How to Start a Business!

Hey, what's up guys? My name's Kyle. And I've been posting about my life, about my business on social media for a few years now. And a lot of you followed along to that journey. And I've gotten a ton of feedback and not always is the feedback positive. There is negative feedback, but overwhelmingly positive. And I'm very thankful for that. And one of the things that constantly is talked about or asked in almost every one of my videos is what did you do to get to where you're at? How did you start your business? How do I start a business if I'm wanting to do that as a new entrepreneur? And I'm going to attempt to do that right now. I'm going to attempt to tell you guys what I think the steps you should take, the things you should consider. And by all means, this is probably not the do all end all list. And I'm hoping those of you that are watching that already have a business already know what to do, what it takes that you will chime in down in the comments and let other people know what I've missed, what I forgot, or maybe if I'm wrong and that you have a different suggestion because I'm only telling you my journey. It's a, it's worked so far. I've been in business since 2007. I never worked for anybody else. I always have just been an entrepreneur working for myself. So I'm going to tell you guys that journey. And today's video is sponsored by next insurance. Obviously insurance will be one of the key talking points about things that you need to consider, but let's get into this. Now, the first thing that we're going to talk about is having a plan. Obviously it seems very simple and you guys all know me on social media because of these structures that I build here. Like the one behind me, my own personal shop post frame buildings. That's what I've kind of grown with on social media, but that's not where I started. And that's not what initially my plan was. If I spin around here, you'll see this house back here. That's my personal house. And that is where my love for the trades started. It was a super, super rundown old farm house. And I started learning my skills right here, remodeling my own house. And I made the plan right then and there that that's what I wanted to do. I wanted to work with my hands and I wanted to build stuff and I was going to be a remodeling contractor. Now it didn't, it didn't turn out that way. And that's not the direction I'm headed now, but you got to have a focus. You got to know what you love, what you want to do or what you're really motivated to do to start that business. So we're going to assume at this point, you know what your plan is as far as what you want to do, but what physically do you need to start doing in order to start that business? Well, for me, what I did was I called around to my local municipalities. I called to the County, I called to my local town and I said, Hey, if I'm going to be doing business as at that time, rural renovators, that was my catchy name. I wanted to, you know, give everybody a little bit of R&R and let me do your remodeling work and you take some rest and relaxation. Like that was my kind of my mantra. But I said, Hey, what do I got to do? And I was kind of surprised because really there wasn't anything I needed to do. If I wanted to be operating as a business name, they said I should run an ad in the local newspaper, make sure that nobody objects to me being called that business name. Which nobody did. And then I went to the bank. And I think the banks were actually the ones that needed me to run the, the ad in the paper for two weeks to verify that I was, you know, able to use the, the business name or rural renovators. And then I opened up a DBA checking account. Now a DBA checking account. It just states that Kyle Stumpenhorst is doing business as rural renovators. Now I was a sole proprietor, which I'm not going to get into all the tax mumbo jumbo. Like that's not what this is about. You're going to want to, you know, go get an accountant or somebody to help you with the financial side of things, which will be, I think one of the later things I'll talk about or recommendations. But from the starting point, all I had to do was start working pretty simple, right? Some of you out there saying, wait, you didn't need any licenses. You didn't need any certifications. You didn't need, you didn't need anything. No, actually in order to do remodeling contracting, I didn't really need anything that I didn't already have. All right. So I can't tell you if you're going to need any licenses or accreditation or anything like that for your specific business that you're starting. For me as a general contractor, a remodeling contractor in Northern Illinois, I didn't need anything. I just could go out and start working in somebody's home, but that brought up another thing that I needed to do. And that was protect myself. I needed some general liability and the way you do that is by having business insurance. Now, Next Insurance, they're sponsoring this video. And I thought that was a great fit for this video specifically because Next Insurance is tailored to small business. But just because they're tailored to small business doesn't mean they're a small company. They're backed by giants. But even better is that you can do everything that you need to do from your phone. We all lead really busy lives. It can take you less than 10 minutes for your general liability. Maybe you're going to need to protect your tools. Maybe you're going to need to get an auto policy. They can handle all of that stuff and they're gonna be able to do it 30% cheaper. One of the really cool things I like about Next Insurance though is that when I meet with a client or a prospective client and they want