1: A Journey of 1,000 Miles Starts with a Single Step

Welcome to a new series on The Building Code Blog. After nearly 10 years in the fire protection engineering and code consulting world, I have decided to make the jump and start my own company! I've had countless conversations and internal monologues to get to this point, but actually putting it in writing here does feel good!

Starting a business is hard, or at least that is what I hear. According to the Small Business Administration, 20% of business started this year will fail within 12 months. 30% within 24 months and the numbers increase from there. While I can't predict the future, I certainly hope to not be in that camp 1, 2 or 10 years down the road. In recording my daily steps here on the blog, I'm hoping to (1) keep myself accountable to take action daily, even if something small and (2) provide a resource for future entrepreneurs, especially those in the engineering community.

Today, I took the first, and maybe biggest step - a business name. Introducing "Campbell Code Consulting LLC."

To register the LLC, I went through the surprisingly easy Maryland Business Express portal. About 2 minutes to create an account and another 5 to complete the registration.

Next, I purchased a domain name for a future website using Namecheap.com.

After these two steps, I made a list of future actions and tried to plot out the next few days. Here is a list of things I need to accomplish, ideally in the next week:

• Apply for an Employer Identification Number (EIN) with the IRS.
• Apply for a firm engineering license (Maryland and most states require licensure for a firm offering engineering services, along with the individual engineer performing the work. I'm already personally licensed, so just need to get the new business licensed).
• After getting the EIN, open a business checking account.
• Look into business liability insurance. My college buddy and fellow fire protection entrepreneur Dave mentioned an insurance broker he uses - need to get that contact info.

The LLC formation can take 7-10 business days, and I can't apply for the firm license until the business is formed. Hopefully Maryland approves the LLC in short order so I can get on with the other steps, but there are certainly some non-legal items on the list too:

• Register the domain name with a website provider - will likely use Weebly (same provided I use for the blog).
• Layout a simple, one-page website. Fancy websites are great, but at this point, I think most of my work will come in through direct client contact, not from people stumbling upon my website. Want to have a minimum functional site on Day 1, but can save more advanced website development for later.

That's it for today, looking forward to another day of progress tomorrow!

Resources Used Today:

• Businessexpress.maryland.gov
• Namecheap.com