8/14/14 Bumps in the road, you can try your best to avoid them, but you'll eventually hit one

     As you can see in our title, this post is somewhat centered around some hiccups/bumps/obstacles or whatever you want to call them in the journey we're on called creating a business.  I was planning on only adjusting the site a bit and cleaning up the experience on the user end, but we ended up looking at some important stuff a business needs today, such as a business license, a bank account, and a P.O. box for return packages, mail, or anything else.
     We decided to dive into the more serious and important aspects of our business today because we received an email from Shopify: "Receive $150 in advertisement credit if you launch your store today!!!!" or something to that effect and excitement.  The gist of it was if we launched our store out of the 2 week trial version (which we've found to be extremely invaluable due to our incessant tweaking) we could receive $150 in Google AdWords and Facebook Ads combined.  I've used Google AdWords and I can tell you, free advertising is great since it eats at your budget.  With this offer we just entertained the idea of maybe not launching today, but maybe by the end of this week.  We found out otherwise.
     In order to continue on, I have to go backwards a bit and mention that me and Ricky (founders and wantrepreneurs) both have internships and are using all of our spare time to work on this endeavor.  Unfortunately places like the US Post Office and City Hall are unforgiving in their open and close times and so this would be one of our biggest road bumps, or potholes as I'll refer to them as now (fitting as we live in pothole central of the United States).
     Okay, back to the now.  We decided to look into a P.O. Box and went to the USPS during our lunch break, and on the way to it I decided to call Capital One 360 to see if we could get a joint business checking account. The call wait time was pretty lengthy, but once I reached someone they were pretty friendly and helpful and redirected me to their business accounts.  I talked to the new rep and he let me know that they only had business savings account, of which you needed an existing business checking account from another bank to link it to which was a dead end for me.
     Let's try a credit union!  Okay so my next call was to DCU credit union.  They answered quickly and gave me everything that i wanted or needed to know.  The rep let me know that it would take about a week to get our account processed so we decided not to go with DCU, but offhandedly mentioned something that we did not know: to get a business account, we would need to be registered in our county/city/state as a business.  (Don't be mad at us, we were planning to get registered later down the line as our business became more serious)
     The last bank I called was TD.  I currently use them, and am pretty satisfied with them despite the lack of locations around our city.  I called and was again impressed by their customer service and the rep let me know that if we went into a location and filled out the appropriate paperwork (again with the necessary business ID) we would be able to have our account created and available in about 20 minutes time.  Unlike the other banks though, TD has a $8 monthly maintenance fee with their most standard business account, but is free for the next tiered account as long as there is a minimum of $1500.  We decided with their good customer service and late closing hours, we would pay their $8 month fee to take on an account with them.
     Arriving at the post office, we found that we needed proof of residency which we did not have as we are both living under our parent's roofs, so we have to get this sorted out as well.
     We looked up the cost and steps needed to become registered at City Hall.  It would cost us $65 which was not too big of a deal, but the kicker was that City Hall closed at 4 pm and again, we had work.  Another pothole.  Then the biggest pothole stems from the fact that I would be enjoying my vacation next week so wouldn't be available to sign for a business registration, bank account, or a P.O. box.  This would delay things further.
     In the end we stumbled along many many potholes, but came out more prepared for it.  Although it may take at least a week longer than our proposed launch date, we're still going to continue editing the site and doing everything else in the mean time.

P.S. - We aim for a launch between 8/27-8/29 so if you're still reading and following us by then be prepared to be wowed!
P.P.S. - Stay tuned and we'll give a way two coupon codes that will give you 50% off your first purchase!

To Do List Summary (Step by step)
- register at city hall as an LLC (limited liability company) or partnership
- open up bank account with our newly acquired business ID
- pay for and open up a P.O. box
- keep on keepin' on


Visit us when we launch around 8/28 at siftee.me
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