“bests”

With reviews available for almost every product and service out there, we have become hyper-concerned with only the most top-rated things, myself included. We should never settle for the subpar — so we google and yelp and seek out all the “bests.” Well, we did our best within our budget and timeline to find these “bests” (best discoveries, best services, best products, etc.) for our small business and have compiled our findings below along with a little roadmap of how we arrived at each nugget of greatness.

1. If you can afford it, it is WORTH IT to find an accountant that will help you file all the paperwork — for peace of mind. (~$1200)
   To start a business, once you know what product or service you will offer, you must come up with a name and bring it to life [on paper]. We started an LLC. After reading tons of reviews, articles, reddit posts, and asking friends, we have learned that it is very possible to find the paperwork and just fill it out yourself — however— unless you are an accountant or lawyer or otherwise equipped to recognize business jargon, you will run into confusing phrases and practices, sketchy people and services will try to convince you that they can help expedite or publish things, and you will have questions that cause you to second guess yourself or glaze over important steps that can cause hiccups further down the road. An accountant will help you navigate the jargon, file the paperwork, increase your network, and offer you helpful points to consider as you move on to finding a bank.
   For an LLC in NY, you have to announce your new LLC in a newspaper. MANY newspaper circulations will try to get your attention with cheap cheap rates to meet this publication requirement. But some of them lie… and what starts out a cheap find will cost you later in time, energy, and money if it turns out they were not legit. (If you’re in New York in the Queens area, we can refer you to our accountant and you can get a discount!)
2. You need a bank. We are a small operation and found Chase to be a good fit for our needs. Plus, it’s right down the street!
3. Virtual offices are a thing. You need a place to do your work. We are fortunate enough to have an office space already but came across virtual offices during the search. I, personally, never heard of these before. A virtual office can be helpful if you have a business that rarely calls for in-person meetings (such as web development and graphic design work). You pay a smaller fee per month (than renting or buying a space) to use the location’s address for record sake and to receive mail with the option of varying perks. You can book meeting spaces at an hourly rate on the rare occasion that it becomes necessary.
4. Before you get the job, to help promote your business! — Gleam for giveaways. Pricing ranges from free to $39 to $149 per month or a slightly reduced rate for annual payment plans. Gleam hosts competitions where you can call people to follow you on social media, share posts and pictures, subscribe to blogs or mailings, and more. We are hosting our very own PRODUCTIVITY BOOST GIVEAWAY* to celebrate our launch starting today and running until February 13 (Saturday). See below for more details*!
5. Trying to get the job — Typeform for beautiful forms for quotes/surveys/etc. Pricing ranges from free to $35+ per month. Typeform’s unique one-question-at-a-time approach makes each form slightly more fun to fill out. With the $35/month plan, you can utilize their “logic jump” function to direct questions to other questions/comments/suggestions based on its answers. This plan also includes a calculating function that comes in handy for quick quote estimates. For example, when you are making the form, you can input values per answer that correspond to the number of hours each answer would take to finish for a project. You can do this for each relevant question. The person filling out the form cannot see these hourly calculations. Once the form is submitted, you will be able to see the answers that yield the total amount of hours a project might roughly take to complete. Check out Adelie’s forms for graphic design & visual branding.
6. To secure the job— HelloSign for contracts. Pricing ranges from $0 to $13 to $40 and up per month, HelloSign is an elegant solution that is widely used for secure documents.
7. To get paid for the job — FreshBooks for invoices, time tracking, and expense reports. Pricing ranges from $9.95 to $19.95 to $29.95 to $39.95 per month. If you pay annually, the rates are slightly lowered to $8.96 / $17.96 / $26.96 / $35.96 respectively. FreshBooks is really easy to navigate and allows for branding with your own colors and logos. Their time tracking feature is pretty robust with a mobile app that helps organize projects and log every billable minute.
8. For swanky business cards — Moo. There are tons of printers that will print business cards for lower rates and they will do a perfectly decent job of it. But Moo has given us beautiful and sturdy business cards (we chose cards in the standard size, original matte finish) and has excellent customer service. There was a slight mishap in our order — no one’s fault but a misunderstanding that resulted in our cards being printed with one side upside-down— I wrote to them about our situation, they actually did respond within 24 hours, actually within only a few hours, with an answer: a new batch of cards printed correctly at no cost with expedited next day shipping! We received them the very next day!
9. The Job — Adobe Creative Cloud for much of our design work. Pricing ranges a lot. There are a lot of great alternatives to every piece of the subscription to Adobe’s Creative Cloud. But I was first exposed to the Creative Cloud elements when I had the luxury of having my school pay for my student subscription for my part-time student job and it is the best system for me. It is easily navigable and consistent across all elements. Since they’re made to interact with each other, integration of fonts, assets, icons, images are seamless. I have heard great things about Affinity Photo & Affinity Designer as an alternative to Photoshop and Illustrator.
10. Beyond the job — The wisdom to know that the “bests” are ALWAYS evolving. As long as you’re producing quality work with the tools that best fit your circumstance, that’s the way to go. We are working hard and learning constantly and adapting as we go!

With that said, we are very excited to be open for business and we are holding a PRODUCTIVITY BOOST GIVEAWAY* (see image below) to celebrate our launch. Please check us out! We are taking entries until Saturday (2/13). The Urbanears Wireless Headphones in (Sea Grey) are endorsed by Spotify, have a built-in microphone, a detachable easy-to-wash headband, swipe interface on right ear cup that controls volume and switch songs back and forth, and boast a 14-hour playtime before needing to be recharged. The Mr. Coffee Mug Warmer is a #1 Best Seller on Amazon, is easy to clean and easy to carry, it has an on-light indicator for safety, and keeps your coffee hot for as long as you want [need]. The Adelie Branded Water Bottle is lightweight, durable, 100% BPA free stainless steal, and helps reduce waste from plastic cups! Yankee Candles speak for themselves but the Autumn Wreath is a year-round Adelie Team favorite scent. All prize items are attested by yours truly at Adelie to be quality products!