Creating Your Business Image
One thing that you will want to start and continue to do from day one in your business is create and portray a professional image. Anyone, be it an individual or a business, that you come in contact with should feel that they are dealing with a professional, well established business.
With the enormous advances made in the home office and computer industries, it is increasingly within nearly anyone's reach to obtain professional equipment at a cost that will not put you in debt forever. I will not get into names or make and model numbers because by the time you read this those names could be things of the past. With computers, this could happen in a week or two. Call stores and ask questions about computers, printers, copy machines, fax machines, scanners and software or whatever can be used to run a business. By all means go into the stores and have the salesperson with the most knowledge of the equipment demonstrate it for you. Once you have done this a few times, you will start to get a knowledge of the equipment, its' features and the prices. From there you can make some intelligent purchasing decisions.
Don't disregard your local classified publications. Many times people buy something that they never use, or just use a few times. Then they realize that they don't need or want it. You can usually get these items for well below store cost. Several times you will also come across an office that is upgrading their equipment and selling the old equipment at a severely discounted price to make room for the new stuff.
Now don't let all this talk of buying equipment scare you. You don't need to buy anything yet. Or ever for that matter. There are several people that have started out in this business who didn't even have a typewriter in the beginning. You can easily begin without owning any office equipment.
There should be plenty of local printers and print shops in your area that can do all of your printing needs inexpensively. Call as many as possible and compare their prices. We will get more heavily into printing later on in the book. Right now we are talking about a proper business image. And a proper, professional business consists of a good, quality logo to go with the business name. Check with a graphics designer or your local print shop. You may even want to go to your local college. Many times you can get one of the students to do it for free as one of their class projects.
Once you do get your logo, you will want to have envelopes and stationery printed up. This way when you start your correspondences with businesses or people in your mailings, you will look professional. You won't need tons up front maybe just 500 or 1,000. Just get ready to use them.
Now let's go get you some DJ equipment. |
