Below is an excerpt from our book Startups Made Simple: How to Start, Grow and Systemize Your Dream Business. Learn more about the book here.  

Great founders typically have a very clear vision of how their business, product, or service should work, how their clients perceive and interact with their business, and include details on how the product looks and feels. Many founders work very hard on perfecting and even micromanaging the user experience from beginning to end and I believe this can pay huge dividends. You can truly tell when you’re doing business that has a founder who cares about these things, usually from the moment you go into their business location or visit their website. 

If there’s a disconnect between a founder and the average employee, it’s because many times an employee just doesn’t “get it” in regards to creating a truly great client experience and having high standards (especially if the founder has not communicated the importance of that to the team). This is why I see a lot of people quit companies and start their own company; they have higher standards than their former boss or manager and believe they can definitely do it better. 

The average employee may not understand that misspellings and bad spacing/formatting on website, emails, or marketing material are bad and reflect poorly on the business. Why broken signs, dirty bathrooms, and dirty counters look terrible and indicate sloppy management. Why the company name “DeBeers” is written properly and “Debeers” is not. Details matter. 

Try to find any of the above-mentioned issues on anything that Apple does from their website to their retail stores to their emails; it simply doesn’t happen, and that’s because Steve Jobs made the user experience an obsession. If your employee doesn’t understand why a misspelling or dirty counter is a huge deal, then that person needs proper training or needs to work somewhere else with lower standards. You usually know you have a superstar employee if they start noticing things that would drive you crazy and pointing them out, or better yet, fixing them. 

If something in your business is allowed to go below your standards and is not fixed or noticed by anyone, then you actually have set a new standard whether you intended to or not. If employees have noticed it and have not done anything, then that’s even worse, and you need to take action to make sure your standards are known and clear. 

How to Build a Great Product or Service 

1. Focus on good design. Whether you have good taste in design or need to hire a good designer for your product, focusing on good design is usually step one in building a great product. Note that designing a great process or service is design as well.
2. Have written standards. If how you expect things are not known, then how will your team know? Write these down as policies, procedures, and even core value or mission statements. See Step 5 for more on this. 
3. Experience it yourself. Actually use your own product or service like a client would (or have a friend or family member do this) and make sure you want to use your product (it’s a big warning sign if you don’t want to). Make this a regular habit and fix anything below your standards. 
4. Have a roadmap. Write down exactly how your customer experiences your product, and examine the process from beginning to end for ways to simplify and improve the experience. Centralize and prioritize feature requests and improvements so you know where the product is going. 
5. Focus on the customer. Be focused on the customer and what they want, not on what you want or what your competition is doing. Watch competitors, yes, but keep your focus on your customer and you can’t lose if you listen to them and meet their needs. Keep a list of client feedback or complaints and fix the issues one by one. 
6. Provide superior service. This is almost always the easiest differentiator when starting out, especially if your product or service is not up to your standards yet. You may not be able to offer a great product or low prices, but you can hustle on service. The advanced version of this is to build a product so great or intuitive that it doesn’t require much service or that clients can self-service. 

This was an excerpt from our book Startups Made Simple: How to Start, Grow and Systemize Your Dream Business. Learn more about the book here or see our previous excerpts here.

If you’re reading this then you’re either interested in starting your business, or you’ve started one already but found that you built yourself a job, not a business.

You might have read books and articles about genius entrepreneurs building multi-billion dollar businesses, going public with an IPO, and escaping off into the sunset. 

But that’s not you. 

Instead, you want to build a business so your wife can stop working.

Maybe you want a business that gives you time to spend with your kids.

Maybe you’re just tired of your day job and want to build something on the side that gives you more fulfillment.

You’re in luck. 

The books in this article will teach you to think like an MBA, even if you’ve never taken a business class in your life. You’ll learn how to start, market, and scale a business, even if you’re still working a day job. And most importantly, you’ll learn about different kinds of business that others have already built so you have a roadmap for your own journey.

Let’s get into it.

The Foundation of a Successful Small Business

1. The Four Steps to the Epiphany by Steve Blank

This is the best step-by-step startup book you can read. The book organizes the beginning stages of building a business. It talks about knowing your values, being market-driven, focusing on customer development versus product development, and how to go mainstream by making products for early adopters first.

2. Great by Choice by Jim Collins

This book tackles the question of, “Are successful companies just lucky or are there replicable patterns they follow?” 

Centered around the tenets of discipline, calibrated creativity, and a healthy sense of paranoia, the book teaches you how to create a foundation for your business that will let it thrive amidst uncertain environments.

