How to Setup Your Business for Success

1. Intro : Lot of people want to start a business, but not many people know what the actual first steps are to get that business off the ground. Hello, everybody. My name is Zach Hartley, and I am an investor and entrepreneur from Calgary Alberta, Canada, and I have been through this process several times. I currently own two businesses. The first one is a three D printing farm that is about to cross over $1,000,000 per year in annual revenue. And the second one is a social media company primarily focused around my personal brand, that is currently bringing in hundreds of thousands of dollars per year. Prior to that, I started a manufacturing business where we purchased wine barrels from California and whiskey barrels from Jack Daniel, and we converted them into furniture and decor that we sold across Canada and the United States. I also started a rental business with the barrels that we were buying, and we rented those out to different events, parties, and weddings across our province. And so I've been through this process. Several times. I know exactly how to do this for multiple different industries and niches. And in this course, I'm going to share with you everything I know about how to start your business. I'm going to walk you through the corporate structures that I have used in the past, and the ones that I think are the most common and most beneficial for you as a business owner. I'm also going to talk to you about how to get your website and domain up and running and how to actually choose that domain. I'm going to walk you through my best advice for finding a good banker, a good accountant, and a good insurance broker. And I'm going to give you everything you need to know to set your business up properly for your own pay roll And for when you hire that first employee. The idea here is that I want to get you started on the right foot. I want to give you all of the information that you need as a business owner that is doing this for the first time, and that is coming from somebody that has done it four times already. And so the goal here is to give you what you need to be successful as that first time business owner. Now, what to expect here? The number one thing is that I want to give you an inside look at the strategies that I have used to build my business and get it started. I also want to give you real life examples of what other companies have done so that you're not just seeing it from me, you're seeing it from multiple real life examples. At the end though, I want you to have actionable first steps to get your business started. I want to give you a clear checklist that's going to be X Y Z for what you need in order to get this business off the ground. Now, to help you with that, I have already put that checklist together, and it is located in the course project associated with this course. It is what I call the business checklist, and it has everything you'll need in order to get set up for success. It is even going to have probably a couple of boxes on there that you don't need, and a couple of things that might not apply to your business. So, in general, this is going to be a very in depth checklist that walks you through all of the different aspects that you need to get set up for success. What I'm asking you to do is either send in a photo or a scan of that submission of that actual form. That we can see you've kind of checked it off and maybe some of the notes that you've written on it, or what I would prefer even more is if you share a link to your website, your product, your social media, or some of the content that you've made around your business so that we can follow it. We can like it. We can subscribe to it, and we can build a community of people that are currently going through the course and the people that have either been through the course already or the ones that are going to go through it in the future. The goal here is to build a network of people that share the same values and are willing to help and support each other. So if you have time Please remember to download that checklist because it will be an excellent resource for you. And if you can, please put in a class submission that shares some information about how you did with that checklist or some information about your product or company. Also, if you get a chance, please consider leaving a review with some feedback to help me improve the course. I read every single comment and every single review. So if there's something that was missing or that I could have done better, please consider letting me know so that I can improve it for the next person. Now, if you want to follow me or see any more information about my actual businesses, I'm super transparent, and I make a lot of videos on TikTok and YouTube. I'm also on Instagram, X, and LinkedIn. So if you want to reach out to me or follow me, that's where you can find me on social media. But without any further ado, I am very excited about this course. So let's jump right into the content. 2. Incorporation vs sole prop: All right. Now that you understand the basics of incorporation and structure behind your corporation, let's start talking about just some of the small little nitty gritty details that you may also need to think about, starting with your name, your license, and your permits. Now, disclaimer, again, I apologize, but this is going to change, depend on your location, and depending on where you are watching this. It changes by province to province, state by state, and especially country by country. But here is the general premise and some things you may want to consider. Number one, your company name, like I mentioned before, you can either choose a name or you can let them assign you a number. If you're looking for the fastest, easiest, most least friction way to get set up and running, go with the number. If you're looking for a to do some research into what it takes to get that name in the country or region that you're applying for it in. In Canada, it's going to be called a nuanced report. I personally, I just use numbered companies because it's the easiest to set up, and I just do business as whatever name I am looking for. Now, when it comes to numbered companies, this is an example of what it would look like, except the second letter is not capitalized. It makes your incorporation very fast and easy, and it's also cheaper because you also don't need to run that search for the name and make sure nobody else is using So if you are money sensitive and time sensitive, just go with the numbered company and you can operate as or do business as another. When it comes to name companies, you will need to do a search to make sure that your business name is available. This is super important. Can't just choose whatever you want. You need to make sure that it's available in your region for your industry, Canada. It's called a nuance report. In the US, you need to go to the US PTO or state database, depending on where you live. Regards to a business license. This is going to depend on the type of business that you're running. For instance, I am completely E commerce, and I'm running an over $1,000,000 a year business out of my basement. I don't need a city license to run this business. I do need insurance, but I don't need a license to run this business. If you were going to go open an ice cream shop and get a on site location on a busy street in your city, I guarantee that you need a business license in order to do that. And so you need to be very careful about what kind of business you are, and then you need to research you need a license in the district in which you operate. You may also need a state or provincial business license depending on the type of business that you're running. Everything is going to be dependent on your situation. These are just the things that you may want to consider and look into as the entrepreneur that's responsible for that business. Now, if you need any of these licenses, you should be able to apply for them through the municipal or provincial websites. It should be a very simple process, and it should not take long, but it will cost Now, in terms of permits, this, again, is going to depend on the type of business, but if you have any type of location where you are renting or leasing a space, you are probably going to need an inspection from the fire department. If you're doing anything with food, you're going to need an inspection from the health or food department. If you are doing anything where you have employees, you may need some type of occupational health and safety or workers' compensation or some type of form that protects your employers. It's a fee that you pay. Now, in summary, I know this is being pretty broad, but it is going to be dependent on where you live. So you need to research need based on where you are located and the type of business you run. I am just trying to highlight all of the different topics that you may look into. This is not a completely conclusive list. These are just the starting points that you need to do research on and think about. Does that apply to me or does that not apply. I hope this helped and we'll see you in the next. 3. How to incorporate: Alright, everybody. Welcome back. Now that you have a basic understanding about the differences between sole proprietorship and incorporation, we are going to start talking about how to actually incorporate your business. I imagine that for most of you, that's probably the most appealing option long term, and it's probably going to be the best for most scenarios. However, I going to leave that up to you to decide. I'm just going to give you the information about what you need and how to do. Now, just as a quick disclaimer, the information that I'm about to give you may change very slightly depending on where you live and when you're watching this video, ten years from now, the rules might be slightly different depending on what country or what area you live in, the rules or requirements might be slightly different, but in general, this is going to be your guide. Number one, my process. Here is what I have done to form my corporations. I've done four or five of them. Pretty much all of them have gone through law depot.ca. You can also go through law depot.com. But basically, it is an online legal processor. You follow all of the steps, you fill out all of the forms. I think I paid $550, and then there's an additional fee if you want to get it done right away or within 48 hours. And basically what happens is they will e mail you all of your documents. They'll e mail you your incorporation number, your business number, all of your tax information, and you can do everything online just by filling out the forms. This is what I have done in the past, and this is what has worked out well for me. Resources and some information that you will need, though. Number one, if you have a company name that you want to use, you'll need that ahead of time, or for me, and what I would recommend. And what most people don't realize is that most companies are just numbered corporations, meaning that for me, my corporation is literally just a series of seven or eight numbers Alberta Incorporated. Like, that's my company name. I do business as Hartley Incorporated or Hartley manufacturing. And so if you look at Nike, for instance, the name behind Nike, the actual company name is Nike Incorporated, but nobody calls it Nike Incorporated. They call it Nike. Nike Incorporated is doing business as Nike. You can do business as whatever company name you want as long as you're not violating somebody else's rights, but your company name, your official company name, can be a simple number company if it's not that important So it is what I do for all of my stuff. If you do want to put