Basic Building Blocks for any Business

Building Blocks of Any Business

Posted by Miguel Feliciano at 6:27 pm

Every business is created from an idea. Whether it be to solve a problem, to compete with other businesses with a better service or product, or just to make money; every entrepreneur faces the question of what business do I want to start and why.

Well for me it started about 2 years ago for this company. Gas prices were rising almost every day and I, like millions of others, drove a long way to get to work. I had to fill up my Toyota Echo every 4 days. An idea kept popping into my head, “Free Gas.” This was, still is, and will be a problem for everyone. How do you pay for the one thing that helps you get from point A to point B and still keep your sanity; especially something that continues to be expensive?

I learned to keep a notebook of ideas for business from Cameron Johnson’s You Call The Shots. So, on a business trip to Texas I was taking for a startup company I was working for, I wrote down “Free Gas” in the middle of a page and started brainstorming how to make the idea a reality. Using what I knew about internet technology and marketing, the page started filling up and a business model started to develop. Actually, several business models came out of what I wrote down in that book.

Now that I am getting my head out of my ass and using a GTD system with my iPod Touch and a moleskine, I have decided to pursue this business model and start a company; my second company to be exact. I took the pages out of my book, got them notarized and mailed them to myself never to be opened unless for legal issues.

The next thing I did was to fill out the “Articles of Organization” for a Florida Limited Liability Company. I sent that in last Monday and checked the Florida Department of Divisions website. I saw that the company’s “Articles of Organization” were accepted on the 15th, so I was on to the next step. I applied for an Employer Identification Number (Tax ID) on the IRS website and was able to get my Tax ID within a few minutes. I really like that the IRS has digitized that process.

Now that I’ve done that I’m starting to look for the financing to get the company off the ground. I may not get the financing and I’m prepared for that. I’ve learned that any business can be started with little or no money at all. After watching the Young Entrepreneur Society movie (the YES movie), I’ve learned that one of the best ways to start a business is to pre-sell. I’ve already started thinking of how to pre-sell the service. I’ll leave the financing for another post. To wrap this up, here are the basic building blocks for your business:

Keep a business idea book.

Notarize your business idea.