This Is How You Start A Business (Step By Step) | B2B Vault - The Biz To Biz Podcast | Episode 265

You are now watching the Biz to Biz Podcast with Allen and Justin. Yo, what's up everybody? It's Justin live from B2B Vault, the Biz to Biz Podcast sponsored by Nationwide Payment Systems, hosted by this guy, the Christian Latiner of Payment Processing himself, Allen Kopelman. And in today's podcast, we'll be giving you some steps, step by step, uh, on how to start a business, uh, some, some things that you need, and, uh, maybe you'll get something good out of it. Today's date is August 13th. It is approximately 11:47 PM, 2024. It's Tuesday, actually.

I wonder who got more minutes in the Olympics, Christian Laettner or Jason Tatum.

Well, I mean, I have no clue.

I don't know if they played him at all.

Christian Laettner, he was a good, he was good for What was that? Duke?

Yeah, he played on Duke championship team. He was the only collegiate player on the Dream Team.

I don't know why that came to mind. It's just the first thing that came to my mind.

Well, we just finished up the Olympics, so he definitely made the Olympic team. I think the two craziest things I saw at the Olympics this year was the guy from Turkey. Shooting with no— like, no, he had like no equipment compared to the other people. Plus they said he, he happened to be like in Paris and somebody couldn't shoot, so they just like called them on the phone, said, hey, can you come over and participate? He just like slid in there and did it.

Nice. One of those guys was smooth.

Yeah, won a silver medal.

They call him the Liam Neeson I wish they would have chose somebody real, but yeah.

What do you mean real?

Liam Nilsson is not a real person.

Well, he's an actor.

That's what I'm saying, like, it's whatever. But yeah, I thought it was cool the way that the athletes were like using his pose as a way to celebrate. So that was pretty cool. Shout out to that guy. And then the other big thing from the Olympics, which is kind of whack, is I mean, I really, I have a very, a lot of, I don't know, I don't really, I don't like how they portrayed the breakdancing at the Olympics at all.

So no, the only thing is like that one girl's just getting ray gun is just, well, what the hell does she expect?

It's hip hop, hip hop. Yo, like ain't shit nice about hip hop, bro. No, I'm just saying she became like, it's all about having fun and expressing yourself and all that happy stuff. Of course it's like, you know, like at the end of the day, but hip-hop is competitive and they were battling. And the fact that, I'm just gonna say whoever was in charge of that, the fact that, 'cause that shit is like cultural appropriation at its finest. Because for her to even say that that is breakdancing, it's just like a slap in the face to all the old school, shout out to Crazy Legs and the Rock Steady Crew. All the b-boys and b-girls across planet Earth. I already, if the second I watched, started watching this woman, I felt so like, I had like this anxiety come over me to where I felt like, I just felt bad. And it wasn't a good feeling. Like, and it wasn't something that I expected to see on such a world stage. And I thought that also my take on it is I really think the judges was really hating on Team USA. So I don't know, man. And I was looking into it. They haven't removed it from the Olympics in 2028. It was never on the Olympic schedule to begin with.

Okay.

So when that was released, the Olympics for this year had already been announced.

Right.

So it wasn't on the list anyway.

Okay.

There's a petition for it to be in the Olympics again.

Okay. Again.

So in my opinion, I don't care if it's in the Olympics.

I just didn't understand the rules. I went and read the rules and they were like, oh, vocabulary and moves and not repeating the moves.

Not repeating the moves is true. 'Cause don't nobody wanna watch you do the same fucking spin, sorry.

You know what I mean?

A head spin over and over again. Yeah, you're good at that, but what else do you got? You know what I mean?

What else you have in your arsenal?

Yeah, you know, like—

I thought the guy from Orlando, Victor, he was all right. I thought he was, I thought he did very well.

So like for me also, like me being an old head, the breakdancing that I grew up on and that you're used to seeing, has evolved, right? Yeah. So now it's a lot about competition and like choreographed moves. And like they said, like talking about, like talking with the music, right? Like it's like expressing yourself through the music. You know, I mean, it's dope. It's for me, maybe it's not for me, like, you know what I'm saying? But it's just like music in general. Is not all music is for me. And that's fine, right? So put a cardboard on the ground and watch some b-boys and some b-girls get busy. That's enough for me. For doing all the extra, like, whatever technical movements that they're doing, I don't even know what that is. My eye is not trained to know, you know what I mean? I just know like, oh, yo, did you see what he just did?