a name behind your company or you want to officially register a name, you will have to do a little bit of research into the requirements depending on the province or state that you live in. If you live in Canada, it's probably going to be called a nuance report, N U ANS. If you live in the United States, it is going to depend on where you live. Now, after the name of the corporation, you are going to need all of the personal information about the shareholders. You're going to need their address, their contact information, their first and last name. You're also going to need an address for the company or the corporation. I would recommend either using your home address or if you don't have a business office or anything like that. Would recommend going to UPS and getting a box at one of the UPS locations. You can use that as a business location or a business address, and all of your mail will get sent and delivered to that UPS box. That's what I recommend because it's very easy to ship and receive and send mail to. You also need to know the number of shares owned by each person or entity. What I would recommend with is always go with 1 million shares. That way, you never need to split up any of the shares or divide any of the shares. You decide that you want to bring on partners later, you can either just issue more shares or you can sell shares. It just makes it very easy to divide if you want to give somebody half a percent or a tenth of a percent or anything along those lines. So regardless, always start with 1 million shares or 10 million shares if you want to, but never start with like ten shares or 20 shares or 50 shares. Always go with a larger number. It doesn't impact anything. It just makes your life easier if you have future transactions down the road. And then you need to decide who will be a director of the company. The director most of the time we're going to be responsible for any taxes that are owed by the company. So there is some liability and some risk that comes with being a director, but you also have more control and more votes or more influence on the company, I should say, when you're a director of the company. Now, this is going to depend on a case by case basis and how you set up your company. But in general, the CEO should be the director, whoever the founders are, should all have shares, and you should divide those shares based on what makes sense for your role in the business and the value that you contribute and the time that you have put into getting to the company, to getting the company to that point Now, a couple of resources to help you with this process. Number one, if you live in the United States, legal Zoom can do this process for you, Ink file can do this for you. Northwest Registered agent and rocket lawyer are also good resources for this, and if you want information about it, I would use Chat GPT to put in any questions that you might have, and it will be able to give you a lot of information about this because there is a lot of resources that it can pull for it. If you live in Canada, I would go to law depot.ca. Also an investor in this company called Good lawyer.ca that can process any legal services that you need, including incorporation, or once you get up and larger, they can provide all of your legal services as a smaller medium sized business. Another company called owner dot C can do this for you or corporation center dot C. Again, there's a lot of different ways to do this. You can probably do your incorporation online by yourself. You don't necessarily need to hire a lawyer to Now, what happens next? Well, you're going to have to submit all of this paperwork and documentation and go through this process and pay your fees to incorporate, most of the time it's going to take a few days to process. And then they're going to send you back a lot of documents. Those documents need to go into a binder, and that binder is called your minute book. For me, this is what my minute book looks like. It's like a two inch ring. And it keeps track of all of my legal documents as well as all of my tax filings each year in hard copying. So you need to create a minute book for your company that keeps track of any legal documentation that has to do with your company, including annual filings, annual meetings. Adding or removing shareholders, issuing new shares, raising money, anything along those lines. That's where it gets kept. It gets put into the minute book. You need to keep track of that. You need to organize it. You need to really take some pride in your minute book, because if you ever need to go out and you need to raise some money, that is one of the areas that an investor is going to look at. Now, in summary, incorporating is actually a very easy process. It just requires that you follow the steps on one of these online platforms. But once you get incorporated, that's when you need to take proactive measures and stay organized by creating that minute book, documenting everything, making sure it gets into that minute book, and making sure that you stay organized? This can take a few days to get processed and confirmed. But the larger process here and the more important thing is who are going to be your directors? How many shares is each person going to own? What are they going to put any money in to a bank account for those shares? How are you going to manage that? And how is the bank account going to get started or how are the funds going to get started? Because you're probably going to need a little bit of money, or at least somebody's going to have to buy the website and the domain and things like that. So you do need to talk about those things with your business partner or your other shareholders before you actually go through this incorporation process. And most of the time, that will actually take longer than the incorporation itself. And then once it's up and running, you're ready to go. It's time to start this business, you're officially, you've got a number corporation or you've got an incorporation number. It's official. Like you're started. It's time to get going. It's time to execute, and I'm going to help you along the way, so let's keep 4. Corporate Structure: All right. In the last video, we talked about how to incorporate, and now in this video, I just want to have a quick discussion about corporate structure. This isn't going to apply to everybody. But for the people that it does apply to, it's going to be very, very valuable for you. When I refer to corporate structure, what I am referring to is whether you have an operating company or a holding company. The incorporation process is the exact same for both, but the operating company is actually going to be running the business. A holding company is just going to be there to hold assets. Personal situation is that I have a three D printing business, and I want to buy a warehouse to operate that business out of. I also want to sell the three D printing business at some point, but I may not want to sell the warehouse altogether. I may not want to sell the business and the warehouse at the same time. And so for me, I have an operating business and I have an asset that is a warehouse that I'm planning to buy. I am not going to buy that warehouse the business, I'm going to set up a holding company to buy that warehouse and charge the business rent and hold that asset and generate income from that asset, so that if I want to sell that asset in the future, it's not connected to my business, or if I want to buy another property, I already have a holding company that just manages properties ready to go. And so I have some flexibility there. It's going to be very easy to keep those two things separate, and the owners or the partners or shareholders that I the three D printing business, don't own the building that I have in my holding company. And so there are some unique situations where this can be very applicable. Most of the time, if you're a young entrepreneur just getting started, this is not going to apply to you. You're not going to have large assets that require separation, but for somebody that has a little bit higher net worth acquiring property or large assets or vehicles, anything along those lines. This may be appropriate for you. The operating company, though, is the company that is actually operating the business and interacting with companies. In my situation, that is the three D printing business. The holding company holds the warehouse or the land or the machinery or the equipment, whatever it might be, and is just a company is there to hold the asset. It also might have different tax implications depending on where you live. So it's something to keep in mind here because it can be very, very beneficial to you down the road. It can also help you organize things with your business partner or your shareholder. One of those partners or shareholders has a large amount of assets compared to one that does not. Now, when is this appropriate? Well, like I said, it's really going to depend on your own situation, and it's going to depend on the type of assets. You also need to think about this in terms of managing risk. If somebody sues your company and tries to take all of the assets from within your company, it's going to be very beneficial to know that the building that the company is operating in not owned by the company, it's a completely separate entity, and it cannot be gone after in a lawsuit or a case like that. And so it can also help you manage your risk and kind of diversify all of your assets. And like I said, I think it will have some tax benefits depending on where you live here in Alberta, in Canada. It definitely does. My structure, like I said, I personally own the operating company, but I also own the holding company personally. Now, there's a couple of things to think about here with regards to taxes. Again, this is going to depend on where you live. But in Canada, you do get a one time capital gains exemption on the sale of an asset, particularly a business. And so if I'm able to sell my business and I have $1,000,000 in capital gains, I can use this one time capital gains exemption? Keep all of that money and not have to pay tax on it, which would be extremely beneficial because it would save me a ton of money in the event that I ever sold my three D printing business. And that is the reason that the three D printing business is not owned by the holding company, it's owned by me personally. And so when it comes to your corporate structure, what you need to think about is, what are the tax implications of where I live? Business implications do I need to think about with regards to my business partners and other shareholders. What is my future plan for the company? Plan on making any large purchases, and if the answer to that is yes at any point, then setting up a holding company may be beneficial, but again, you need to take advantage of your knowledge of the tax system and what situation is going to work best for you. In summary, a holding company may be appropriate if you're making large amounts of profits or you want to separate your assets from operations. You're not going to be able to buy a warehouse if you're not generating profit. And so you need to make sure that number one, business is successful first, and then if you excess income or excess assets or large assets, then it is time to start looking at the holding company. But if you already have large assets as you're building this business, it may also be something to consider. 