoToMeeting makes that easy.  Instantly join, host or manage a video, audio, or web meeting from a conference room, your desk or a remote location via your Mac, PC, or mobile device. Visit GoToMeeting to signup and get started in mere minutes.

By now you are starting to see the theme here: Reduce future headaches. Set up your systems now and you’ll be able to focus on growth moving forward.

1Password is an excellent tool for managing all of your passwords and sensitive data. It makes it easy to securely share logins with your team — which is key because Centrify estimates that lost passwords cost $416 in productivity per person.

This is easy but often overlooked. 1Password is great for keeping track of your subscription logins. You still need some way to quickly see everything you have and what you are paying for, especially as you grow and have more people using and signing up for different tools and subscriptions.

A simple spreadsheet is all you need. Track the subscription, cost per month or year, terms (if any), payment method (what account or card is it tied to?), and renewal date.

Like your business plan, your strategic plan doesn’t need to be complicated.

Here’s how to write a simple startup business plan for year one:

Even in a one-person shop, taking the time to do this will force strategic thinking and purposeful action. It will help you avoid being reactive and randomly doing whatever comes your way.

It becomes even more important when you have a team that needs to know what direction to march. They will need that context in order to do their jobs.