Hey, tackle it here and welcome back to another episode today.

We're going to be talking about how to start and grow a small business.

And we're going to be talking to somebody somebody in their twenties who has found it and multi $1,000,000 business, a company.

And that person is going to help us get all started.

And Joe, what are you doing here?

I'm not talking about you, Gemma.

What you mean?

But it's my bedroom.

Well, maybe she go to sleep and gather.

Here, go the bet.

It's past your curfew time not talking about You even start a multi $1,000,000 business.

Yeah.

Here.

Crime in Dover.

Climate, climate.

Hey, climate.

Now Clement here has started and grown a very successful business in his twenties.

Clement is going to tell us all about how he got this started.

What were the logistics and how to practically get a business going and why it is so useful for young people to be starting small businesses.

He's going to take us all through the steps.

What was this business that you started and tell us all about it?

Our business is called Aldo expert after expert dot io.

It's basically targeted at software engineers who, like you and I who wantto prepare for their coding interviews, especially big tech companies, big startups.

And we provide curated questions like the ones you find these coating interviews and we give video explanations.

Those questions a coating workspace, etcetera, etcetera so you can go Aldo expert dot io slash tech lead If you want to check it out that's right.

You won't make sure you use co Tech lead.

Get this count.

Check him out now Starting a business sounds cool and we are here all the time.

We'll just start business.

Let's talk business.

I'm gonna start business.

But how exactly do you start a business?

What are the steps that you have to go through?

What are the challenges and how do you concretely get this off the ground?

Yeah, So the first step, I think, is coming up with the idea.

And to be honest, I think a lot of ideas can work.

It's just about finding a problem and then coming up with a solution to that problem and building it and executed.

And so in my case, I was prepping for coding interviews and I was using a bunch of resource is textbooks, websites, online, YouTube, Wikipedia.

And I thought, there's gotta be a better way.

That's how it came up with the idea.

That sounds simple enough.

Do you do it by yourself?

Do you have a cofounder?

You set up like a sea Do incorporate start partnership.

You can do it alone, I think.

Alone.

Isn't it tougher?

I ended up having a cofounder, so I contacted with my best friends who happens to be a software engineer is.

Well, I pitched him the idea, and he was on board, and we got it up and running.

So we had going with an l l C.

The reason being is that fit our needs.

The best we wanted from a tax point of youto have things be simple.

We want only be taxed once, right?

So no, Loc was good for us from that point of view.

A supposed toe corporation, for instance.

But we also wanted that limited liability that a partnership a general partnership won't.

Did you?

Yeah, that's right.

Because as I understand that you have a so proprietorship and that is where anyone can actually start business you just start making money, and that's a business already your sole proprietorship.

Now a step beyond that.

You can actually form a partnership, say, with multiple people.

But that's still pretty much acts very similar to like a sow proprietorship.

The level above that is you for my L C, which acts more like a corporation where you can pay yourself a salary, you get limited liability such that if anyone sues you, they don't have access to your personal assets is simply the companies standing alone on his own?

And then the company has its own bake account, its own Social Security number for tax purposes.

Everything is very separate, and then it's easier in a way to separate your business and personal expenses.

Now, how do you go about forming?

And Elsie?

Isn't it very complicated?

Aren't there officers of paperwork that you have to go through?

So it's a little bit complicated There few service is like a stripe.

Atlantis LegalZoom rocket lawyer that'll give you like service is to make the all see for you or help you along the way.

We ended up doing it ourselves, going to sort of like old fashioned red Oh, So you just filed all the paperwork on your own?

Yeah, we went to the State Department, and it'll that ourselves?

How complicated was that Doing your own?

It's intimidating, but not actually that complicated.

Okay, Interesting.

Now I have formed a few Elsie's myself as well.

And generally I just use the service.

Like Clement mentioned in.

That scenario is very simple and easy to get this all set up.

You just fill out online Web application press, submit one and don't get l.

C all set up for you.

What are the fees involved in the sea here?

So you haven't Inc fee?

It's escaping me right now, but it's roughly $202,000.

Something like that might very from status.

It's $100 in California.

And as I understand that you choose a state to incorporate in and then you can actually operate in any other state.

Yep.

Which state did you choose?

We'll have you in New York.

Just that Well, for us.