5. Business name and Licence,Permit: All right. Now that you understand the basics of incorporation and structure behind your corporation, let's start talking about just some of the small little nitty gritty details that you may also need to think about, starting with your name, your license, and your permits. Now, disclaimer, again, I apologize, but this is going to change, depend on your location, and depending on where you are watching this. It changes by province to province, state by state, and especially country by country. But here is the general premise and some things you may want to consider. Number one, your company name, like I mentioned before, you can either choose a name or you can let them assign you a number. If you're looking for the fastest, easiest, most least friction way to get set up and running, go with the number. If you're looking for a to do some research into what it takes to get that name in the country or region that you're applying for it in. In Canada, it's going to be called a nuanced report. I personally, I just use numbered companies because it's the easiest to set up, and I just do business as whatever name I am looking for. Now, when it comes to numbered companies, this is an example of what it would look like, except the second letter is not capitalized. It makes your incorporation very fast and easy, and it's also cheaper because you also don't need to run that search for the name and make sure nobody else is using So if you are money sensitive and time sensitive, just go with the numbered company and you can operate as or do business as another. When it comes to name companies, you will need to do a search to make sure that your business name is available. This is super important. Can't just choose whatever you want. You need to make sure that it's available in your region for your industry, Canada. It's called a nuance report. In the US, you need to go to the US PTO or state database, depending on where you live. Regards to a business license. This is going to depend on the type of business that you're running. For instance, I am completely E commerce, and I'm running an over $1,000,000 a year business out of my basement. I don't need a city license to run this business. I do need insurance, but I don't need a license to run this business. If you were going to go open an ice cream shop and get a on site location on a busy street in your city, I guarantee that you need a business license in order to do that. And so you need to be very careful about what kind of business you are, and then you need to research you need a license in the district in which you operate. You may also need a state or provincial business license depending on the type of business that you're running. Everything is going to be dependent on your situation. These are just the things that you may want to consider and look into as the entrepreneur that's responsible for that business. Now, if you need any of these licenses, you should be able to apply for them through the municipal or provincial websites. It should be a very simple process, and it should not take long, but it will cost Now, in terms of permits, this, again, is going to depend on the type of business, but if you have any type of location where you are renting or leasing a space, you are probably going to need an inspection from the fire department. If you're doing anything with food, you're going to need an inspection from the health or food department. If you are doing anything where you have employees, you may need some type of occupational health and safety or workers' compensation or some type of form that protects your employers. It's a fee that you pay. Now, in summary, I know this is being pretty broad, but it is going to be dependent on where you live. So you need to research need based on where you are located and the type of business you run. I am just trying to highlight all of the different topics that you may look into. This is not a completely conclusive list. These are just the starting points that you need to do research on and think about. Does that apply to me or does that not apply. I hope this helped and we'll see you in the next. 6. Taxes: Welcome back to another video. In this one, we are going to talk about business taxes. This is something that a lot of people just aren't aware of or they don't understand how it works. And so in this video, I'm just going to break down for you the different types of taxes so that you can be aware of it. You can plan for it, you can understand exactly how it works. Now, as a disclaimer, the tax numbers, the tax names, thing, again, is going to be dependent on your location and where you live. But in general, they're going to kind of fall into four different categories. The first one is going to be income tax. The second one is going to be employment tax. Third one is going to be sales tax, and the fourth one is going to be excise tax. These names might change slightly depending on where you live. The categories are basically going to be the exact same. The first one here is income tax. When you operate a company, if you generate profit at the end of the year, you'll have to pay tax on the profits that you generate. You'll have to pay taxes to both the federal government, as well as the provincial or the state government. And in Canada and the United States, it's usually on the lower end of 20 to 30%. I think it's 21% in the United States, and maybe just slightly higher in Canada. However, As a small business in both Canada and the United States, you do get a significant tax rate on your first basically half million or million dollar of revenue depending on where you live, and that brings this tax rate down to usually below 15%. And so as a small business, there are massive tax incentives to help you reduce this burden, but in general, you need to understand that the province or the state that you live in, as well as the federal government are entitled to a certain percentage of the profits that your company earns, and you need to pay those profits to them. Now, the second type of tax that you need to be aware of as a business is employment tax. You are required to deduct and submit taxes for your employees. That means that when your employee earns an income, you are required to deduct the federal and the provincial or state tax from that employee, as well as meet all of your requirements for pensions or unemployment or contributions to their savings accounts or whatever it may be, you need to make sure that you handle all of that. This is usually done through an accounting or a pay roll software. I personally use QuickBooks, and I try to do everything through QuickBooks. But again, there's multiple softwares out there that you can use for all of this. And again, it can be easily automated. It is going to take time to set up. It is going to take time to put a new employee into the system. It is going to take time to understand how all of it works. But at the end of the day, it can be completely automated so that it is hands off, and all you need to do is approve the payroll every two weeks or every month. Now, number three here is sales tax. This one is slightly more complicated here, but it is super important. Sales tax or GST, or whatever you want to call is going to be dependent again, depending on where you live, but it is a tax that you must charge customers on sales and submit to the government. So in Alberta in Canada here, we have a 5% GST that we pay on every product that we buy. So when I buy this Sharpe for $1, it actually costs me $1.05, and that extra $0.05 gets submitted to the government as a tax. Now, where I live, the requirement for this, and when you must start charging and submitting tax is at $30,000 within 12 months. Hopefully, if you're watching these videos, you're going to do more than $30,000 in 12 months, so this is going to apply to you. In that instance where this applies to you, you will need to register for a GST or a tax number with your government. Once you get that number, you can then start charging your customers 5% on all of their purchases. Now, here's the important part. When a customer buys this pen for $1, I charge them $1.05, but realistically, the base of it costs me $0.40 and the lib cost me $0.10. And so it costs me $0.50 to buy the materials for this. And I got charged 5% on this. So it really costs me 50 p and a half cents to purchase this material. Me as a business, I get to claim that 2.5 cents back from the government. And so in this scenario, I get 2.5 cents for myself, but I have to submit $0.05. And so the difference there is 2.5 cents that goes to the government. And so as a business, all of the things that I purchase and pay GST on, I get that GST back. As a business, everything that I sell, I have to charge GST on, and I have to submit that GST to a company. That is how sales tax works mostly around the world. Now, the fourth type of tax year is excise tax. This may or may not apply to you depending on your business model and what you do. It is a tax that is charged to specific products to either incentivize or penalize people for purchase. In most instances, it is a penalty, and it is charged primarily to alcohol, tobacco, gasoline, and luxury items. You'll notice a couple of governments around the world have implemented a luxury tax on vehicles over $100,000. We also pay significant taxes on alcohol and tobacco. That is so that the government can make more money and deter you from harming yourself and putting a burden on the healthcare system. That's the idea behind that. And so those are the four main types of taxes. In summary, what you need to think about is you need to understand how the taxes work. To plan for the taxes, you need to account for the taxes. You need to make sure that your company is able to manage your taxes, and then you need to pay your taxes. It is very important that you pay your taxes. Everybody needs to do their responsibility, and if you're lucky enough to have a company that is generating a profit in the economy that you live in, it is not only thanks to you, it is also thanks to everybody else that has supported and built that economy, and so your taxes are the dues that you owe for that success. You also need to stay up to date. These tax codes change every single year. Everything gets updated. So you do need to stay up to date because these percentages and these rules do change. You also need to keep good records of all your payments and transactions. Because if you ever get audited, the number one thing that the government is looking for is the taxes because that's the money that they are owed. And You need to make sure that above all else, if you're going to do any focus in your accounting work, it should be on your taxes. You need to understand what taxes you need to collect and pay, and then you need to forecast and plan for it. And if you can do that, it is going to help you run a smoother, more successful and less stressful business that ultimately is going to generate more profit. So I hope this video helped. I hope you learn something new, and we'll see you in the next one. 7. Banking Insurance and Accounting: All right, everybody. Welcome back. In this video, we're going to talk about how to set up banking, accounting, and insurance for your business and what you need to think about and consider and factor into your decisions when you were doing that, so let's jump right in. Okay, so the first thing that we need to talk about here is how do you find a good accountant? How do you find a good insurance broker? How do you find a good banker? Have a couple of different options here, but I can tell you the absolute best way to do this, and the way that you're going to get the best results is to ask your other friends that are entrepreneurs or that run a business or that have experience in this and ask them if they have any good contacts or people that they have used in the past and had good results. The best way to filter through all the accountants in your city is to find somebody that has a good accountant and ask