3. Good to Great by Jim Collins

If you’ve ever wondered what separates good companies from the ones that are truly great, then this book holds the answers. Concepts in the book, like the Hedgehog Concept and the Flywheel, show you the qualities and mindsets you need to cultivate in yourself and in your employees to build a company that lasts.

4. Purple Cow by Seth Godin

This book is about how you and your business can stand out… And how to handle the risk that comes with being different. You’ll learn about creating remarkable products and services, and identifying the first few customer-slash-evangelists who will excitedly tell the world about your business

How to Start a Successful Small Business

5. The Personal MBA by Josh Kaufman

You should read this book if you think you need an MBA to build a successful business (spoiler alert: you don’t). You’ll learn to ask the hard questions that will help you make the right decisions so your business succeeds. You’ll build a framework for business decisions like getting outside funding, vision, marketing, negotiation, and collaboration.

6. The E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber

Coupled with The Personal MBA, this book is for anyone who is great at what they do and now wants to build a business around that expertise. You’ll learn about the nitty-gritty operations side of the business: how to plan for growth from day one, what to put in place so that you’re building a business and not a job for yourself, and how to (eventually) find and train people to run your business for you.

7. The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss

If you want to build a business and not another job for yourself, then you need to be intentional about this from the beginning. This book will teach you how to redefine why and how you work, help you eliminate as much busy-work from your plate as possible, and prepare yourself for entrepreneurship — even if you’re still at your day job.

8. The Lean Startup by Eric Ries

Building a successful business is simple but difficult. It’s not about how fast you grow. It’s not even just about how much revenue you make. Instead, it’s about finding a profitable business model that can stand the test of time. 

In this book, you’ll learn the right and wrong reasons to start a business. You’ll learn how to test to make sure your business idea is profitable before you release your product. And you’ll also learn how to bake marketing into your product so that it sells itself. 

9. Zero to One by Peter Thiel

The most difficult stage of building a business is taking it from 0 sales and customers to the first ones. That’s much harder than going from 1 to 2. In this book, you’ll learn why successful founders tend to be weird oddballs, the sequence you need to follow if you want mass-market success, and the 7 crucial questions you need to ask yourself before you start your business.

How to Find Your First Customers for Your Small Business

10. This Is Marketing by Seth Godin

This is the best high-level marketing book you can read. Good marketing is about painting a story about how your business can help your customer improve their life. And This is Marketing gives you a framework for the marketing strategies and tactics that you’ll learn in other books.

11. Blue Ocean Strategy by W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne

Stop trying to be better. Just try to be different.  This is the main premise of this book — and it’s the most important positioning concept you need to learn in a world of commodities and choice. The book teaches you to be different, to carve out category or niche (blue ocean) and to stop seeking out crowded markets (red oceans).

12. Tribes by Seth Godin

The health of your business is dependent on the audience or tribe you built around the change you’re trying to make. Tribes is a short book that goes into detail on how communities start and thrive, and how you can start, nurture, and build a tribe around your work.

13. Show Your Work! by Austin Kleon

If you subscribe to the “build it and they will come” model of marketing, then you’re in for a rude awakening. These days, your marketing needs to start as soon as (or even before) you build your product. This book shows you how you can start documenting the process of building your business… So that when you finally launch, you won’t launch to crickets; you’ll have people who are eager to buy.

14. Traction by Gabriel Weinberg and Justin Mares

If you want a systematic way to grow customer demand as early as possible, then you need to read this book. It runs you through the 20 possible channels you can take to find customers, and with ‘The Bullseye Method’, teaches you how to systematically test each one until you find the ones that give you the most bang for your buck.

How to Grow and Scale Your Small Business

15. Company of One by Paul Jarvis

This book is about perspective and priorities — how “successful” doesn’t have to mean big, and how ‘“staying small” might actually be a better definition of success for your business. You’ll learn to focus on the people who are working in the business (for a small business, that’s probably just you) and the two things you should emphasize to build a successful small business.

16. Small Giants by Bo Burlingham

This book is for business owners who want to keep control of their company. You’ll learn why staying private might be a good idea in this time of high growth, IPOs, and unicorns. You’ll also learn what it means to be community-focused as a company, both internally and externally, so that you grow without outside funding.

17. Work the System by Sam Carpenter

If you’re reading this, then it’s likely you struggle with perfectionism and control — two common traits that entrepreneurs share. More than just learning to build systems, this book will teach you how to let go of perfection and focus on controlling the parts of your business that you can change.

If you want to learn how to scale a business without making a job for yourself, then this book is for you. 

18. The Effective Executive by Peter Drucker

As a business owner, you have to wear a lot of hats and that can get overwhelming. In this book, one of the history’s foremost thinkers on business and management helps you take your effectiveness and efficiency to the next level by asking, “Is this decision even worth making?” 

