You have to take care of business, operations, and sometimes there are just costs out there that you’ll have to pay due to the fact that you start out with low volume of sales. I think that’s the key. Step by step, one of the biggest issues I run into is that people believe that they’ll make money off the bat. Their time schedule is completely off, and they believe that if they bring a product to fruition, the people will come. Having been around the block a few times, I personally would recommend that they shoot for their first dollar in profit. Then you shoot for ten, then a hundred.

When you’re off to the races and making ten thousand dollars a month, come give me a call. Because then you’ve successfully made it well enough to hopefully be self-sustainable. And that’s what the first major milestone of any business. To get there, you’ll still have to make that first dollar. So don’t worry less about the expenses, and more about the profit. The only reason that you would worry about expenses is if you’re selling for a loss per transaction. Then there’s something wrong with the process itself.

1. Go to the state corporations website. Figure out if you want to go S Corp or LLC, and pay the fee and sign up for that. There will be an annual fee from here on out.
   
2. Go to the IRS and get a EIN. You can sign up for it online.
   
3. Go to the bank with your EIN and your articles of incorporation from #1. Open a bank account.
   
4. Make sure you have accounting software of some sorts. You need to keep track of that stuff as a business owner. Find a great accountant for your end of fiscal year fun tax stuff that you probably won’t want to do yourself unless you’re crazy.
   
5. Find a good attorney to represent your business.
   
6. Make sure you put down corporate minutes as needed. Most businesses fail to do this, and if ever in a legal battle or legal audit, they get messed up here.
   
7. Make sure you pay your annual dues and do your paperwork for the state. This will kill you in an audit too.
   
8. Make sure you have some sort of exit strategy. This can change over time, and be multiple scenarios.
   

This won’t make you a success, nor will it keep you from failing. But these are things that most people that start up in business actually do not learn nor do they teach you this in business school. It’s good to know how to set it up, and how to dissolve a business since these steps are precursors to your business plan or any actual idea that you may have.

But if you’re seeking to create something huge, and you have opportunity to do so, then grasp it firmly and don’t let go.  I can speak from experience that there have been more than once that there were opportunities that I only had one shot at in the businesses that I’ve owned and I made the wrong decision.   This opportunity will unlikely come again, and the think that you’ll get another shot is just like thinking that you’ll get the winning lottery ticket.  Again.

And when you own a corporation, you can never ever take things personal.  Even if  a business partner happens to be family or a friend.  Business is business, and friendship and family are separate.  If people hold it against you, then they’re not good business folks.   Because while family and friends can help you out when the going gets tough and such, bad management teams and bad employers/employees can drag a business into ruin.   Don’t ever mix the two up and feel like you have some sort of obligation.

Would I personally hand over the reigns of any of my businesses to my children?   Sure, if they proved themselves to be capable.   But if not, then the business would go to the hands of people that could manage it and would succeed with it.   It’s nothing personal, just business.

Here is the difference. Contracts in general are legal documents that bind two parties into doing something. You can put as much detail or as little detail in these, but to be royally screw yourself in a court of law, corporate counsel will always detail it into oblivion. Easiest way to protect yourself is to detail away if you don’t have counsel running all of your business gigs. Purchase Orders are made by the purchasing agent where what is needed, at what time, and at what price is specified. Once this is accepted by the vendor, then it is also a contract that is enforceable. The only thing it means is that it’s a one-off contract which means it’s a one-time deal. The purchasing agent has to create another purchase order to send to the vendor, and the vendor has to accept it to create another binding contract. Again, these are contracts which means the vendor can negotiate and put in more details the same as the purchasing agent before sign-off.

What I didn’t get in the article itself was the fact that there was some discussion on level of detail in a purchase order versus contract, which is completely incorrect. Purchase orders must be signed off by the vendor to be accepted which provides the level of specification. It’s like a RFP but coming from the buyer instead of the vendor providing one. This ensures that all of the questions are asked by the vendor on what you are and are not doing when you walk into this contractual obligation.