them for their contact information or ask them if they're taking on any new clients. You don't have to say, Hey, who's your guy or anything like that. You can just say, Hey, I need some help and accounting. You know anybody that is taking on new clients right now? Keep it very, very casual, but I can tell you right now that asking other people that have already found these people is going to be your best strategy for finding a good banker, accountant, or insurance broker. Now, if that doesn't work for you or you don't know anybody in this kind of entrepreneur world, what I would recommend is going on Linked in or social media and trying to find somebody near you go on and find somebody that's engaging that talks about the topic that you need help with that is giving out free information and is actively looking for new customers and try and engage with them and see if they would be willing to take you on and see if you are a good fit for their business, and if they are a good fit for your business. And if that doesn't work, what I would look for, is I would try and find a bank or an insurance broker, or an accounting agency that is currently running a promotion. If they are running a promotion, it means that they are actively looking for new customers, and you can usually take advantage of that promotion to either save on some money or get some extra services. And so this is the process that I would use in order to find a good insurance agent in order to find a good accountant or in order to find a good banker. This is what I would do. Now, when it comes to insurance, there's a couple of things that you need to think about. Number one, why do you need insurance? Is this a requirement from one of your suppliers or platforms that you deal with, or is this something that you just want for your peace of mind? The next step is that you need to get multiple quotes. If you need insurance for liability on your product or you need insurance for transportation or whatever you might need insurance for, try and get multiple quotes so that you can compare and contrast those quotes to find the best price and the best rate that still provides the value that you need. If this is difficult for you, or you don't want to call around and try and get multiple quotes, I would find a broker that can go and do that work for you. They can take all of your information once, and then they can kind of divvy it out to the agencies or the insurance companies that would specialize in your type of insurance. Some companies and a lot of brokers will specialize in specific industries. So do products, some do transportation, some do legal services, whatever it might be. Try and find a broker that specializes in the industry that you are in. Now, a big thing to think about here is do not lie on any part of that application form because if they find out that you are untruthful or you are wrong about any of the information, and then you have to file a claim, they can void that claim based on your false application. So try and make sure that that application and the information you provide is very, very accurate. You also want to try and ask for monthly payments instead of yearly payments. This will save you money in the long term, and will also possibly allow you to invest that money up front instead of having to pay it to the insurance company, and when you're going through this process, ask as many questions as needed. That broker or your agent is getting paid when they close your deal. So make sure that you're getting your money's worth and you're getting all of your questions answered. So that was insurance. Now let's start talking about banking. What you need to understand here is that when it comes to your business, there are certain advantages of going with bigger banks, especially if you are doing any type of international business, and you need to send and receive money internationally. When it comes to your actual banking account. What you need to make sure is that you get a checking account that you can buy and receive money with and you can spend on different products. But you also need to make sure that if you are going to be transacting in any other currencies, you want to make sure that the bank you choose has the ability to open up an account in that currency. What I mean by that is I sell a lot of my products in the United States, but I am based here in Canada. So the bank that I choose, I have to have a Canadian checking account, and I have to have $1 account so that I can receive US dollars, and I can control when that currency gets converted from Canadian to US or vice versa. Comes to business banking, you'll notice that the fees are way more expensive than personal banking. I don't know why this is, but in general, business banking is going to be significantly more expensive than personal banking. Right now I'm paying 85, maybe $95 per month plus some fees for certain transactions. The other thing you want to consider here is that your banker or your main point of contact needs to be responsive. If they're not going to answer your phone calls when you have a problem, or they're not going to help you open a new accounter, they're not going to help you apply for a line of credit, go somewhere else or ask for a new representative. You can rotate these people out. You can ask for new representatives. Find somebody that meets your neeeds, and if they don't meet your needs, go to a different bank. If you're in the US, or if you're in Canada, you have multiple options here, and many of them are very, very similar. You can move banks whenever you want. There is nothing that is tying you to a bank, once you've opened an account. If you take all your money out of that account and you close that account, they're not going to be able to keep charging you, and you can move whenever you want. So do not have loyalty to these banks. They have absolutely no loyalty to you, and you can move banks whenever you want. Now, lastly, here is the accountant, and I would argue that the accountant is going to be two or three times more important. Your banker and your insurance broker. Your banker is going to be important, especially if you need financing from the bank. But other than that, if you don't need a bunch of financing or a line of credit or debt from the bank, they're not going to be all that useful for you, and you're not going to have a whole lot of reason to interact with them. However, your accountant, you are always going to have a reason to interact with them because you are going to have to do your year end financial statements, your year end taxes, you're going to need their help setting up payroll systems. You're going to need their help putting together your financial statements and reporting, and they are going to be some of the best advice that you will be able to get. In general, if somebody is able to run an accounting business and get their CPA or whatever the designation is where you live, and they can actually be an accountant for more than five years, I can almost guarantee you that that is a very, very responsible person that is fairly smart and can give you some advice because they've probably seen your situation before. And so When it comes to your accountant, try and find somebody that you can talk to that you can trust, that sounds like they know what they're talking about that ideally has some experience dealing with companies like yours, and that is willing to give you a little bit of advice or coaching along the way for the questions and topics that you're not completely sure of. My personal advice, and this is what I did, is I found a very small accounting shop. What I mean by that is an accounting firm that's run by one person, and they maybe have a couple of employees there. And what I did was I found one that was close to my house so that I know the person, I can meet them face by to face. I can call them up. I know that I'm going to be a priority in their company and not just a number, and I can really build a relationship with them. And so that's what I did, and it has been one of the best decisions that I've made because this is a person that I can call up every single month and say, What do you think about this scenario? What do you think about this scenario? Here's how I'm feeling about my money. And they can offer a third party perspective that is completely unbiased and usually has a very conservative approach to it that will keep you in business. It might not be the thing that changes your business and turns you into a millionaire, but it will keep you in business. And that is sometimes the name of the game, and so hiring a good accountant is very, very important, and they are almost always worth the money. I am telling you right now a good accountant is not cheap. I cost 150, 200, 250 bucks an hour, but I am telling you that when it comes to your business, 99% of the time they're worth the money, and if they can charge that much, it's probably because the advice that they give is very, very good. So my personal setup, I bank with a company called ATB here in Alberta. I pay $85 per month for them. I also have insurance through a supplier out of the United States for $97 per month, and my accounting costs $1,500 per year or about $150 per average. My corporation is a little bit more complex because of all of the things that I have going on. Put it in perspective, though, my year end for last year was about 3,000 to $3,500. And so you are going to have an accounting bill every single year for that year end financials and year end taxes. At minimum, it's going to be 10,000 to 1,500. More than likely if you needed help throughout the year or you needed their guidance on certain things, it's going to be higher. Mine is a minimum 3,000. I think it's been up to 5,500, but it just depends on what's going on throughout the year. Now, in summary here, when it comes to your insurance, your banking, and your accounting, it is crucial to build a team of good professionals that can help your business and build its strength. The goal here is to build a roster of people that you can call up when you need that you know are going to get the job done, that are going to give you solid advice, and that are going to help you make the right decisions. That is the goal of what I'm trying to say in this video. Number two here, focus on finding good people and keep moving until you do. If you start a relationship with somebody and you realize they are not the right long term fit, cut that relationship short, start the search over and go find somebody good. I've been using the same account for five years. I've been using the same insurance broker for like three businesses now, so probably 12 years. I've been using the same people because they are good and they help my business grow, and it alleviates my stress. It alleviates my workload, and I know that I and I know that when I ask something to get done, it's going to get done, and I'm willing to pay a fair price for that because I know it's good quality. And it's much better to do that than to penny pinch and end up with mistakes or end up having to find a new person or end up having to go through your search again. And so take your time with it, find the right people, put some effort into building that roster, and make sure that those people have your best interests in mind. Good help is worth the money in the long run. If you can find an accountant that sets you up properly from the beginning, It is going to save you so much time and money compared to figuring out that you were set up wrong two years later. I guarantee you it is worth paying that first guy the extra money instead of paying thousands and thousands of dollars for somebody better to clean it up later. Now, that's it for this video. I hope this provided some value, and I hope this gives you some things to think about as you're building out this team, but we'll see you in the next video. 