Core activities: must-have infrastructure

You love your start-up life, as we do :: there is nothing you craved more in the corporate drone world than feeding your passion. Getting paid the big bucks for it was icing, right? 

But now that you are in it you realize that it’s hard. Fulfilling, but a lot more detailed than you thought it would be. Perhaps you forgot to consider something about starting your own business: it’s a business. Here are a few basic operational necessities that you should have in place preferably before you jump into the fire of the entrepreneurial world. 

A bookkeeper

One of the first ah-ha moments of any small company: the bills aren’t going to pay themselves. You went into business to work on your passion, not drown in receipts. It’s easier and cheaper (especially in the long-run) to work with a bookkeeper than wandering aimlessly into the land of invoicing, tax reporting and payroll. 

IT support

Your website stops responding, your printer’s flashing all the lights at once, and your brand new internal tech system just crashed. Your typical chaos turned into panic mode. Your computer whiz friend can only help you so much. Besides, can they jet over right now and figure out why your email isn’t working? 

Tech support is invaluable to any company in 2011; if your computer crashes in the middle of a client meeting, what do you do now? You call up your IT person. 

Administrative support

Funny how the voicemail box fills up in a day yet you didn’t recall hearing the phone ring? And where did you stash that excel sheet with all your investor contact info? What about those business cards from two weeks ago; you followed up with them, right?  Where did that stack of paper come from, and how did it get so big? 

Admins keep the office going. You need reliable people who are skilled at dealing with customers and clients alike. They need to be as fearless as you working in a small start-up environment.  Confidence in your admins is necessary, especially in a start-up. 

Marketing

Computers are working great? Yep. Enough ears answering the phones? Great. Excellent product to sell? Of course. Now it’s time to get the word out. You know what you have to offer to the public is top notch, but they won’t know that if you don’t tell them. 

Basic marketing is better than no marketing. But working with professional marketers well-versed in branding, design and the correct language can take your business incredibly far.