Where to Start for Business Newbies

Regarding your questions about your business and business name. If you have not officially registered your business with your state as an official LLC (this choice has several ongoing filing requirements) and you are new to creating and building a business, you may want to start simple. You have a couple of options.

OPTION #1:

Once you are certain what you want your business name to be, you should research to see if that business name is being used (Google Search) or registered via your county clerk (assumed name records) or the secretary of state.

Next, you should search the main social media platforms (YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, X, TikTok, LinkedIn, etc...) to see if that name is being used. If you find the name is not being used, you could register that name with your county clerk (one-time small fee usually) and set up a Gmail account (businessname@gmail.com) and then a social media account with each platform you want to use to promote your business.

OPTION #2:

If you are not ready to decide on a business name, you can create a temporary business name and use it as a placeholder. You would not register it with the county or state, but you would check the main social media platforms to see if that name is not taken.

If it isn't taken, you could set up a Gmail account and then set up each social media account with this temporary name. In the future and in most cases, you are able to change the name on your social media accounts and keep the same account.

If neither of the above options are ideal for you right now, you could use your business nickname to set up the social media accounts.

Until you have an official business address, you can use your personal address. Options for business addresses if you don't have a physical address are a USPS, a UPS P.O. box, or a virtual address. These are expenses that you need to be financially secure to keep the service for years to come before deciding to go down that road.

Once you've had a chance to review the above, decide the path you would like to take and execute the steps needed to accomplish this stage of your business, I look forward to hearing your feedback.