You’ll learn why and how to delegate based on strengths and not weaknesses, how to make decisions when you have to, and why holding longer decision-making meetings might actually save you more time down the road.

19. The 80/20 Principle by Richard Koch

Whether it’s dealing with toxic customers, having too many business ideas, or just having too much on your plate, entrepreneurs are constantly stretched thin. The main premise of this book — that the largest share of your results is produced by just a small fraction of the work — helps you simplify your professional (and personal) life.

By focusing only on the 20% of products and customers that actually drive your business, you’ll spend more time on the most important tasks, instead of managing your time.

20. Startups Made Simple by Matt Knee

Drawing from his experience running an INC5000 company, Matt helps entrepreneurs start and run their businesses. In this book, he distills lessons from the best business thinkers and books (including ones from this list) and organizes it into a step-by-step system you can follow to start and grow your own business.

Next Steps

Did we miss one? Let us know in the comments!

Below is an excerpt from our book Startups Made Simple: How to Start, Grow and Systemize Your Dream Business. Learn more about the book here.  

Very closely related to Clear Vision is how you will reverse engineer your Vision into Clear Goals, concrete action steps that need to be taken to turn that Vision into reality. This is where most visionaries drop the ball and remain in the thinking part, not the doing part.

In a well-run company, not only is there usually one big, obvious goal (called a “Big Hairy Audacious Goal” or BHAG®️ made famous in the book Good to Great by Jim Collins), but you should have realistic (but aggressive) yearly and quarterly goals that you’re looking to accomplish that moves your company forward to that big goal. Each employee should have an individual goal and that’s usually (but not always) tied to the company goal. 

For example, let’s say my Vision was to build the next “LinkedIn for Businesses” platform and my BHAG was to have 1 million businesses on my platform by 2029. Here’s how I might quickly brainstorm and reverse engineer the steps to make that goal. Note that these are just wild guesses and things will change each year or even quarter.

1. Write specifications for beta version of website 
2. Design mockup and logo for website
3. Get a marketing list of 1,000 random small businesses of all types for testing
4. Build and test website 
5. Invite marketing list for free beta signup and to provide feedback 
6. Interview 10 users a week and build around their biggest feature requests 
7. Launch “Invite my Address Book” functionality 
8. Reach 10,000 signups 
9. Launch targeted ads and newsletter functionality 
10. Reach $10,000 in monthly revenue 
11. Launch “Message my Business” functionality 
12. Launch mobile app
13. Launch national digital advertising campaign 
14. Reach 100,000 signups 
15. Launch “Recommended Vendor” functionality 
16. Reach $100,000 in monthly revenue 
17. Reach 250,000 signups 
18. Launch premium membership option
19. Launch national radio advertising campaign 
20. Reach 500,000 signups 
21. Launch national TV advertising campaign 
22. Reach 1 million signups 

Based on that very rough list of possible goals to get to our BHAG, you can close in on the likely goals you’ll need for the next year or so and then further break down those goals by quarter. So you’ve taken a long term vision and now have a solid sense of what needs to get done in the next year. Now break down what needs to happen this year by quarters, make them measurable and assign them to a responsible person (likely yourself at first). 

The important thing is to have the vision and general roadmap to getting there and adjust along the way. With this example, I know I need to get working on the specs and design for my website right away. Finally, assigning deadlines (even if those are guesses) to your goals is a very effective way to encourage their completion and add a sense of urgency to getting them done. 

A frequent question I get is, “When am I supposed to find the time to work on goals while I’m busy working in my business?” The obvious answer is that building your business should already be based on clear goals, but if not, then you should make a roadmap like I’ve listed above. As I discuss in the section on the superpower of Productivity, there is Real Work and there is Process Work. Process Work is the stuff you do daily to provide your product or service. Real Work is working on Goals and things that move the company forward.

If your vision and BHAG are big, then realize you’ll never get there doing the Process Work all day. I recommend you brainstorm goals yearly and assign goals each quarter to individuals and make sure they are measurable. We’ll go into more specifics about creating a plan for your company in later chapters, especially Step 5. 

This was an excerpt from our book Startups Made Simple: How to Start, Grow and Systemize Your Dream Business. Learn more about the book here or see our previous excerpts here.

You don’t need to be a United States citizen to sell on Amazon, but once you sell 50 or more items on the marketplace, you’ll need to have a proper tax id. However, if you’re selling through Amazon’s FBA (Fulfillment By Amazon) program then you’ll need to form a company in the United States before you get started. If you plan on selling more than 40 items per month then this is the most cost-efficient way to sell on Amazon. 

