Things You Absolutely Do Not Need in Order to Start a Business and Make Money

Or, all the dumb crap you’re doing instead of what you should be doing which is sales. Starting with:

A Cool Name

Or any name for that matter, besides your own. You can just tell people, “I [insert your name here] provide [insert valuable product or service that people want like turtle shell cleaning or whatever].”

Offer your product or service now, name it later.

A Domain Name

Speaking of names, guess what else you don’t need? A domain! Be honest, how many times have you had some genius idea (probably after a few brewskis with your friends) and then thought to yourself: “I’m really going to do this!” So your next move was to spend all night hunting for a catchy, unregistered domain name like YourHipsterBullshit.co and then paying GoDaddy $14 to register it.

And then you never did anything with it again. Right? I own like 50 domain names that are all sitting around collecting whatever is on the inside of GoDaddy servers.

Buying a domain for your new idea is a classic wantrepreneur move and what you (and I) should have been doing instead was either selling your service to everyone in the bar or actually building the product.

“So if I don’t need a domain name I suppose you’re going to tell me that I also don’t need —”

A Website

Yep. Maybe you’re starting to see a theme here. What you need to make money is the thing that people actually want (the service that makes them happy and solves their problems)— and unless they’re going to pay to look at your pretty website then you don’t fucking need it yet.

Shocking as it may seem, there are A LOT of successful people, and entire businesses, out there hauling in cash without any sort of web presence. I know a few personally. As an online marketer I’m always telling them, “Man, you need a website.” And they say, “No, I don’t.” And they are right because they’re making more money than I am.

For most businesses, a website is a handy way to look you up. Or it might, if your copy is great, function as a secondary sales person. Are you planning to hire a sales person right now? Before you really even have anything to sell? No. So why the hell are you building a website?

(Because you are procrastinating the hard, scary work of selling your thing, that’s why.)

The only exception here is if your product is a web service — but even then, build THE SERVICE before you make some flashy website for the service. Write the code, upload it to a Github repository and launch it on Github pages when it’s ready to show the world. (And don’t create a repo until you have code to put in it. That’s another BS cart before the horse move.)

Once your thing is launched, tell people about it. In the unlikely event that anyone cares, you can give it a real home on a luxurious cloud with an actual domain. Pretty it up after that. If it’s useful, people will use your service even if it looks like ass. Like Craigslist. And Facebook.

A Logo

Sweet holy lord don’t get me started on logos. Making (or buying!) a logo before you have a viable business is just another time-wasting, feel-good, fake-work activity that distracts from the real things you could be doing to build the business (like defining your ideal customers and then emailing them).

Here’s my suggestion: Get yourself a logo when you can afford, using money you earned through your business, to pay someone like a thousand bucks to make you a truly sick-ass logo. Otherwise skip it. If you have to use something, just put your name in a nice font. Done.

Business Cards

Surprisingly, you don’t need business cards to be in business. I know. It’s shocking. If you talk to people (because you’re out there actually selling your shit) and they ask for your card, just tell them that your cards are on order or something and exchange emails or phone numbers or LinkedIns or whatever.

Then send them a nice followup message so they remember you.

P.S. Once you’re actually ready to get some business cards because your business is up and running and you’re feeling fancy and successful, put an offer on there. Like: “This card entitles the holder to one free pet massage,” or whatever it is you do.

Social Media Accounts

How many abandoned Facebook pages do you have for ideas you never followed up on? Twitter accounts? Instagrams? I have like 30.

Stop it. Sales first, social later.

A Fancy Email Address

Use your gmail for now. It’s fine. You can set up an email from a custom domain once you buy one of those which will happen after you have customers and are making money.

And don’t spend any more than like 5 minutes setting up some elaborate email signature with all your social media links in it. No one even sees those anyway. And if they do see them, they don’t care.

An LLC

So, you’re going to pay several hundred dollars (if not much more) to register an official business entity for a business that is not real and doesn’t do anything?

The guys who started Google registered a business when someone gave them a hundred thousand dollar check and they needed a business account to cash it. You should do it that way too. This is America — money first, legalities later*.

*If you’re not in the good old USofA, that situation may not apply. But at least you have health care.

Medium Posts

Shit. I’m out — I’ve got emails to write.

Did you enjoy this post I wrote while I was procrastinating my actual work (helping small businesses and startups refine their messages to sell more stuff)? Great! You can help me feel like the crap I publish here makes a difference, while simultaneously giving me a quick shot of dopamine, by hitting that ❤ button.