to know that I am insured, I can very easily go on my phone and give them a proof of a certificate of insurance. And that wasn't always that easy for me back in the day. But now with Next Insurance, you can do it almost effortlessly. And I know what you guys are saying. Some people, they like to talk to human beings. They don't just want to talk to their phone and that's okay because Next Insurance also has real people available if you need it. Now let's talk about marketing because as a small business and especially a young or new starting small business, marketing is going to be very important. And this is something that I learned through experience because when I started, I didn't market anything. I just went and did the work that was given to me by my clients. And then I hoped that their word of mouth would get me new work. And it did work. I mean, I was able to stay busy. I kept finding new jobs, but marketing is how you as a small business are going to focus the story that is being told about your business in a way that you want it to be told. And what I mean by that is if, if you're a remodeling contractor and you're willing to do everything, then you probably don't need to market. You just need to basically go out and do anything that comes your way. But for me, as I grew my business, I found that I wanted to focus on post frame and I use social media as my marketing tool to tell the story that I wanted to be told, to showcase the work that I wanted to be getting from my next prospective client so that that is what people saw RR as and would hire me as. So that's very important. Without marketing, you're at the will of other people spreading your story. So use social media as much as you can. It's free other than your time and it's a great marketing tool. Let's talk about tools. We all know how much I love tools, but I didn't start off my business having just a plethora of tools. I had a very minimal amount. I had enough to do the remodeling on my own house. I had nothing specialty and I definitely didn't have the latest and the greatest. So when it comes to tools, you got to have them to do your job, but that doesn't mean you have to go out and buy them all right away. Every job that you take on, you should think about what tools will I need to to finish this job. And then you're going to work the price of those tools into that job. And every time you do a job, there's nothing wrong with having a line item that says something like shop supplies or miscellaneous or tools. It's really no different than going to the car shop, getting your car service. And every time I go there, there's always a line item that has some generic phrase that talks about shop supplies or something. And I'm paying for all the supplies, whether I use them or not. It's kind of like a generic fee. And when you're running a business, it's called overhead. It's the things that are added on. And there's a lot of contractors out there that always feel like they're not making money because all they're charging is for their labor. You can agree or you can disagree. But for me, I feel like all of my overhead, all of my labor, all those things combine into what a client pays for our buildings to come out and build them something. So don't forget that and don't go out buying the latest and greatest just because you know, your favorite influencer on Instagram or YouTube or whatever is using the newest tool. Yes, it's cool. You will get there. It will take some time, but don't go do it from the beginning. I started with a Volkswagen Jetta and a bunch of old crappy tools. And you know what? I was still able to do almost everything and I probably could still do almost everything today with them. Well, that's it. I think for this video guys, and you might be saying, well, Kyle, you didn't really talk about training. You didn't talk about, you know, where do you get, you know, the ability to learn your skills. And to be honest, I didn't do any of that. So other than the fact that I remodeled my home, I had my dad who showed me what he knew. A lot of it was on the job training. I watched a lot of this old house. I read the, this old house magazine. Like that was my way of learning things that I could. And I just conceptualized the process in my head. And I thought if I had to do this, how would I do it in life? A lot of times you can learn in many different ways, but on the job training is always going to be the best. That's how you're going to learn because you're going to make mistakes. And that's all part of the game. That's all part of the process. And honestly, that's what's enjoyable about it. So that's why if you're not learning, you're dying is my mantra because I like to keep learning. I want to keep getting better. Failing is okay because I'm going to learn from it. And hopefully you guys learned something from this video. Like I said, in the beginning, a lot of you might've watched this and said, I already know all this. It all is basic, but I'm not making this for you per se. I'm making it for the people that that reach out to me and are looking for that information. And hopefully if you have more info, if you're one of those seasoned guys, drop it down below in the comments so that people can learn. And that's really the whole point of this channel. So I hope it worked out. If you guys ever have questions, you can always reach out to me and I will always do my best. It's a ton of work sometimes. It can be daunting the amount of messages I might get, but I don't do this for me. I do it to help somebody and hopefully that comes through. And hopefully this video helps you guys go out there and chase your dream like I did 14 years ago. So end of the day, I'm gonna get out of here guys.