zen business

Instructional Entrepreneurship in a Pandemic

With the rise in popularity that social media platform TikTok received in 2020, I stumbled more and more into the business side of the platform. When I first joined TikTok, the attraction was the thirst traps, dancing, and lip-syncing videos. I began wasting my time being sucked into the vacuum of endless consumption of entertaining videos much like the beginning of other social media outlets. By June 2020, I had consumed and liked enough videos about business and entrepreneurship that I put my foot down about taking action myself on business interests. Even though in the wake of the pandemic which started to affect me in late February, my job was considered essential and I kept up with the demands of providing services to children who no longer had school services during the day. I came to a decision that I would work on creating other streams of income for myself in the stay-at-home environment. I went ahead and started my own limited liability corporation (LLC). Relentless Advance became an LLC in Wisconsin.

I ended up doing some research on different platforms that could assist me in forming my business and making sure that all of the necessary paperwork was submitted to the state and federal departments. LegalZoom was an option and maybe due to them being the biggest platform, I read many different reviews on their services. Eventually I settled on Zen Business and possibly due to some affiliate marketing of other TikTok users but it worked out in the end. Zen Business seemed like a good alternative to LegalZoom. Any of the several legal platforms are going to charge for the various tasks needed to set up the business and Zen Business gave me everything I needed without giving me the run around. In hindsight, I probably didn’t need the extra service of having them be the registered agent as someone who can handle mail that is important for legal notices and serving papers for lawsuits. Being a noob in how to setup a business, reading the requirement of having a registered agent and knowing my current work hours, I fell for the service pitch of adding that fee onto my initial yearly costs. In the next cycle of paying for services, I will make myself my own registered agent, as I also went ahead and paid another service to be my official mailing address in the likelihood that I will start selling products on a Shopify store.

It took a bit more effort to figure out how to get a business bank account started when I was not entirely sure what category my business idea fit into; there was not really a category for blogging and freelancing. After having switched from a credit union credit card to a Chase rewards cashback card, I thought the best option was to get a Chase business checking account. Unfortunately, with the application, the questions did not allow for a clear picture of what my business plan was trying to achieve. Before finishing the online application, the algorithm told me that I was ineligible to open a Chase business account. This was frustrating because I like my cashback rewards card and wanted to keep the two accounts within the same institution. The next bank I tried to apply with was US Bank. Fortunately, US Bank asked me more questions about my business plans as well as my current professional occupation. Perhaps relying more on the fact that I hold a stable personal occupation was the reason that US Bank decided to approve my account application. There is one hiccup when it comes to US Bank and it occurs when using the mobile app. I am not able to schedule money transfers on the app and have to use my laptop to transfer money from my personal accounts to my business account. Also, the transfers often take several business days to go through which can be a hassle if I need the money to purchase needed supplies.

Check back to see more posts on how the business efforts are advancing! Do you have any tips for others on starting a business or an LLC?