Exactly.

For, for me, I think that's what people wanted. Like, I think that's what I was expecting too. Like, because that for me, it is a competitive sport. But whatever.

I dig the only thing that I did, the, the thing that, that literally the only Olympic thing I watched, and I was so pissed. The thing that I didn't really like about it was, is you would think like they would get like, okay, like for gymnastics when they do like their routines, they pick their own song. Right, so you would think like—

No, it's a battle, so that's not how that shit works.

Okay.

At any battle, that's not how that works. And a b-boy MC battle, whatever the DJ puts on, right, is what you gotta spit to.

Okay.

So whatever the DJ is feeling, you know, you know, I actually thought they was doing a pretty good job. The beat, the, the, the DJ was playing some decent stuff. I thought it would be more old school, but again, like, I'm an old head, so it's like, right, I was— what I was expecting to be there was not. And I don't watch enough of the, like, the b-boy competitions, like the Red Bull breakdancing thing. I need to, you know what I mean, to familiarize myself, I guess, with the sport some more so I'm not like, what the fuck is— what is this? You know what I'm saying? But yeah, that woman from Australia, she became a meme now. Well, she's gonna forever live in infamy. Yeah, dude, like, that was That was bad. I do not feel bad for her at all.

There's a battle now. Who's more famous, her or the Haktua girl?

I don't know. Anyway, so I mean, I have a quick list of 8 like things.

Yeah.

I don't know if you, you know, like 8 things for what, business? No, 8 things like this would be my 8 steps. Okay, your 8 steps, right? Like this, it's— I try to do 5, okay, but then it was like, you can't really. So number 1, do your research on the business type, the business name, uh, the idea in general, right? I'm gonna do this quick. Number 2, create your business plan. This is so extremely important that people forget about doing. I'm not going to get into the whole what is involved in doing the business plan and in creating a business plan, but if there is no plan, then you're planning to fail.

Number 3, I agree with that.

Choose your business structure type, right? Like, this is important as well. If it's just you and you're, you know, you're, you're a— like, for instance, for me, when I first started, I went big way too early out the game and I started an LLC. I didn't need to do that.

Yeah, but you can do— now you could do the single-member LLC, that way you get a federal tax ID, right? Right. Relax, relax, relax.

This is not my steps. Those are— these are my steps. Number 3, choose your business structure, you know what I'm saying? And it's different for everybody. You got the, the sole, the, the sole pro, the LLC, the DBA, whatever. Do your research and find out what works for you. Number 4, register your business locally and federally. This is, this is beyond the struc— the business structure type. I don't care if you could do it together, whatever, but register your business, bro. Don't keep doing the backdoor shady stuff. Go get yourself an EIN number from the feds, the tax free. Go do it locally. Get registered within your state, however you need to do it. If you're a home service, whatever permits that you need, go do that. That was number 5, actually. Obtain required licenses and, and, uh, permits that you need for your businesses. Number 6, also, this is very important: open a business account, business banking account, because you do not want to mix your, your money the business money. In the end, at the end of the day, you're just going to create an accounting nightmare for yourself. You end up losing out on a lot of benefits and tax breaks that you would get if you had it separated. Uh, number 7, market the shit out of your business. Like, get yourself a website, create a marketing plan. There is enough artificial intelligence. ChatGPT will put together a a 12-month marketing plan for you in 30 seconds. Be patient, do your research, write the right prompt, put the business type, what your plan is, what your goal is, and boom, it'll spit it out. And last but not least, you got to get outside and network. Like, you can't sit inside and expect, you know, Jesus to come. Like, it's It's just not. Like, you gotta go put in the work, you gotta go outside, you gotta shake hands, you gotta do stuff for free, you gotta do shit that you do not want to do, that you feel like you don't have time to do. You're gonna have to sacrifice, and you are going to have to make sure you go outside and network. And those are Jay's top 8 tips for businesses. Good luck, you know what I mean? There's a bunch more, but I figured for the sake of like, keeping it easy, that would, that would be like my 8 things to do.