Okay, Cool.

Generally, I will actually register in Delaware, which is very well known for its business friendly laws.

And then you can operate as a foreigner business in other states.

Now we're now, once you have to say L c all set up, How did you find the company?

So we didn't need too much money at the beginning.

So we just put $2500 Eaks up front, me and my cofounder, and that was the company's been self sustaining ever since.

Did you ever have issues?

Truc of co founder?

I find that this a co founders are often almost like having a marriage because you get to work with the co founder so closely and you have to work out so many different issues.

How did you know that you could trust your co founder?

What would happen if your co founder decide to just stop working at some point?

This is where I totally agree.

I think choosing the right co founder is probably the most important thing you could do.

Me and my co founder are lucky in that we're very good friends, and we just have that crust.

On top of that, we have very complementary skill sets, and we also have a different sort of goals, so we don't overstep on each other and it just works out really beautifully were ableto work remotely, pretty seamlessly, with no personal issues, work issues, fighting someone who has a complimentary still set, it's probably gonna be the most important things because so that you it's actually useful to have multiple people and then probably just making so that you have open communication.

If you have open communication and trust, you will be able to work together, and you could maybe even be creative and set up things where you have to work a certain amount of time or produces an amount until you get your equity in the business.

So is your business purely online?

Do you have office space?

Yes, so we're purely online.

That means that we don't have an office space.

We can work remotely from wherever we are in a coffee shop on a beach if we want.

That's one thing that's really cool about the era that we live in, where we can build fully online businesses and not have toe deal with the difficulties of having a physical product, having tohave an office space or a warehouse or hold inventory.

Of course, not everyone has a luxury to do this.

Not everyone has a purely online business.

But you can have that these days.

Yeah, I think that's when the interesting thing when I was run the online business is actually allowed me to take time off work between jobs.

There wouldn't be like a huge resume gap, because I could say, Well, I'm working on this business.

You're in that time I could do some traveling during that time as well, and I just get more flexibility and freedom and what I'm doing while at the same time still being productive and living how I might choose to live.

I remember I would work from Hawaii sometimes, or work on cruise boats.

Now you're painting a really good picture of running your own business.

What are the cons of this?

What are the challenges of running the business?

Yeah, I think they're They're three big challenges, but in some sense, they are also positives.

If you like this, if you have that sort of entrepreneurial, it's the 1st 1 is there's a lot of work.

A lot of the work is gonna be stuff that you don't like.

Like, for instance, warming the LLC marketing.

I'm not the biggest fan of running ad campaigns and all that, but I have to do it.

Town's number two is that sometimes you're putting in all this work and you're not getting much in return.

Especially like in the earlier months, earlier years of your business you might not be making that lets you might be losing money, right?

That's a challenge to stay motivated.

And number three, this one is really critical.

It is that everything that goes wrong in the business is your fault.

Everything that goes wrong is your fault.

And even beyond that, if you do something wrong and you break something in the business, there's no one on the other side that's gonna be able to fix things when you're at a normal job and something goes wrong.

For instance, in software engineer, some system breaks, even if you don't know how to fix it.

You have this sort of mental peace that oh, some other expert here is gonna be able to fix it here.

That's not the case.

It's only me and my co founder.

And maybe you know one other person, so no one's gonna fix it for you.

You got to do it.

That's right.

You have to really be accountable and have a good work ethic.

I understand that It doesn't matter how much time you put in in the normal job.

It's just about putting in the hours and many times people would just go in and work, and they're not going to worry about being terribly productive all the time.

But when you're running on business, you really need to make sure that the effort that you put in translates into real impact into the bottom line and oftentimes, is not going to be something that you really enjoy doing.

Sometimes you're going to find out that all you want to do is maybe coat.

But it turns out that you know that marketing is going to be what your company really needs at this point.

And then you have to spend all your time studying about how to do Facebook advertising or instagram advertising or something like that.

That's a key thing like that, especially as as a software engineers, we have this tendency to want a code code code, want build.

Sometimes you gotta stop building and you gotta start maintaining, and this year over there, don't sneak up on me like that I hope you've enjoyed Part one of two of this interview for the stunning and epic conclusion to this interview head on over the Clements Channel is going to be great link in the description below, and I'll see you over there.