8. Website and domain: All right, everybody. Welcome back to another lesson. Now that we are starting to get our business off the ground. We've got an incorporated, we've got a banker, we've got insurance, we've got an accountant. We've got all of the infrastructure that we need to really start growing this business. Now it is time to buy our domain and build our website. So I have a lot of thoughts about this. I actually love this topic. I buy domains as investments. I currently own 40-50 domains right now, and believe it or not, there's only ever one domain. There's only ever one apple.com or google.com or zachhartley.com. And you can buy and you can sell these and some of them are very, very valuable. I have bought a domain for $15 and I have sold it for $4,000 US. I've done extremely well on some of them. Other ones I've held and paid money for over the years, and they've lost money. And so there are a lot of different ways to do it, but realistically, if you're going to start a business, you need to buy a domain, and you need to build a website. Now, the reasons that you need to do this are number one, it lets your customers find you, and it gives you a little bit of legitimacy we can just search you up on Google and find you right away. It also gives you an opportunity to showcase your product or service and have customers learn about what you do and possibly engage or buy from you through your website. And on top of that, with all of the tools today, it is very easy to do. And if you wanted to fully pursue everything I'm going to talk about in this video, it's only going to take you five or 10 minutes to buy the domain, and you can pay somebody else to build the website. So it's a very, very simple thing to do, but it can have a very, very big result for your business. Comes to the domain name, there are a couple of principles that you want to keep in mind here. First of all, the domain name is the address of your website. So apple.com is a domain name. Zach Hartley dot is a domain name. Google.org is a domain name. Those are all domain names that when somebody types it into the worldwide web, a website will appear. Now, in general, the principles that you want applied to this so that you want your domain name to be as short as possible. The shorter it is, the easier it is to remember, usually the easier it is to type in, the easier it is to find online. And so shorter is better when it comes to your domain name. When it comes to the ending of your domain name, that apple.com or google.net or zacharty dot, whatever it might be. In general, the most valuable ending and the most sought after and the most common, and the one that you want to try for first is.com. If you can get a.com domain, that is going to be your best bet. If it is available with the zachartley.com, I Zachhartley is available.com at the end of it, buy it instantly. If it's 15 or $20 or it's cheap or if it's within your budget, buy it instantly because that price could change or somebody else could buy it. I'm telling you you cannot get it if somebody else owns it and they don't want to sell it to you. So.com is super valuable. If your domain is available in.com, just buy it right away. Next one here is that you want to think about something that is easy to spell. If I tell you that my website is onomatopa.com. That's a little bit difficult to spell, and somebody might forget it, or they might type it in wrong. But if I tell you that my website is the plainbgel.com, that is fairly easy to remember. Everybody knows how to spell those words. It's not super difficult, and they are common words that people are already spelling in their regular day. That makes it easier to search on Google. Drive more traffic to your website and to hopefully bring in more sales. And then lastly, here, you want to try and match your domain to your business name. So I'm trying to help a company right now buy their domain that matches their business name because currently their domain does not as closely match their business name. And so if your website is Nike Inc and you do business as Nike, you want your website to be nike.com. That's what they have, and I'm sure they paid a little bit of money for it. Tesla.com. They had to go in and they had to send the nicest guy in their company to the owner's doorstep and basically not leave until he agreed to sell it. And I think they paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for tesla.com. There are examples of this happening every single year where people are paying for domains in the hundreds and sometimes even millions of dollars range. But ideally, you want your domain to be the name of your business, and then finish in.com, you want it to be easy to spell and you want it to be short. Do you actually buy that domain? Well, there's a lot of different websites that you can go to to buy the domain. The one that I use is godaddy.com. If I am testing something out and I don't know for sure if it's going to be long term, I will only buy that domain for a one year time period. When you buy a domain, you have to buy it for a certain number of years. I would usually go with one year, and then I would set it to auto ro auto renew so that after one year, it will just renew at the same price over and over and over again. However, you can get a better price if you commit to buying a domain for a certain number of years. The goal here is to try and find one that is available. A lot of the time, you'll notice that the domains you want are no longer available because all of the short ones are taken and all of the popular words that might be used in a website are also taken. Now, if your website or your domain is taken, you do have the option where you can buy the domain from the owner. Go Daddy has an excellent service, will they will broker that deal for you for a fee. But if you e out who actually owns the domain, you can reach out to them, and you can try and buy it from them around Go Daddy in a separate deal where you don't have to pay the Go Daddy fees. I've seen this done both ways, and there's lots of optionality here. But if somebody owns the domain that you want and they refuse to sell it to you, there's absolutely nothing you can do unless for some reason, they forget to renew that domain name. In which case, you will then be able to buy it after a certain time period. When you are buying a domain, most of these platforms will try and sell you website protection, and they'll sell you e mail services and website hosting and all of this stuff. Do not need to buy any of that. Just buy the domain, checkout. That's it. You don't need to buy anything else, because when it comes to your website hosting, that is going to be dependent on what type of business you are running. For instance, if you have a product business where you are trying to bring in sales through your website, you are more than likely going to want to use Shopify. Shopifys hands down without a doubt, the best website provider and builder for companies that actually want to sell products. You are designing a website where you are more focused on design anesthetics, and you are offering a service, then square space might be a better option for you because they are not as geared towards e commerce, and they do offer a couple more design options compared to Shopify. What you need to do is evaluate your business and figure out which platform is going to be best for your business. Both of these platforms are fairly cheap, running as low as ten to $20 per month. Again, I will link them in the resource tab for this course, though. Now, when it comes to the steps here, this is what I would do if I were you. Number one, I would buy the domain. I would figure out what domain you want, try and find it in.com, keep it as short as possible and relate it to your business name, and then I would buy it. Then I would probably set up a shop offi account would build a website on Shopify, I would connect it to that domain, and then I would list all of the information about my product, my company, and my services. After that, I would then go on to every social media platform, and I would try and create an account using that same domain or company name. That way, I have it locked up. I own everything. Nobody else can rip it off or copy it or use it for other reasons, and whether or not I create content on that social media platform, at least I own it, and I have a cohesive brand everything lines up and matches. And if somebody types in Calgary weekly delivery of milk, whatever the company name is, I will show up for everything. I will show up no matter what platform they type that in on. And that is super super valuable, especially over the long term as more and more people start to type that in to Google or into TikTok or into Facebook, whatever it might be. So these are the steps that you should go through. Number one, buy the domain, number two, build the website, number three, connect them. And number four, get that basically handle for all of the different social media profiles that are available to you. We'll see you in the next video. 9. Accounting software: And, everybody, welcome back to another video. Hopefully, by this point, you have opened a bank account, and you have possibly even hired a year end accountant or somebody to help you along the way. What we are going to talk about now though, is the accounting software that is going to connect everything, bring everything together, and allow us to manage our finances. So let's dive into it. Number one, my personal preference and the software that I use is called QuickBooks. There are lots of different options out there. You can choose any one of them. They will pretty much do almost all the exact same things. I use Quick Books ough I've been using it for years. I'm familiar with it. I don't really feel like learning a new software, and it does a good job of pretty much everything that I need. My opinion is that QuickBooks is the best option for most small businesses, but realistically, you can use any software you want at the end of the day. Now, when it comes to the rules of the accounting software versus the accountant, here's how it breaks down. The accounting software will withdraw or take a look at and basically pull in all of the transactions that happen in your bank account. You will then need to go in, and you will need to classify those transactions and say, O h, this was revenue coming from the sale of product. This was revenue coming from services. This was an expense for employees. This was an expense for supplies. You need to go in and you need to classify all those transactions, and you do that through your accounting software. Your accounting software is usually accessed online. At least minus to QuickBooks and we'll pull in all of the transactions from your bank account, and then you go in and you basically manually say, this expense or this incoming money was for X Y Z. Once you have done that, you'll be able to create reports in your accounting software to see how much money you have in the account, how much money you guys made last month, your expenses were, how much you spent on payroll, and it's going to give you all of that analysis about your business, and it's going to be the tool that you use to gather data to help you make decisions. It's going to show you where you're spending too much, where you're spending too little, where your shortcomings are, and where you're making all the money. After that, you're also going to use your accounting software to manage invoices. When you have to pay suppliers, or you have to send out invoices to customers and you have to wait for payment or collect payment. You're