Pro Tips - How to Start a Business

So, you want to start your own business and you're looking for an expert to tell you how to do it? This is not the right blog for that.

However, I do have some honest advice and hot tips for anyone looking to go all entrepreneur up in here.

#1. Get Laid Off From a Stable Job
This will send you into a rage panic strong enough to make you consider actually starting your own business. Having people support you in this decision is very nice, but without pure desperation, angst, depression and fists full of your own hair, you may not be able to fully commit to this journey.

#2. Cry Buying New Office Supplies
There is nothing like the panic attack that will hit you in a supply discount store as you spend money to support a business that you haven't received a paycheck from yet. Openly weep. Other people spending hundreds on printers, copiers, and nice pens around you are probably about to have a nervous breakdown also. Let it out. Be a trend setter. Buy nice pens and a leather notebook to show your legit before you have received your articles of incorporation/organization.

#3. Marry Someone with Good Insurance.
Being self employed means saying buh-bye to sick days, vacation, endless supplies of easily stolen office supplies, and health insurance. Either never get sick again or chose wisely when you say "I do." If your man/woman doesn't have good insurance, Zorro Z snap at them and go find someone you can leech off of in case you sprain your ankle. This step can come pretty much anywhere in the start up process but make sure you're on their policy before cold and flu season.

#4. Women - Get a tubal ligation.
Have your babies and make sure you can never end up with people in your womb again. No employer means no maternity leave, no FMLA and no short term disability. What's that? You love your significant other and want to start a family AND start a business? Don't be stupid.

#6. Invest in 5-Hour Energy Stock.
You may never be so tired in your life as when you are starting up and running your own business. Days start before the sun and never seem to end. Work well past midnight and sleep restlestly trying to remember if you checked everything off of the to do list. At the end of the day it's not a company that you work for that's on the line, it's YOU and YOUR REPUTATION that's on the line. Try not to suck. Pound a Red Bull, snort some Folgers and meet your deadlines.

#7. Be Prepared to Hear How Easy You Must Have it Because You Make the Rules. Learn How to Avoid Punching People in the Eye Socket When They Say This.
Listen, or read, closely - You do not make the rules when you have a business! In fact, you play by several people's rules instead of like the old days where you answered to one boss. Even TPS reports were universal...nothing is when you work for so many different people. Understand that it's your name in high gloss on the business cards but it's everyone else's priorities. You are playing basketball on a 100 yard field with shortstops and half court shots. Or something. It's all over the place. Be cool. Stare at "President|Owner" printed under your name on correspondence and your company name on checks you receieve in the mail to combat this frustration.

#8. Go Bananas on Linkedin
Update the whole internet world that you, a mere person, have created an entity which now has a website, county license and tax ID number. You are AWESOME and you need to share how ambitious you are with your peers constantly. Request new contacts be in your network as if these are the people that will get you through a zombie apocolypse. Get a profile picture that screams, "I'm professional, but I still love the way says Han Solo , 'I know.' " Make sure to totally forget you have this account and ignore for weeks. Come back to see that you have MORE PEOPLE that you may want to add to your circle. Join every group you can in hopes of expanding your business. Eventually send all of the correspondence from linked in to your spam mail.

#9. Get Excited About all the Small/New Business Programs in Your Area!
Never go. Get too busy running a business to try and figure out if you're doing it right. Call your friends who are lawyers, tax advisors, florsts, bakers, teachers, gymanasts, bartenders, WHATEVER, and ask THEM for advice on what to put on your W9. Come to the realization that all the information available online is too confusing for you and decide to hire a tax person eventually. Also decide that you will use your swagger to pay them in coupon codes for free website formatting and Search Engine Optimization and consulting or whatever it is that you decide to do.

#10. Call one of your best friends to name your company. You are a successful and edgy business person who owns a pant suit, you don't have time to name your own adventure. Or you suck at it. Whatever. Call Tara Foreman and have her figure it out. High five your spouse when the name gives you goosebumps. Long distance respect knuckles to my T.

Now you have all the information you could possibly need to get out there and just do it. If you are currently employed steal as much as you can from your office supply room, make a business plan in a Lisa Frank notebook with your husband, and go get 'em!

It workd for me ;)