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Transcript: Hey, welcome back to my channel. This is for all things newer wedding vendors. And today we are talking about setting up your business. If you haven’t gotten started yet, this is a really good video for you to watch. Or if you’re brand new to the wedding industry, or you’ve been doing it for just a little while, but you’re not legally set up yet, watch this video. 

So, really quick, the steps you’re going to need to follow to set up your business are: you need to go on to your state’s Secretary of State website and file for an LLC. You want to file for an LLC, no other kind of business licensing, I can talk about that more in another blog post, but you’re going to want an LLC, just trust me on this, get an LLC. And then you’re going to go ahead and you’re going to file everything you need to with your state. What you want to look for is you can just google your state’s LLC filing, try to get this document from a .gov website, there are lots of third parties who want to charge you way more money than it actually costs to file your LLC. And they’re gonna do it for you. And like, whatever, it’s probably legit, but try to do it yourself. Look for the .gov web address because that’s going to be your government’s local website. So, it doesn’t cost a lot. Usually, it’s anywhere from like 50 to $200. Depending on your state, it could be more, it could be less, but try to get it from the.gov website. The next thing you’re going to do, you’re going to submit that paperwork and when you get your LLC back, you’re going to get this really pretty certificate that you can frame or to do whatever that just says yes, you are a legit business now, we recognize you, whatever. 

With your business now officially set up, you can go and get an EIN, which is like a social security number for your business. With that EIN, you can now get a business bank account, which I would recommend, and you can get insurance. Now you have to have insurance if you are a business. You have to have it, a lot of people don’t and listen, that is so sketchy. You need insurance, you need to be having insurance. You can get insurance through anyone like progressive Allstate, whoever your home or auto or renter’s insurance is through, they’re going to offer business insurance. And what you’re going to ask them on the phone is you need to say, “I have an XYZ business photography, videography, wedding planning, business, whatever these are the assets I have…” Your assets are going to be like your inventory. So your cameras, if you have a wedding planning business, probably your computers, if you own new rental gear, that is going to be your assets, computers, cameras, anything that you’ve bought to run your business is considered an asset. They’re gonna ask you how much you think those assets are worth, you can give them relevant numbers based on the used gear you can Google around, it’s really simple. But then you need to make sure that your insurance policy is going to cover you when you’ve left your office. So your office is probably going to be your house or your apartment. So once you go on-site to the wedding, you have to make sure that you have coverage on-site and during the travel. A lot of insurance companies only want to cover stuff if it breaks in your office. But if something happens outside of your office, so on-site, you need to make sure that you are covered when you drive out to these weddings. And when you’re on the road in case you get in a car wreck or something like that. You need to make sure you’re covered. So be sure to ask them, Hey, I’m traveling, we go to these different venues, what coverage Do I need to make sure I am covered at these different places. And whoever you’re talking to on the insurance side will tell you all of those things. 

So, after you’ve gotten set up, kind of behind the scenes, all the legal stuff, you get to move on to the really fun stuff. So this is creating your website, your social media platforms, getting legit. So, you want a website, that’s your “businessname.com”, this is the easiest way for people to find you. And it’s the easiest way for you to pop up on Google and you want to do the same thing for your social media sites. And that is all you need to get your business set up and running. And then you can just start working and posting on social updating your website and blogging and doing all that fun stuff. 

So, I hope this was helpful. Be sure to download my business startup checklist. It’s going to walk you through all of these things. Make sure you don’t miss anything and I can’t wait to talk to you again.