going to do all of that through your accounting software. And the transactions and the money is actually going to hit the bank, but all of the classification and the actual reporting of that is going to happen in your accounting software. So that's how that works. When it comes to your accountant, what they're going to do is they're going to provide advice and guidance, and then they're going to take all of the data in your accounting software, and they're going to prepare your year end taxes and your year end financial statements so that if you want to go get a loan or a line of credit from the bank next year, going to ask for those statements, and that's what your accountant is going to basically compile for you and also submit to the government to figure out how much you need in taxes. And so your accounting software is what tracks and manages and analyzes everything, and your accountant is what takes all of that information and turns it into a year end financial basically close out and helps you manage your taxes and pay your bills at the end of the year. That's the role of the accounting software and the accountant. Now, when it comes to steps for implementing your accounting software. First thing you need to do open that business a bank account. Next thing, you need to figure out what software you want to use. I recommend using QuickBooks, but again, you can use anyone you want. Then you need to link your bank account to that software. Inside of that software, you should be able to do that fairly easily, and that's what's going to allow that software to pull all those transactions from your bank. And then you need to organize your reports in a way that will help you get clarity for your business. Software is going to have a standard setup that it's going to show to everybody. And in reality, you're probably not going to need that standard set up. You're going to need a little bit of customization. You're going to need some new accounts, you'll need to get rid of some old accounts, and you'll need to adapt it to your business. That is one area where I would highly recommend having your accountant help you set that up early on because trying to correct it months or years down the line is going to be an absolute pain in your butt. And I can tell you right now it is so much better to get professional advice, setting it up properly early than it is to try and clean it up later. It an absolute pain in the butt. Once you have this set up, let's say you got your accountant to kind of set it up properly and get all your accounts in order and get an income statement that makes sense to your business. Now what you need to do is build an accounting routine. My personal routine is that at the end of every single month, I go in and I classify all my transactions. I do a review of all of my reports, my balance sheet and my income statement, and I file all of my receipts and my expenses. This way, all of my accounting is up to date at the end of each month. I can analyze the data, I can make changes for the month ahead, and I can see exactly how my business is doing. Then, at the end of each year, I will double check everything and make sure that I submit everything to my accountant for my year end. They will send back all of my financial statements, and they'll review everything with me. They'll tell me how much I owe in taxes, and they will review my business performance and give me their unbiased third party independent feedback about what I should change, what I should improve, what I should start doing, and what I should stop Now, if that routine sounds a little bit complicated for you, or it sounds like it's a little bit out of your ballpark, and you don't want to be in there classifying transactions and making big decisions in your accounting software, well, that's very simple. There is a way to solve that. And the position that solves that is something known as a bookkeeper. This is a person that is familiar with your accounting software. Familiar with the basics of accounting. They are not an accountant, but they understand how accounting works, and they've usually done some courses, and this is a person that can go through and classify all your transactions and make sure that at the end of every month, you have all the data and reports that you need to analyze your business without having to do any of the work. This is great for somebody that does not have the time or the knowledge to do this themselves. But what I would recommend is making sure that you hire a bookkeeper that has previous experience, do not hire somebody new, do not hire somebody that is just getting into hire somebody that has been doing it for years, that has multiple customers already and that charges a fair rate. It is better to pay a reasonable rate for this than again, to pay somebody very cheap or to pinch pennies and have to clean it up later. This is one of those things that is super important to your business, and it's way better to keep it clean and pay the proper price than it is to pinch pennies and end up having to clean it up later. Now, in summary here, accounting should be a priority for your business. Unless you know you are profitable and you know that you are making money, accounting should be a major, major priority for your business, because it's going to help you analyze the performance of your business. It's going to help you make better decisions to improve the business over time. Now, the other area where it can really help you is in planning and forecasting. If you are worried about running out of inventory or ordering supplies or managing your cash flow, the better and the more up to date your accounting is, the better you're going to be up to forecast and plan into the future. And so this really is a tool that just takes a little bit of maintenance, but can have a major, major impact. The success of your business. What you need to remember here is that your accounting software is what keeps all of the data and analytics about your business. You are not going to be able to tell what your cost of good sold is from looking at your bank account, but you are going to be able to tell by analyzing your accounting statements that are generated from that accounting software. And so this is a super important aspect of your business. It's going to take time. It's going to take effort. It's going to take maintenance, and it's going to cost you money. But it's going to help you make a whole lot more money in the long term and maintaining it properly, is going to relieve your stress. It's going to keep your business organized, and it's going to keep you making more and more money over the long term. So I highly recommend putting an emphasis on this, and if you need professional help, go and find somebody with experience and pay them a fair rate to get the right help and to get good help because it's well worth. 10. Hiring first employee: All right, everybody, welcome back in this video. We're going to talk about a very exciting topic, and that is when to hire your first employee and what are you going to need? This can be a complex decision for a lot of businesses. So in this video, I'm going to try and simplify it for you and help you make that decision. Now, a couple of rules that I personally follow when it comes to hiring First one here is fire fast and hire slow. Do not be in a rush to hire somebody because it is going to take time to find the right person. And when you realize that somebody is not the right person, but they are already in your company, you need to fire them. It is your responsibility to maintain the culture and to maintain the profitability of your company so that you can keep everybody else employed. If somebody is not a fit for your culture or not a fit for your business, it is your responsibility to fire them and get them out of your business because they are going to ruin your company culture. It will decrease your profits over the long term, and you will build an environment that people are not happy to go to. It is literally your responsibility to fire somebody that does not fit in with your business regardless of whether or not they deserve to be fired. That means that maybe that person didn't do something wrong. Or they didn't get three write ups or whatever it is. If they're killing your company culture, and if they are absolutely destroying your business with negativity, you need to get them out of there. The idea here is that if it is not a 100% fit, it is a no. You need to be very strict about the people that you allow into your company culture and who you allow to influence both yourself and your employees because it is going to have a direct and long term impact on your business. You need to always be thinking long term. Do not make a short term hire just to fill a role because if that person ends up staying, they're going to infect the rest of your business with negative attitudes, poor culture, and a poor demeanor. You need to be very, very careful about your first hires, and if they are not a 100% fit, it is a no, and you need to move on to the next person until you find a 100% fit. What you need to understand here, though, is once you find that fit, the success of your hires is a direct reflection of your ability to hire the right person and train them properly. If somebody has the wrong attitude, then you chose the wrong person. If somebody is incapable of doing the job, but they have the right attitude, then you failed in training them. Those are two very different situations. Both of them will end up being your fault, but it's going to be your decision before you hire them and your ability to train them afterwards that dictates their success in your business. So you need to be very, very careful of that. You need to understand that the success of your business will be a direct reflection of the people that you hire. Once you start to exceed a certain level, you are no longer able to do everything. Therefore, your business operations are reliant on somebody else, and who you choose that somebody else to be is what will determine your success as a business because you are not going to be able to fulfill every single order or provide every single service. Now, when do you hire that first person? When do you actually make that jump and commit to somebody else and commit to employing and giving somebody a livable wage? Well, here are two factors that you need to consider. Number one, when the low value tasks of running the business take up too much of your time. So let's say that business is going well. You're starting to sell buckets of pistachio ice cream or whatever the example might be, if you notice that you are now spending four to 6 hours a day making and packing ice cream instead of doing the marketing and the business development and the sales and growing the business, that is the point you should hire somebody else when the low value tasks or the repeatable tasks or the easy to train tasks take up too much of your time to the point where you're losing the ability to grow the business. The other thing that you need to consider is that before you hire an employee, you need to make sure that your company generates enough profit to comfortably afford that employee. The last thing you want is to have that employee cause you additional stress. That employee should be relieving stress by taking a workload off of your plate and allowing you to focus on other aspects of the business. If paying that employee add stress to your plate, then hiring that employee might not be the right solution. Now, once you're ready to hire, meaning you've got enough low value tasks for them to start with, and you can free up some of your time and you have the financial wherewithal to handle that employee. Here is how you actually hire