Lesson 3: Name, Logo, Business Cards, Letterhead, Website
Your place of business
Where are you going to sit when you're doing your work. This is important because the kitchen table is a possibility but not a good one. You really need a room or at least a space which you can close off, not be disturbed and leave your work out without it being messed up. That will be your place of business.
Your place of business can be anything from a rented facility somewhere close to your customers to a desk with a roll-up top in a corner of a room but there are a few things which, at minimum, this place of business must have.
- A desk with drawers or a filing cabinet. You need a bit of room and you need a place to keep files. If you're receiving customers frequently and need to make a good impression, your desk might be a good-looking wooden model which says permanence and stability to the visitor. If you work out of your home and don't have clients visiting, your desk can be a melamine-covered board over two filing cabinets. Even then you have to ask yourself, will you be more productive if you're sitting at a nice desk? If you really don't care, spend the money on something else.
- A computer. Almost any computer from the original Pentium grade onward will do the work you need done but you will have to have some kind of computer and it will probably have to be one running Windows.
The range in cost and performance is quite wide. You can get a five year old machine running Windows 95 and MS Office 6.0 for around $250.00 and it will do everything you need although you will need to get a new printer for around another $100.00. At the other end of the scale you can get top-of-the-line performance with a 17" LCD screen and a high quality flat bed copier/printer/fax machine for $4000.00.
A reasonable amount to budget for a new computer system might be around $2000.00 for a fast system with a good 17" monitor and an excellent printer.
- A telephone/fax system. Although getting extra telephone lines is a substantial expense, it should be a priority to get at least one extra line if you're going to be working from home. You will be plugging in a telephone, a fax machine and a computer for Internet service. It is not realistic to expect all these things to run through your home phone line.
The least expensive system and the minimum you need, is a single new phone line with two numbers, one for the fax and one for the phone, and different rings ("ident-a-call" with some phone companies). You'll also need the telephone company answering machine service ("call-answer"). Here's how this works: If you're on the phone or using the fax, the answering machine at call-answer will take the message (a normal answering machine wouldn't work if you're on the phone). When a call comes through on the fax number, it rings two short rings and the fax machine picks it up. If a call comes in on the regular phone number, it rings normally and the fax machine ignores it. If you don't answer it, after four rings the call-answer answering machine takes the message. Using this line for your Internet as well is possible but, if you're working from home, you may want to use the home line instead so that business calls can get through.
Once you have your desk, your computer system and your telephone/fax/Internet hook-up you're ready to do business.
