Besides the aforementioned taxes, you may be required to pay these too:

• Sales Tax: Most states in America have their own defined sales tax rate. This is a tax that customers pay at the time of purchase of goods or services. The business owner is then responsible for both collecting and reporting these taxes to their state and local government. 
• Excise Tax: Some goods and services are privy to being taxed, but it doesn’t get passed on to the consumer. Instead, it comes in the form of an excise tax, as with cigarettes, liquor and gas, for example. 
• Payroll Tax: Even if you don’t have employees, you will have to pay a payroll tax. For sole proprietorships earning more than $400 in net earnings, it’s just called the self-employment tax (see above). If you have hired employees, then you have payroll tax withholdings and obligations. From an employee’s wages, you have to withhold federal taxes and FICA taxes (a 6.2 percent Social Security tax, a 1.45 percent regular Medicare tax (and a 0.9 percent Medicare surtax when the employee earns over $200,000).
• Property Tax: When you own a commercial property, you will have to pay property tax to the city or county in which the property is operating. 

It’s no Denzel Washington movie when it comes to training day. Once you’ve recruited the perfect new addition for your team, you’ll have to invest resources like time, money and effort into preparing the new hire for their role. Training actually turns out to be one of the most expensive pieces of the new hire process. 

You could and should think of training as an investment. You are putting money upfront to hopefully reap dividends in the future, if all goes according to plan. On average, the cost of training a new hire is just north of $1,200 per employee. This number is calculated by quantifying the hard materials cost, as well as the time it takes a manager and fellow employees to get the new hire ready to go (to the point of 100% capacity).

No matter your reason for starting a home-based business, there are some tips and steps that look the same for every at-home entrepreneur. From the inception of the idea to marketing the new business to the world, you’ll want to touch base on each of the following steps in your process of building. 

1. Brainstorm Ideas: After checking in with your localitlie’s business registration restrictions, it’s best to start by brainstorming various ideas for your business. You can run a salon, daycare, e-commerce business, service-based business like tutoring or another type of business from home. 

2. Combine Talent and Skills: The optimal way to go when deciding upon the business you’ll run from home is to pick something that combines both your talents and skills. This will help to ensure you are passionate about the work you will be performing day in and day out. Some people have the education and experience they already need to run a business from home. If you have more to learn, don’t be afraid to take online certification classes, attend trade school, rely on a mentor, read books or ask people in your network questions. 

3. Funding: Like any type of business, you’ll have to have funding to get it off the ground. There are a variety of kinds of funding methods you can rely on for capital. Some of the most popular funding methods include: business line of credit, merchant cash advance (particularly fitting for commerce businesses even if you have bad credit), small business loan, or crowdfunding. While it is sometimes possible for a startup to self-fund, it requires extra disposable income or being okay with going into debt. However, if you are confident you will be making sales as your business gets up and running, then a merchant cash advance can give you quick funding upfront for a promise of a portion of your future credit card sales for repayment. 

4.Write a Business Plan: Running a business requires planning and organization. Writing a business plan can help you stay on track to achieve your goals. It is also a necessary piece of documentation to have if you plan to apply for business loans or investment. A business plan typically includes: an executive summary, financial planning, marketing strategy and a budget. 

5.Separate Personal and Business Finances: Importantly, you’ll want to separate your personal and business finances, especially when working from home. A lot of your personal life and work life will overlap when it’s all taking place in the same location. As such, it’s even more important to separate your finances. This begins with opening a separate business bank account and tracking business expenses separately from what you spend personally. 

6. Insure the Business: Whether you rent or own your home, you will likely already have renter’s or home insurance. When you open a business in your home, you should ensure that you have the right home-based business insurance protection. This typically requires both general liability insurance and professional liability insurance. You could even want a Business Owner’s Policy (BOP), depending on what industry you’ll operate in. 

7. Understand Tax Deductions: Business owners who work from home can claim tax deductions for certain portions of the business activities that take place inside their home. For example, you can deduct a portion of your rent (based on the percentage of space you use for your “home office”), utilities, repairs, maintenance and real estate taxes. 

8. Create Your Business Identity: Once you have all your financial plans and logistics figured out, you can get into the fun work of building your brand. With enough brand awareness, people will hopefully be able to recognize your logo and know what your business is. To get to this ideal place, you must begin with creating your business’ assets, which include: a logo, typography, color palette, packaging, a business website, and marketing materials, to name a few. 