them. Number one, before you do anything, you need to create a job description with all of the tasks and a full description of what that job actually looks like. Then you need to create a formal job offer with terms and conditions of employment. No matter if they are your friend, your brother, your cousin, or somebody that you've grown up with your entire life, you still need a formal job offer, and you still need terms and conditions of the employment. What does the vacation pay look like? What does overtime pay look like? What does sick days look like? You need to have all of that listed out and very clear so that it is the expectations are the exact same. That's the goal here. Anytime you're getting into a contract or a relationship with somebody, you want to make sure that when you go into that contract or relationship, that the expectations are crystal clear, and they are the exact same. And that is what the formal job offer will do because it will lay out all of those expectations in the terms and conditions. Now, once you have that formal job offer, what you need to do is start interviewing multiple people. You need to interview multiple people because the first person is always going to look like a good option, and then by the time you get to the third fourth or fifth person, it's very, very clear that there is somebody better. And so you need to be very careful about how many people you interview, and I'm going to give you a few tools to help you with this process that will significantly save you time, effort and energy. When you get into that interview, what you need to do with this person is ask scenario based questions. Do not ask yes or no questions. Do not ask questions where they can kind of control the narrative. What you need to do is give them a scenario that would be common in your workplace, you need to ask them how they would handle it. If the answers that they give you are acceptable and good answers, then it is time to start checking their references. You want to narrow this down to two or three people. You want to check all of their references, make sure everything lines up with what the references are telling you compared to what they are telling you, and you want to make sure that you are asking the references open ended questions. So, for example, Can you explain to me the job role of this person at your company? Can you give me examples of where they provided excellent quality work and poor quality work? You want to ask open ended questions that make the reference actually have to think about and give solid answers and solid examples to those questions. And then Finally, once you have all of that information, you've checked the references. You've got some good candidates. It's time to make the decision and hire somebody that is passionate about what you are doing. Now, one tool that I use for this entire process is a service called Video ask. What it allows me to do is when somebody submits a resume to my formal job application or to my job offer, what happens then is they will get a link. That link will open up a video where I am asking a few scenario based questions. And then they have to physically record themselves. Answering those questions. What this does is it eliminates the need for me to set up ten or 15 Zoom calls. It also filters down the people that are serious because only somebody that really wants the job is going to go on video and answer these questions, and it allows me to get an understanding of what this person actually talks like and how they think before I actually commit a large amount of time to setting up a meeting or to setting up a second interview. So my first interviews are always through a platform called Video ask, and I send them a video and I ask them to answer questions, and then submit it back to me, and I will filter through and then basically go through the top five, and I will bring them in for a second level interview. Now, once you've got an employee that you're happy with and you want to make that final job offer for. Like I said, you need that contract with the terms and conditions. You also need a full job description, which should be in that contract, and then you need a system to manage your payroll and your taxes. You can do this manually, but it will be a little bit of a pain in your butt. So if you're using QuickBooks, I would use the payroll system in QuickBooks. Otherwise, I basically sign up for or use another software or accounting software to manage your payroll and your taxes. It is going to become a pain in the butt if you have to do it manually, especially when you have multiple employees. So I would just automate this so that it's just managed for you every single month. The other thing that you might want to consider is your bonus structure. A lot of the time, employees are going to ask you for raises, and they're going to ask you for bonuses, and they're going to ask you for holiday time off around Christmas. And you need to kind of factor that into the cost of your employee and kind of pre budget it for it and know that it is going to come. If somebody stays with you for a year or two years, they're going to expect a raise, especially if they're doing a good job, and so you need to factor that into your cost. You need to plan for it, and you better not be surprised when your employee asks you for a raise if you don't already have a preset structure in place. You're also going to need a system for managing time off and vacation. If you're a small company, I recommend doing this manually on an Excel sheet, but if you're growing and you're larger, and again, you want to automate it. There are lots of softwares that you can use for this. You're also going to need a policy document. If you don't want your employees doing drugs, and you want to be able to fire them if they do drugs on the job, you need a policy document and a company basically policy that everybody is going to sign off and agree to. When they start their employment, and they give you back a signed contract with the terms and conditions, you then should give them a company policy document that they can read and sign as well. You need to be very careful here, though, because you need to make sure that all of your policies are legal. But if you want to be able to fire somebody for a certain reason, whether they do drugs, or they crash a car, whatever the example might be, you need to have it written down in a policy document that they sign off and that they agree to. You also need your employee to sign off and complete their tax forms when they start their job. I live in Calgary Alberta. Any of my employees have to fill out both a provincial form, a federal form. They have to complete an employee profile, and then they have to sign off on my company policy document. That is the process when a new employee starts with me. Now, if you're in a shop or you're hiring multiple employees, or you're doing much manufacturing, you're also going to need some form of workers compensation in case your employees get hurt. This is going to depend and vary, and it is also going to be called something else, depending on where you live, but it is basically a service that you pay to a regulatory body in case your employees get hurt. It is something that is usually legally required, so you do need to look into it. And then if you are running a shop or a physical location, you're going to need safety documents such as a fire escape fire escape plan or a map, or you're going to need to identify the fire extinguishers and smoke alarms, or you're going to need, like a first aid program. You're just going to need to make sure that you fit whatever kind of business you have with a safety plan and the documents that support that facility. That's the idea here. And then, lastly, and probably most importantly, then everything else is a training program. This is what is going to actually teach the employee how to do the job. I'm telling you right now, this is one bullet point on here, but this is by far the most important, and it should take you the most time, and it should take you the most effort, because if you have a good training program, it means that it is going to cost you a small amount to train an employee. It's going to cost you a small amount of time to train that employee, and that employee is going to be well trained and very effective at their job. The advantage here is that if you have to fire that employee or if that employee quits on you, there is a smaller burden to bring in the next employee. The idea here is the better your training program is, the less dependent you are on certain individuals, because you can just hire and train the next person. This will give you peace of mind. It will help your business run smoother. It will save you money, and it will eliminate your need constantly train employees for weeks and months on end. And so the training program that teaches your employee how to actually do their job is probably the most important part of this entire video. Now, when it comes to the training program, like I said, this is the number one factor in determining the success of a new employee. You need to have this training program written out or you need to have a video manual for every task that you expect that employee to perform. If it's not a super simple task that's absolutely obvious, it needs to have instructions. Then once you have built those instructions, you also need to consistently update and adapt this program for each position and every time that you make a change. We are talking about constant iterations where you're building MVPs and you are trying to change the product and improve the service. That means that your training program and your manual and your instructions are also going to need to change, and they're going to need to be brought up to date with every change that you make. And so this is an ongoing thing that you are going to need to maintain, regulate, and put effort into because it is going to save you time the next time that you have to hire an employee, is going to make a world of difference. Also, you need to build it in a way that you can use it for years to come. You need to make sure that whatever you are putting into this training program, it is something that is going to be evergreen and something that you can continue to apply and use for years and years and years, as long as that product or service or process is still in operation. Now, I did talk about this before briefly, but when it comes to wages, people always want to get paid more over time. What I mean by that is as soon as somebody gets through their probationary period or they get through one year, they get through two years, they're going to want a raise. Their money is buying less products and services every single year due to inflation. And so if they aren't getting a raise, in theory, they're actually making less money, or the money that they are making buys less goods and services. And so people need to get consistent raises, they want consistent raises, and they want bonuses. So you need to factor that in to your forecast and your expenses as a business owner. You also need to structure out the position in the company with two to four pay levels. What I mean by that is when somebody signs on, they need to have room to upgrade at least twice, if not four times, so that you need to give somebody room so that they can come in at $22 and work their way up to $27 over time, and as they accumulate more skills and more value for the business. Now, when it comes to employee performance, this is something that you are going to need to track, and you're going to need a management system in place for this, but it's going to be dependent on your culture and on your business and your operations and how you actually manage