Yeah, and you know, to add to like what you're talking about is when you're picking out your business name, it's important to research that.

I mean, that's why I said research, research.

Yeah, but it's— but the name is the most important thing. Make sure the domain name is available, the Facebook pages are available. Well, you don't want to pick something that all of a sudden you pick a name for your business and remember, you know, you pick a name for your business and then it's not available.

Yeah. Well, you know, I mean, depends on your marketing plan too, but I've seen a little bit more advanced, you know what I mean? Like your business name doesn't have to be a URL. No, don't limit yourself. You can be creative, you know, if you're, if you're, uh, I've been thinking about names of businesses, so I don't want to say the ones that I have, right?

Okay.

Um, So like, for instance, Digital 1380. It's a shitty name. It's the first name to my company. It doesn't describe anything. Digital, yeah. 1380, what is that? Is it a scale? You selling drugs? Like, what is it? You know what I'm saying? And actually it is a scale, so I didn't do my due diligence and I was, you know, it's all about me. I would say to don't be so personal, but don't pick a personal, like, think something that is gonna be relatable to your customer. You know what I'm saying? If you're selling, you know, Mad Impact Media, something like that, right? Like something like, it's a marketing company, it's media, it makes an impact, something like that, right? Like, and so like, The domain was available, madimpact.com, but that's— this is an old idea. There's nothing new.

I get it.

So like, but it doesn't necessarily have to match the URL, but for marketing purposes, you should want to possibly include a keyword in your domain. Like for instance, Nationwide Payment Systems. Again, this is a business that's 20 years old, so he, he has the, the name of the business and there's keywords within the URL, which is a big thumbs up from Justin.

So, but yeah, no, but like your corporation name doesn't have to match your DBA name. And especially like, let's say you're going to be in somewhat of a higher risk type business category like CBD or hemp, you don't want to name your corporation like Justin's Hemp Farm. You want to just call it Justin's Farm. And you could whatever for your corporation for the purposes of get being able to get banking.

Smiley Face Farms, whatever you want to call it. Get creative is what, you know, right?

But I'm talking about like your corporate name doesn't have to match your DBA.

Oh yeah, I mean, you can get super technical. You just use your last name or something, right? You know, like keep it simple, don't make it complicated.

Yeah, of course, you know, you don't have to— those don't have to match. And a lot of people think that it has to match when they're doing their business. And if you're doing sort of a, you know, maybe whatever, controversial, you're going to be a nutraceutical company or you're selling some kind of like supplements, you don't want to put those names in your corporate name because you want to be able to go to the bank and get banking and not have a problem getting a bank account. Because the banks don't really care what you do, right? They don't really care. What they care about is when they're, when their shareholders or their board is looking down the list, They're gonna— they don't want to see Justin's Hemp Farm and Allen's Adult Strip Club, right? If it says Allen's Restaurant, they don't care what Allen's Restaurant does it, or if it is a strip club, and they're not going to go look into it. They just don't want to see those words in there, you know. They don't want to see the words.

Don't try— what basically what Allen's saying is don't draw unnecessary attention to yourself. Exactly. You know, you know, keep it keep it discreet. If you're in that type of business, keep it discreet. But, you know, you don't want to start a business in, you know, two towns down up the road. There's the exact same business with the— in the exact same business model. That's what I'm— that's the real research I'm really talking about too, right?

So yeah, you need to see like how big is the market. Like today, if someone said to me, oh, I want to— I need to start a business, what would be in your top business is I'll tell you what, anything handyman related, anything fixing stuff at people's houses, like there is just a shortage. I mean, if you're able-bodied, it's a good business to learn how to do it. If you're good with your hands, you know, like what Justin said, you know, no commingling funds is a super important thing. I've seen people, they start a business and then they're putting— they got money going everywhere. PayPal, Zelle, this, that money into their personal bank account, which is okay, right?

