The day passed virtually unnoticed for me, but, yesterday, my company officially turned one. I’m basing that on when I got my Nevada State Business license. There are other ways to measure it, but this seemed appropriate. So, what did I do over the last year?
Well, I
- Filed my state business license
- Filed my county business license
- Filed my city business license (for Sparks and Reno)
- Obtained an antiquities permit from the Nevada State Museum
- Obtained a Cultural Resource Use Permit from the NV BLM
- Researched and cold called 20 companies
- Bought a domain name
- Started a website
- Got a PO box
- Joined ACRA
- Joined the Geological Society of Nevada
- Joined the Nevada Mining Association
- Called 20 more companies
- Stole my first job from my last company
- Started a business bank account
- Set up Quickbooks for accounting
- Bought Dropbox space for total cloud storage
- Called 20 more companies
- Started the CRM Archaeology Podcast
- Connected with others on Linked In and got two more jobs
- Got a small job from a big company
- Wrote the report for my second project from a campsite at Yellowstone
- Set my company up in Dun and Bradstreet for my DUNS number
- Set DIGTECH up in SAMs
- Connected with BLM contracting officers
- Connected with a few companies for teaming
- Helped develop an archaeology recording application (still in progress!)
- Did about $10,000 in business
- Spent about $17,000 (you do the math)
- Bought a chair from Ikea (hello Markus)
- Set up professional liability insurance
- Set up worker’s comp insurance
- Set up general business insurance
- Called 20 more companies
- Optimized Linked In and Website for best search engine optimization (SEO)
- Received a random call from a company looking for cell tower work because my SEO was effective!
- Wrote a book
- Published a book (out this April from Left Coast Press)
And most importantly,
- Never lost focus
- Remained optimistic
- And I’m looking forward to Year Two.
Thanks for reading and I’ll hopefully be hiring you soon!