that business. But basically, You need a way to track and measure the performance of your business operations or the individual output of each employee. Ideally, you want it to be both group and individual targets. You want a business that is going to generate profit, and you want individuals that are all going to excel at their individual task. And so you need to create metrics to measure the performance of your employees, and everything needs to be tracked at some point. The idea here is that if you're not measuring it, you can't track it, and you can't make decisions based on that information. And so everything needs to be measured that you can use to actually make decisions and measure the performance of your employees. And then you use that to give them raises or give them bonuses or give them compensation. That's the idea here. But without tracking the performance, you have no way to give them a performance review and give them feedback about what they're doing wrong or what they can improve. It comes to their performance review and when you actually have these conversations. Here is a brief outline of some of the topics that you may want to consider. I'm not going to go through every point right here. What I would recommend is when you have these conversations, you come back to this video, you pause the screen, and you read through this because this will give you a full outline of how to actually have a performance review meeting with one of your employees so that you can justify your position for either holding them or giving them a raise. A couple of tools that I use for this entire process. When it comes to the job posting, I use a platform called indeed.com. It's pretty popular here in Canada and the United States. When it comes to the video questionnaire, like I said, I use video ask.com. If they pass the video ask level, and I want to bring somebody in for a second interview, I will usually do it virtually over Zoom. And if that goes well, I will bring somebody into my shop to show them the space and actually meet them face to face. At that point, I will then decide who I want to hire. I'll give them the full contract with the full terms and conditions. Of the employment at my business, and I will give them usually 48 to 72 hours to decide if they want the job, and if not, I will withdraw that offer, and I'll move on to the next person. That is the general process that I use for hiring employees. Now, in summary here for this video, what I'm trying to say here is that you need to be very, very careful about who you hire. You need to have a system in place. You need to have a training program so that once you hire them, they're successful, and you need to realize that who you hire is going to be one of the most important decisions that you make in your business. If you fire somebody, you need to realize that they are not a good long term fit. It is your responsibility decide whether somebody is a good long term fit. And if they are not a good long term fit, you need to have a conversation with them, and you need to find a way to part ways. It is going to cost you money. It is going to cost you time, is going to cost you resources, and it is going to cause stress with the rest of your employees if you do not take the responsibility for hiring the wrong person and make the tough decision and have a bad day firing somebody and disappoint them, but it's going to save your business in the long run. It is one of the hardest things to do, but it's like ripping off a band aid, and I guarantee you that one week later, you will feel so much better about the decision. I have been there. I have ripped off several band aids, and I can tell you that every time one week later, the other employees are happier, I am happier, and I can find a new employee that's going to be a better fit for the company. The thing you have to realize here is that it is better to fire somebody than to let them bring the business down and have everyone else suffer or end up unemployed. You are the person that has to make the tough decision to cut that one person in order to save everybody else. That is your responsibility, that is your decision, and you need to make that hard decision. Do not shy away from it, do not put it off, and do not take this decision lightly. It is your responsibility. And as the owner and the founder of the business, this is part of the job. This is what comes with it, because if it's a success and your business sells for millions of dollars, you are going to get all of the accolades. You're going to be the founder that created something from nothing. You are going to be the amazing entrepreneur. But I am telling you right now, If you can't make the hard decisions, that day will never come. This is one of those hard decisions when you have an employee that isn't the right fit, you need to make the hard decision, you need to save the rest of the company. Now, I'm sorry this had a little bit of a negative tone to it. I know there's a lot of information here, but I'm saying this because I've been through it before. I've had companies brought down because of bad employees and decisions that were made too late, and so I'm trying to save your company and save your business and save you from ever running into that same situation. So I hope this helps and we'll see you in the next video. 11. Conclusion : Alright, everybody. Welcome to the last video in this course. The first thing I want to do is just give you a quick recap of what we learned and what we went through. Number one, I highly recommend you do your best to build relationships with other entrepreneurs and other business professionals, particularly a banker and accountant, and an insurance broker. These people are going to be able to offer you guidance. These people are going to be able to solve your problems quickly. These people are going to free up your time so that you can focus on growing and building your business instead of trying to put out fires and organize your mistakes or somebody else's mistakes. And I highly recommend focus on building relationships. If you can build a relationship or build some type of connection with another entrepreneur that has experience and is willing to help you out and maybe has done something similar before, it can be a huge, huge advantage, and it can save you a lot of time and a lot of headache. Also, I've put together a checklist as a group project for this course. It is a step by step guide with everything you need to do in order to set up your business properly. I highly recommend you take a look at it and go through it one by one. Some of the check items on that checklist may not apply to you, but the majority of them will. Also, if you find that your domain is available in a.com format, I highly recommend buying it as soon as possible because if somebody else snatches it up before you, you are going to have an absolute nightmare trying to buy it back from And also, that general idea here is spend the time, spend the energy, spend the resources, and educate yourself or pay somebody else to set your company up properly from the beginning, because it'll cost you so much more to try and organize it later on. In summary, though, or not in summary, but also, I would really appreciate it if you would leave a review. Whether it's good, whether it's bad, whether you have feedback for me or whether you just love the course, I sincerely read every comment and every review, and I use them to try and make the course better. So if there's something that I could have done better, if you needed more examples, if you needed something else that I didn't provide, please leave a comment, please leave a review. Let me make this course better for the next student. I sincerely appreciate it, and I use your feedback to make the product better. Also, that class project, it is a checklist. If you don't feel comfortable submitting that checklist or you don't think it's a good idea, try and leave something that connects us to your business, whether it's a website, a social media handle, whatever it might be, I want to support you. I want to comment and follow all of your social media pages, and I think other people that go through this course would want to, as well. So, if you can leave something as a submission for that class project that leads us to your business, please let us know. If you sell a product that I am interested in, promise you, I will place an order as well. I have ordered from several students throughout these courses before. So I want to learn about what you are doing, and I'm trying to give you a checklist that sets you up on the right foot. So that is all I ask in return. Now, if you're interested in checking out the next course in this series, it is all about managing your business cash flow. I'm going to teach you how to build a cash flow spreadsheet. I'm going to teach you how to forecast revenue and expenses and how to scenario plan around buying a big piece of equipment or expanding to another country, or whatever it might be, I'm going to give you a tool that allows you to model your business to see the implications on your bank account. It's going to be extremely useful. It's also going to help you with budgeting within your business, and I'm going to walk you through all of my principles and strategies for managing my business money, because it's very different than how you might manage your personal money. I'm also going to teach you how to analyze and compare your cash flow between your forecast and your actual numbers so that you can optimize it and get better at forecasting moving forward. This is all going to be contained in the next course, and it's going to be super super useful if you start to build a business that's actually building some revenues. So I highly recommend it. Also, if you want to see more about any of my personal businesses, or you want to follow along with updates about what I'm doing with my money or my business. One, follow me on skill share, but two Check me out on YouTube and TikTok. That's where I post most of my content. It's also going to Instagram, Twitter, and N X. So check me out on those platforms. I would love to connect with you there. And lastly, if you're building a business and you are confident that you have found good traction or that you have found product market fit, and you're ready to scale up, and you want to bring on an investor, and you need some money to scale up. Please send me an e mail. I am actively investing into small companies and helping them grow. I buy a small portion of your business. I write a check into the business. We help the business grow together. You remain the main operator, the co founder, the CEO of the business, and I am just here to offer my guidance and take a small chunk of the company in return. Infusing money into the company. So if that sounds like something you might be interested in, you can send me an e mail to info at zacharley.com, and I would love to hear from you. But please don't message me unless you are sure that you have found good traction or good product market fit. To summarize everything in one sentence, I want to tell you that it is better to set up your business properly from the beginning than to have to organize it later on. Spend the time, money, and resources to set it up properly. Educate yourself hire the right professionals, put the money in to build relationships with the right banker, insurance broker, and accountant, and actually take pride in what you are building here because it is those foundational building blocks that will set you up properly for the future and give your business the best chance of success. Thank you so much for watching this course. I sincerely appreciate it, and we'll see you in the next one. I hope to talk to you soon by.