Like, as long as you're like— I'm fine with that. Like, if you're able to— if you're able to accept those types of payments from your customer is a super thumbs up, kudos to you, right? But at the end of the day, when you're finished with your business day or your, you know, your work week, are you just letting them sit there or are you pushing it to a, a bank account? You should be pushing it to your business bank account. And then that way it's all in one place. You don't have at the— you don't have to worry. Like, it'll eliminate a lot of frustration and save you some time.

I got a client, I'll tell you this, this story they had, that it's actually two people, two people in two different businesses. One guy was a, a guy who was refurbishing typewriters.

Yeah.

And another guy is in the, in the business of cornhole, and he's making all these cornhole bags and cornhole boards and, and all that. But the problem was the, the guy with the cornhole guy wanted to— he had one problem. He wanted to get loaned to buy more sewing machines for his cornhole bags, but he had all the funds messed up because he had his PayPal money going in his personal bank account, not into his business account. And you know, the bank, when they go to give you money, they want to see the money in the business account. And that's the reason for that. That's the same thing. Like, you know, if you're going to take alternative forms of payment, you want to make sure that it's going into your business account. And I mean, again, and the reason for that is— let me just finish up— is that now you can produce a P&L and you can show somebody a real profit and loss statement. Okay, this is how much sales we did. And this was my expenses and this is my profit margin and I have this really good profit margin, therefore I can afford this $1,000 a month payment on this $20,000 piece of equipment. No, you—

he's right. And what I was just going to chime in and say, you know, like, again, every business type is different and we're not trying to tell you how to run your business. We're trying to help you run it more efficiently. And, um, I think that You know, once you, once you've surpassed a certain number of sales per month, I think you need to reassess the ways that you accept payment and, you know, tighten that up a little bit. But, you know, like to make it simpler for yourself, we are both in agreeance that you should definitely have a business bank account. Push that money to one place, pay your bills from that one place. Don't pay from— pay yourself from that one place. You'll save yourself a ton of time and money at the end of the year, and you'll get tax write-offs. There's just so many benefits of doing it the right way. You know what I mean?

You can get set up with a payroll company and you can pay yourself even if it's $500 a month to get started in the beginning. Establish that there is payroll going on, right, and things like that in your business because Later on in life, you don't want to get— you know, I know somebody that had a business their whole life. All they took was distributions, and now they're not going to get very much Social Security, and they're dependent on like, oh, now—

yeah, I didn't pay myself for 12 years, so there's just a 12-year gap of me not doing anything. So that's a big, uh, big hit for me, man. Yeah, I'm 44, man. So all you youngins out there trying to dodge, you know, paying what it weigh, man, you know, it ain't worth it, bro. Like, sign up, get your EIN, pay your taxes. If the business don't work, who cares? Start another business. It's— you can't— don't— I used to think like you would fail at a business and you couldn't start, get a new EIN, and that's just not how that shit works. You know, you could, you can fail a thousand times. Um, it don't matter. You can go get you a new EIN, get you a new— well, it's going to get a little harder to get a business bank account as it goes.

Well, as long as you didn't mess the bank account up, you can get a business, depending on where you go.

But yeah, I mean, yeah, man, but definitely set that up ASAP. Like, that should be— for me, it was weird because it was like my third stop basically in the process.

Right?

Um, me and my pops went to the local PNC where I was already banking, just had a few questions, had a meeting with the branch manager. Boom, got it. It was a terrible decision because of the fees and all the other stuff, the, the man— the mandatory balance that you have to keep in there. You know, some— you just got to be really mindful and do your due diligence when you're setting it up.

But, uh, yeah.

The minimum balance I'm talking about, like, it was at one point when we first started, we had to keep $5,000 in the bank at all times.

Yeah, it was crazy.

Yeah, the rules were really hard to try to maintain, you know what I mean? And then, you know, you take out, you'd get under that threshold every day. They're hitting the account with the— you know what I mean? Like, you're penalized, you're getting penalized for every day that you're under the $5K.

Yeah, business banking has definitely changed over the years. I find now like most banks are gonna charge you like $20 or $30 no matter how much money you have in your account. You know, you're gonna pay some kind of fees for your—

PayPal is not a business banking account.