Another interesting tidbit that I gathered from the article and quotes was that the purchase order was somewhat more generic. Having done enough contractual work in my life on similar contracts, I have to say that this is where you get burned as a vendor. In accepting a contractual agreement in a more generic and broad sense, you are bound by the contract to do all the nitty gritty detailed work that you didn’t “foresee”. And the court of law doesn’t change in this fact as you can see from patent law where if a broader patent is granted, then that broader patent usually is the one that is being infringed upon by the more specific patent.

Granted here, I’m not a corporate lawyer, but I’ve had to deal in my life with enough contracts to know when you’re going to sign into a really nasty situation or not. Most contracts have ways out, and so do purchase orders, but they have to be written in. If not, the county in this case technically could pursue this in a court of law from the details of the transaction given. Whether or not they would is up to to them.

Good luck with that, publishers. Let me introduce you to something called corporate counsel. Any legal person would laugh that out of the ballpark for even being put on the
table. This is because if distribution channels like Apple have a proactive group and miss something. then they become liable in most copyright situations. No company would enter that sort of legal risk. There is absolutely nothing to gain from that type of enforcement.

You have to understand why corporations act the way they do if you wish to pursue any interests that are pertaining them. And as organizations like this get “mad” at what is and isn’t done with larger corporations, they need to sit back and realize that there is always counsel involved in every major decision. Things such as copyright will always side on the more conservative since most companies do not like paying their attorneys needlessly to fight frivolous lawsuits. The moment you can understand this concept, then you won’t be chasing the wind when it comes to corporate ethics.

It’s interesting that government doesn’t pay attention to the one industry that has the ins and outs on who gets what job.   And that my friend, would be the human resources department.

What’s fascinating about this industry is that while most of the time you think of them as the people that manage your benefits and other miscellaneous employee type thingies, they are also in charge of hiring and letting go of employees.   Yes, this industry is the iron fist of those up top and make the decisions on which individuals are to be chopped due to some bean counter upstairs so that top management can still make their numbers and collect on their bonuses.

What’s also interesting is the fact that while there has been government elation about how there is now job creation and jobs out there, these positions are written in such a way that HR professionals have deemd them purple squirrel positions.

Ah, yes.  So you ask, what is a “purple squirrel”?   This is where the job specifies for a skill set that is so defined and limited, that there is no individual that could possibly fit them and thus as elusive an potential employee as finding a purple squirrel.   And I’m sure you job seekers out there have encountered this insanity time and again.  What’s funny is that government is so baffled when they find that there are jobs out there but the unemployment numbers keep growing that they don’t ask the right questions such as “are these people truly hiring?”

While I’m thankfully employed currently, I myself have had the opportunity of fighting the battle of unemployment.   There were several jobs out there that you couldn’t even land a screening, let alone an interview even if you were over-qualified for the positions.  There were many a position out there that I saw open for over a year and were not filled, even though there were many individuals that could have been put in those positions.  This makes me wonder whether or not corporations truly are in need of people or if they’re just putting those positions up to satisfy some government mandate or to look like they’re actually hiring.   In fact, instead of the statistic of unemployment and positions open, we really should be comparing the rate of hiring via companies to the unemployment rate.   That would probably give a much better ratio on whether or not there is actual hiring or not.

If you do happen to actually get hired into a purple squirrel position, please let me know.   I’m sure there are many unemployed individuals out there that want to know which company is actually not creating some unattainable demi-god positions.

Related articles

• ‘Purple Squirrels’ Now In Demand (newyork.cbslocal.com)
• Employer demands mean some jobs go unfilled (msnbc.msn.com)
• Chron.com: Four in U.S. compete for every job, so skills are at a premium (chron.com)

I really love Chick-Fil-A.  They not only have a wonderful methodology for customer service, but they often double-up on service when it comes to the drive thru.   If you’ve ever noticed, there is usually one person that handles drinks, one person that hands it to you, and several people in all to complete your transaction.  This isn’t the same at other fast food restaurants where there could be only one person trying to manage every single part of the exchange.  This isn’t even accounting for the food preparation part.

So when they screw up, it’s actually pretty annoying and devastating to their image.   It’s not a huge deal, since their loyalty is much like Toyota’s.  People are still willing to come back after one bad incident, but if it keeps up, the image starts going southwards.

