Most startups don’t launch on time. That would… include us. 
But, a launch delayed by only one day… not too shabby. Today was an exercise in problem-solving, time management, schedule coordinating, details arranging– you name it.
The morning started off by getting the blog effort going. For principle 10– Think virally– we’d established accounts for The Hundred Dollar Business experiment on Facebook, MySpace, Gmail, WordPress, Delicious, Flickr, YouTube and more. (If you’re in our contact list & got suspicious-looking friend requests from 100dollarbusiness, please accept our apologies!)
On one hand, some of those services aren’t totally applicable, but they might come in handy, plus– they’re free. We did learn the other day that Facebook will distribute a “banner-ad flyer” to 10,000 BYU students for 1 day, for $5. I don’t know if everyone at BYU is staring down the Facebook ads all day, but if they are, that seems like a pretty cost-effective way to reach them.
Within a few hours of launching the blog, we’d been blogged about by local Ryan Byrd and had a pretty good day, traffic-wise, on the site.
And oh, the mountain of paperwork! DBAs, tax forms, bank forms, ID cards, two copies of the mall lease agreement, and that was only a part of it. We also have decided to use principle 7- “franchise” the business. This is especially critical as we have added potentially 2-3 more vendors to our pool of products, and have different detailed agreements with each company. We made vendor agreement forms and inventory checklists, to make sure we are keeping the nitty-gritty as clear and simple as possible. 
I’d also like to add, that up until this point, we hadn’t spent a thing from The Hundred Dollar Business’ $100 budget. I find this amazing– because like principle 3 says, “Money is the last thing needed to start a business.” It’s TRUE! It is really, really true. All of these transactions and opportunities had been established without spending anything. Of course, there are plenty of things we could have put money into along the way, but it ultimately wasn’t necessary.
Part of that, without doubt, is because of the nature of the experiment and the support of the business community. And on the other hand, I think often that entrepreneurs limit themselves either because they feel that their idea must first have huge monetary backing, or else that there are many overhead expenses that they need in order to launch a business. And those are both true and untrue.
It seems that ultimately, it’s what you’re doing with your total resources– not finances only. And we have been extremely lucky and had doors open right and left, which also does help quite a bit. Though, you have to work hard and see the doors as being openable, too.
Anyway, we did spend $22 for our DBA (gotta be all official!) and $4.96 for constructing/printing vendor agreement forms, and $2.55 for xeroxing the inventory checklists. But, to spend $29.51 to make our legal pathway smooth… pays for itself.
So, now we’re down to $70.49, and we’re moving into the mall tonight! And… I’m didn’t make the midnight bedtime. Again.
