Business is about helping people, not wearing suits and working with abstract numbers. Often time it’s not even about team management.

Business is about kindness

It’s about offering your services, providing high-quality work, and creating those win-win situations where all of the parties feel like they got more value than they paid for.

Business is transactions

In business, economic agents (humans, entities, bots) are exchanging information in various forms: (1) monetary, (2) verbal, (3) labor, (4) products, you name it. Once you understand those 3 fundamental concepts, you can free your mind from false stereotypes and build reliable, prosperous operations.

The reason why Smart Economy will strive is that the computers can exchange information much more efficiently and at higher volumes than humans.

Anything is business

Whether your flipping discounted items on eBay, running a private label on FBA, making hand-made wooden bags or printing your art on the t-shirts you’re running a business.

Organization

Going to the mountains naked, carrying no equipment or food is foolish. So is building the business.

Write about your business first

Before you start any activity it is wise to sit down, think and describe your business. Try to answer the following questions for yourself:

• What is your project about? Try to fit the answer in 3 sentences max.
• What’s your 1, 2 and 5-year vision of this project?
• What’s your motivation? Why do you want to do this?
• What are your company values? What do you stand for?
• What’s the message of the brand?
• What’s your market?
• Who’s your audience? You can think regarding Instagram accounts for instance and say that your audience is the people following these A & B accounts.
• What’s your roadmap? Break down the process into smaller milestones. It’s easier to walk up the stairway climbing one step at a time.
• Who are your competitors?
• Who are not your competitors?
• What would be your business references? What businesses do you like and respect?
• Think of the mood board of your business. It will help you always stay emotionally connected with your project.
• Who are you, potential mentors? Who can guide on how to run this business?
• Who are your potential partners? Your allies on the way to the top of the Mountain?
• Who are your potential sponsors?
• Make a list of equipment that you’ll need in this expedition. These are your resources like hardware, software, wardrobe, capital, etc.
• Fill out your Business Model Canvas to review your entire business model in a compact and interactive form (I’ll place a link to my guide on Business Canvas Model here once I publish it).

Prepare your templates

Before you start running any operations, I highly advise you to think all of the models for emails, invoices or agreements that you’ll be using. Trust me, you might be okay doing 1-2 sales a month but the volume will eventually start to pile up so you gotta think about keeping your internal docs and papers clean and in order which brings us to the folder organization.

Folders organization

Transactions and interactions in business often involve the production and exchange of data in the form of (1) documents (2) photos (3) videos (4) reports (5) spreadsheets (6) invoices (7) contracts, etc.

By introducing the standardized approach in your data management, you can help your future self to work faster and never lose any important file again.

Pro tip: Hold all of your frequently used data offline so you can access it even if there is no Internet. Back up all of your data on the hard drives every month/week so you can never be locked out of it by any malicious software.

CRM

Money-making transactions in Business are called deals. They are the products of the art of effective communication. The more effective you are in presenting the information and the mutual benefits of every deal, the higher is your success rate.

Keeping track of your deals is the very vital process as it helps you (1) keep track of your progress (2) plan and strategize about the coming months of operations (3) establish meaningful connections and (4) communicate effectively. I highly advise starting with the free CRM software like Hubspot for example.

I’ll include the link to my guide on how to set up your CRM, sales pipeline, and keep a journal on all of your leads, contacts and business partners.

Budget & Accounting

Make sure to start with a certain budget in mind and work on doubling it several times first, before you start any expansion or aim for the higher goals. Focus on the low-hanging fruits, make it easier for yourself to start.

Whenever you make a transaction make sure to take a note of it in your books. I’ll have a separate guide on how to make your accounting easier and post a link here. For now, depending on your country you might think about various accounting solutions. I know that Quickbooks and Xero are the most popular in the US.

Set up

Register a company

In the beginning, make sure you register a company. You want to shield yourself from the various individual income taxes and liability associated with running a business.

In one of the upcoming articles I will be presenting various countries and so-called economic sandboxes where you’re operations will be less limited (and even incentivized) by the local authorities but just to give you a hint think:

1. US
2. Puerto Rico
3. Cayman Islands
4. Singapore
5. Estonia

Open a bank account

Having the bank account will allow you to move the money in and out as a business entity. Unfortunately, ly until the crypto evolution of the economy is over it’s impossible to operate a business without the intermediaries.

Open the merchant account

Examples: Paypal, Quickbooks, Square, Stripe, Braintree
Again, the economy is kinda weird in the modern world, and while the bank accounts are suitable for sending and receiving the occasional transfers to start processing credit and debit cards, you’ll need a second layer of a merchant account on top.

Strategy

If you’re just starting your business think about the lean approach: don’t get any significant equipment or orders at the start. There are plenty of the low-hanging fruits that will grant you with a series of quick, easy wins from the beginning. Grow step by step and don’t rush.

Networking

Once you feel like you’re ready to make some deals the way to start is through networking. Always start with your first circle connections. You may already have some business contacts or some friends and their friends in the business. Focus on searching for business opportunities.

Take a look at my Guide on effective b2b emails

Try joining the discussions on Reddit and Facebook that are related to your business.

Co-founders

Lastly, if you feel like you would feel more comfortable running the operations with your partner or the best friend, make sure you start your activities by signing a partnership agreement. In it you can indicate how you plan to collaborate, how would you split the expenses as well as the profits, what is the voting process on decisions, and most importantly how do you split if the collaboration is not comfortable for one or both of the parties. Discussing all of those positions will help you save relationships and avoid a lot of troubles in the future.

Remember: Your best friends may become the best partners in business; you can also turn into the worst enemies and never talk to each other again. I’ve seen both scenarios, and I wish you all never to experience the former.

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