For me, it was through the drive-thru where it just happened that there was a tomato peeking out from the top lid of my sandwich box.   I didn’t really think anything of it, but when I opened the box, there was no top bun.  How the heck do you close the lid of a box without realizing there wasn’t a top bun?   Wow.   And it’s funny that I had just finished telling my wife how their quality control and customer service was above every other fast food place even though they were closed on Sundays and probably lost a lot of money in doing that.

Better training drives revenue.  Anyone that works at Starbucks corporate could tell you that.   Remember when they locked it down for three hours company wide?  That’s how you get things done.

Well perhaps it’s only a single isolated incident.  It wasn’t like it was a misplaced item which happens frequently in fast food and take-out.   It was just part of the food preparation that was missing.  It probably doesn’t help matters with the fact that they do actually care about their customer service and training either.   But this demonstrates why you can never cut corners around quality control.   In fast food, it might generate an annoyed customer.   In civil engineering, it could mean the bolt that holds the roof from collapsing on the people inside.   QC/QA is a part of every business and should be thought about if you care about your corporate reputation.

Obviously, for those in the know-how and geekdom, this is a pretty simple task of dissection. But this isn’t like an IBM commercial where it’s targeted at business people. No, this is something targeted at your normal everyday Joe Schmoe that doesn’t really care one way or another if your application is in the “cloud” or not. I mean, in all honesty, you just want things to work, and work well. Do you care whether or not it works in the cloud? Of course not. It’s like me trying to explain the differences between CDMA and GSM and the difference in call quality based on technological differences to my mother. If she’s going to buy a cell phone, she cares about the way it looks and how cool it is instead of what the infrastructure it sits on.

Same thing here. Thus, that Microsoft ad turns out to be a total cheese to those that know, and totally misses the ball with those that don’t. Always make sure that you understand your audience before you play technical keywords at them.

There’s a lot of information that you can gather the analysis of both the website and the whois records. The first can tell you if it’s been thrown up in a hurry and if it’s a template site. If it is, no worries, but if both the former (shoddy website) and latter (domain registration) don’t jive, that’s a sign to run very far away before you get taken for a spin.

The whois record shows the registration of the domain and whom is in charge of the business itself from billing to technical to administration. Every major corporation will have their own IT departments in charge of these records and thus the emails will always be from a corporate domain. For example, ibm.com is registered to the corporation and the emails all have ibm.com on the end.


Registrant:
International Business Machines Corporation
New Orchard Road
Armonk, NY 10504
US

INTERNET-SERVER.ZURICH.IBM.COM 195.176.20.204
NS.WATSON.IBM.COM 129.34.20.80
NS.ALMADEN.IBM.COM 198.4.83.35
NS.AUSTIN.IBM.COM 192.35.232.34


That is a huge tell-tale sign that says that someone is a legit owner and knows what they’re doing. If not, then whether or not you’re a legitimate business, you could be stereotyped into the bucket of “scammers and fraud” even before you start your wheeling and dealing. And is that something you really want to do to yourself if you’re trying to create partnerships and sales? Definitely not.

So do the right thing. Register your domains in the right method and keep yourself from having a lot of headache explanations in the future.

Image by Ivan Walsh via Flickr

There are certain things I believe in business.   One is that you need to know when to choose your battles.   The other is that you have to disseminate relevant information so that people know why they have to do something that is pretty self explanatory to you because of what you know.

Perfect example:  At another position in my career, we were told to put our time in as salary employees into Niku, then Clarity.   You would have to go through training to use these tools and from an engineers perspective it was a complete waste of time since most of our project schedules should have been self explanatory.   We were never told what the big picture was and why these tools were being used to track the time.   Looking back from the eyes of a project manager, whomever was tracking the time and cost and earned value should have explained what the point of this tool was for, but they just figured everyone should be using it.

One thing about technical people?  No one likes to do things that there’s no “reason” for and if you don’t provide a reason for it, then it’s not good enough.  And the PM should have said that it was to track the amount of money we were spending against what we were making.  It was that simple, but yet no one ever bothered with the disconnect.

I believe that this is the duty of a good project manager.   An instructor of mine once told me that a PM’s position is communicating ninety percent of the time.  I’d like to go one step further, and say that the PM’s position is also communicating the right information ninety percent of the time.

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