9. Designate a Workspace: You’ll want to designate a workspace inside your home that is dedicated to the business. For some, this means having an office or studio for work. For others, it may be cornering off a part of your living room for business activities. It doesn’t matter how big the space is – the importance is being able to step into it and knowing you’ll be productive. It’s also nice to be able to limit distraction in this portion of the home so you can set your work hours when you’re spending time in that location. Again, this also will play a role in your tax deductions as you can accurately estimate the square footage used for the business versus living. 

10. Get the word out: After you’ve set up all the behind-the-scenes factors to ensure your business can run smoothly (i.e. finances, funding, brand identity, etc.), you can step into the spotlight! Oftentimes, this is one of the hardest parts of any business. Building your brand and marketing your value will entail preparation, funds, and time. While you can do it alone, it’s recommended to rely on experts in respective fields like social media, paid advertising, SEO, influencers and the like. If you can commit to providing a product or service of quality with great customer service, then word of mouth can become your best and most useful tool for marketing. 

Once you have funding for your business, the next step is allocating where and how you will spend the capital.

Don’t ignore marketing. More specifically, invest in marketing!

It’s usually a hard pill to swallow because you won’t be able to see the results right away. 

But, once you are up and running, you’ll see the ROI. Some aspects of marking you should familiarize yourself with include: 

• Organic traffic from search: Once again, SEO plays a role here. You can grow your organic traffic from being ranked highly in search engine results. This will take time to build and requires some expertise in understanding keywords. You’ll want to implement keywords in your website copy and your blog posts to maximize their benefits. 

• Social media: Social media gives you the opportunity to build your following organically or through paid advertising. Running social media accounts is timely, but it can pay off, especially as social media platforms integrate more with e-commerce platforms. It’s another channel to boost brand recognition, gain a loyal customer base and push products. 

• Content strategy: Running an online business comes with having a content strategy. Content can be in the form of the written word, webinars, videos and more. Whatever content you choose to produce, it should have a measurable goal in mind. You may be looking to boost brand awareness or drive sales. Your strategy will depend on your goals. Additionally, you’ll want your brand tone of voice to be consistent because your brand has a personality. Consistency is key when content is king. 

• Email marketing: For any online retailer, email marketing plays a major role in keeping customers engaged and up-to-date on offerings. It’s best practice to employ an email marketing automation tool to manage drip email marketing campaigns. Along with audience development and segmentation, your email marketing will act like your silent salesperson. 

• Data-based decision making: Above all, everything marketing related should be measurable. This is so you can quantify your ROI and allocate funding according to what is giving you the most bang for your buck, as they say. There are marketing agencies that can do this for you, but you can also leverage software tools and systems to help you keep track of your key performance indicators (KPIs). 

In today’s age, word of mouth is the biggest marketing agent. People look to the internet for customer reviews first, using platforms such as Yelp, Facebook, and other online forums. For this reason, customer service and satisfaction are critical. Utilizing free social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Yelp can build your clientele as well as your credibility tremendously. They are also ways to engage with your customers and provide quality customer service.

You’ll need a basic website to direct your customers to, even if it just states the minimum about your company: who you are, your mission, contact information, and product or service details. Email subscription is another great way to keep your customers up to date on products, services, and anything else going on at your company. You can also add news and other updates about your company to invoices that are emailed to customers.  

There are many free ways to market your product or service, but you’ll also want to set aside a marketing budget for some paid advertising, which will definitely increase your visibility. 

When it comes to your business and money management, there are a lot of financial statements to keep track of. As a small or midsize business owner, prioritize the following documents: 

• Cash flow: Cash enters and leaves businesses like water flows – swiftly and endlessly. Even if you’re running a profitable business, you must ensure that you have enough cash on hand at any given time (i.e. money in the bank). You can get cash from sales, loans, cash advances, asset sales, etc. Your cash flow statement shows you the inflow of revenue and outflow of expenses in a specific time period. Cash flow statements tend be generated monthly or quarterly. 

• Balance sheet: Your balance sheet is one of the most important financial statements your business will have at any given point in its existence. A balance sheet serves as a snapshot of your business’ overall health because it reflects the assets, liabilities and equity you have. It’s used to calculate your business’ net worth. It needs to be maintained for accuracy because it becomes a regulated document for public companies. 

• Income statement: An income statement is also known as a profit and loss statement. It shows your business’ revenues and expenses from the year (which are then used to calculate your net profit of loss). Income statement can help monitor your business growth over time.
  
  

• Revenue forecast: Revenue forecasts are a look into the future based on data from the past. Revenue forecasts help to predict how much money your business will bring in so you can assess what you can afford to do now and set budgets.

Regardless of where you are in your small business journey, these tips have been practiced by those who have made it in business. Always remember why you got started in the first place. If you can continue to apply your knowledge, skills and allocate funding wisely, then you will be able to build your business with each day!