Yeah. And don't—

Cash App is not a bank account, right? Zelle is not a bank account. It's not. Those are not it. Like, familiarize, familiarize yourself with the terminology so you understand the difference between a merchant account a bank account, a peer-to-peer payment processing app, right?

Yeah.

Payments app.

Now, because that was one of the problems this guy had, that cornhole guy kept the money in PayPal and he was paying bills out of his PayPal account.

And then, you know, at the end, money is funny money to the government, right?

And no, but they just count it all as income, right? And you can't deduct any expenses from it because you didn't put it in a business account.

I mean, if you had the PayPal business account set up properly, You can, right?

But he didn't. It was on—

if it's all personal, you're screwed. There's nothing that— that's all, like you said, it's all income that you made from the business. This is not— you can't— it's, it's just really difficult. I did it for years, tap dancing with the, the IRS, finding receipts, sending them the PayPal statement, and then finally I said, why am I doing this? And I just switched it all over, everything. And it, you know, it wasn't smooth sailing, but it was a lot, lot easier to keep up with.

Yeah. And, you know, when you're trying to get your business going, it's important to do that. But one of the things I see a lot of people run into, you know, doing this for 24 years, right, is— and we'll just— this would be like one of the last things. And we've talked about trademarks before on the, on the show is, you know, making sure like the name you pick out, like it's available. Someone didn't trademark it. I've seen people, you know, get a name, all of a sudden open their business, and the next thing you know, they're getting sued. And they're like, oh, why am I getting sued? I don't even know who these people are. But they trademark the name. We had it happen to us twice in 24 years. One guy wanted to— wanted to do NPS. He's out of business now, and the trademark is open. And another one was we had this thing for rent collection and we were promoting called NPS Rent. And there was some massive, huge company that had some product called NPS Rent. And then we said to them, well, you know, you can have it, but now we got to, you know, we got to take down a website. They wanted the URL. They gave us like $1,000. And, you know, but, you know, they were threatening us first, you know, with a bunch of legal action. But we said like, hey, we have printed material. We showed it to them. We made a website. They gave us like a little over a grand and we walked away.

Seemed like they got off pretty cheap, but it's—

who did?

That company.

Yeah, well, we tried asking them for more money. They weren't going to give it to us. So, but the thing is, is, you know, that's why you have to research your name, because today people get names, they don't even use them, but they buy the domain and they hold on to it and then they think, okay, well, somebody—

yeah, they're in that domain squatting stuff though, slowly.

Yeah, people will, people will hold on to the name and hopefully sell it. Like, I saw somebody, they just renamed their company from one thing to just the word North. I don't know how much they paid for that, but I bet you they paid a lot of money to get that domain name.

North.com. Yeah, maybe not, bro. You never know.

No, you never know. Or maybe they owned it for a while, maybe they bought it a long time ago. Exactly. But I'm just saying, like, we just picked up a name. What name did we get? Nationwidepayments.com, right? So we got that. Nationwidepayment.com goes perfect with us. Somebody probably didn't renew their name, and then—

oh, you had to buy it.

Yeah, to buy it, but it was cheap.

It was still a premium.

It was like $700. Yeah, and it was well worth it. It wasn't cheap, bro. That's cheap compared to— I see $10,000, $20,000.

Way too rich for my blood, sir.

$10,000, $20,000. So, you know, if you're getting ready to start a business and, you know, it's time to get that merchant account, we're here to help you. You want to discuss it, you have business idea, you want to run by somebody, we're really good with, you know, helping people., you know, figure out like, hey, is this a good, you know, what do I have to do? I meet with a lot of like young people, you know, what do we, what do I have to do to get this business, you know, so that it's, so I can get credit card processing, right?

Because they'll tell me, you follow those steps that we said, I mean, I know you'd be, you're good to go.

Yeah, you're good to go.

But yeah, man, I mean, if there's anything that you think we missed or Anything we should touch on, I would love to hear from it. Subscribe to the channel for us, man. That's the pod.

Peace out.

Carpe diem.

Peace.