Things You Need To Know When Starting Your Own Business

When you're starting your own business, especially if you're starting off just you from your home, you often have more time than money and want to do things yourself. Expert help is expensive and I get that. I started out by figuring things out for myself and it ended up with some trouble. I want to save you that trouble.

Let me start off with the usual disclaimer that I am not a lawyer or accountant and you should talk to someone in your state for official requirements. Okay, now that we've gotten that out of the way, let's talk about some basics.

Your Business Name
When you are choosing your name, you need to check that the name you actually want to use on a day to day basis is available. My legal business name is Sarah Jane Portrait Photography, LLC, because Sarah Jane Photography, LLC was taken. But I wasn't using that whole long name anyway so it didn't matter to me. Then I learned that if I wasn't using my official name - I was using Sarah Jane Photography - that I needed to have a Certificate of Assumed Name (sometimes called a DBA) and that because there was already a Sarah Jane Photography, I could not use that. Let me just say that I did not have a good day when I found that out. Every state is different in what they require, but please, PLEASE make sure you check on the availability of any and all names you want to use in running your business.

Where Will Your Focus Be?
I started with a website and an Instagram account. From almost day one, I was blogging three days a week. I picked my website/blog and Instagram to be where I was focusing my energies. I've since added PInterest and LinkdIn, but those to not get the level of attention and interaction. Pick one or two places to focus your marketing and attention. I highly recommend a blog that you post to consistently (even if that is once a month) because that is a place you can link back to and is more permanent than social media.

The reason you want to pick just one or two places is so that you can really do them well and not stretch yourself too thin. A web and social media presence is a necessity these days but we also can't kill ourselves on it.

Invest In the Necessities
We've established that you have limited funds. So where should those funds be going? Most things have a free and paid version. Unless that thing is crucial for your business, use the free version. For my business, I was paying for Lightroom because that is essential to my business. I paid my LLC and DBA fees each year and that was it. Those three fees were all I paid. I used a free website, a free email, the free version of Canva, Vivi, Mailchimp, Linktree, etc. They worked and I was able to work around any snags. Find the things that you can't operate your business well without and pay for those. As you grow, you can start paying for the upgraded versions of other things. I will admit that you have fewer headaches when you can use the full version.

Get Educated
Read books. Go to conferences. Watch free webinars. Buy a course. When I was starting out, I watched all kinds of free webinars on different aspects of photography. Sometimes those led to me buying courses and sometimes it didn't. I learned from Cole's Classroom (the free version :) and Digital Photography School's emails. I got books about running businesses and I went to a photography seminar. I did what I could to learn more and got as much free education as possible. Find other people who have businesses like yours and ask them questions. What do they recommend? What advice do they have for you? If you're stuck on a problem, ask. I've gotten some great help from more established photographers on lighting, pricing, studio specs, and more.

Find Community
Owning a small business can be an isolated job. Maybe you really like that aspect of it, but you still need community. While a community of other small business owners is great, try to find a few other people in your industry and try to build some form of community in real life. Online friends are amazing, but we need that real life support too. You can't force community, but you can make it a priority and be constantly looking out for it.



These are a few things I would say are essential to the success of your new business. If you started a business, what things would you add to this list?

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