Requirements to Sell on Amazon

The Amazon marketplace is one of the most visited sites online today and is the industry leader for e-commerce sales. To sell things on Amazon you’ll be required to set up an Amazon account, provide a product feed to Amazon, or use their FBA program and send your products to an Amazon warehouse. There are legal requirements if you’re going to sell as a merchant that you’ll also need to be made aware of.

Regardless of the type of account you want to open, a non-citizen of the United States will typically have very similar requirements to citizens or residents of the country in order to sell on Amazon. These requirements, listed below, include obtaining your FEIN (Federal Employer Identification number). 

You don’t have to be a corporation to get your FEIN number and sell as an individual seller but it can be cheaper to register as a merchant, where you will need a registered business. If you’re not a resident of the United States then you’ll need the following information in order to register an FBA account, regardless of whether you’re selling as an individual or a business: 

• Your Home or Business Address: A place where you can receive personal mail. 
• Email Address: An address Amazon can send important information about your account.
• Credit Card: An internationally chargeable credit card with a valid billing address. 
• Phone Number: This will be needed to verify your identification during registration.
• United States Tax ID: Either a social security number (for individual sellers only) or an FEIN number. 
• Bank Information: You’ll need a bank that can take an ACH (automated clearing house) payment from Amazon. 

Additionally, if there are states where you have a tax nexus then it’s required for you to include your state tax id in all of those states. If you’re not residing in the country then this will only apply to any business dealings you may have in specific states for the business that will be selling on Amazon. 

If you have all of these pieces of information then you’ll meet the minimum requirements to sell on Amazon. You can move forward with registering your account at Amazon’s Seller Central. During the process, you’ll need to choose to either sell as an individual or as a merchant. Let’s take a look at the comparison. 

Selling as an Individual vs Merchant

If you’re going to be selling on Amazon then you’ll need to make sure you’re maximizing the amount of money you can make. Choosing the type of account you want to have on Amazon is part of this process. You can sell as an Individual and Amazon will charge you $0.99 per item sold plus referral and closing fees. 

You still have to pay those fees with a merchant account but instead of nearly $1 per item sold you’ll just pay $39.99 per month, regardless of how much you sell. So if you’re selling more than 40 items per month then you’ll likely want a merchant account, which requires your FEIN to register. 

Another option is to use Amazon Vendor Central if you’d prefer to be a vendor to Amazon’s products and their listings on the marketplace. As a vendor, you sell to Amazon and not to consumers through Amazon. While Amazon does the heavy sales lifting for their vendors, you’ll lose all control of pricing and placement. 

Fulfillment by Amazon

Another decision you’ll have to make during the registration process is whether or not you’ll want to use Amazon’s FBA option. This might be more difficult for non-U.S. based individuals and businesses. Essentially the program allows you to store your products in one of Amazon’s facilities where they’ll take care of all the order fulfillment and shipping for you. Additionally, the program allows your items to be put on Amazon’s Prime shipping program, which is the most used shipping feature on the Amazon marketplace. 

This is recommended for most businesses that sell a lot because it lowers your business operations and increases the amount of opportunity to get sales. You won’t have to worry about customer service or returns but you’ll have to get all of your products to Amazon in order to take advantage of the program. There are no additional restrictions to the FBA program based on where your business is primarily located. 

Once you’ve made these decisions then you’ll be able to register, either as an individual or business. Now let’s go over the requirements of registering a business in the United States for non-citizens and residents. 

Registering as a Business in the United States

Regardless of where your business is located, we recommend registering your business as a legal U.S. entity before applying to be a seller on Amazon if you plan on selling more than a few items per month. It’s a smoother process and the tax benefits of being a business could be beneficial for you. Plus, not only will registering as a business protect your personal assets but it typically makes the entire setup easier if you’re going to use FBA, and it’s required if you’re going to sign up as a merchant or a vendor. 

Luckily, you can easily register a business entity through the help of a third party that will draft and file all of the legal paperwork for you. All you need to determine is what type of business you want to create, as we discuss below, and who your registered agent is going to be. 

Getting a Registered Agent

Part of registering your business means getting a registered agent within the state your business is created. Most states require you to have a registered agent, which is a person or entity that can receive official legal notices and correspondence from the government. This is especially helpful and needed if you’re not a citizen or if you don’t reside within the country. 

Businesses routinely offer registered agent services to help businesses that do not have a physical address, in the event there is a legal notification to the business. Not selecting a registered agent could cause your business to fall out of good standing with your state, resulting in the business entity potentially being disbanded. 

Frequently Asked Questions About Selling on Amazon as a Non-US Citizen

There are many questions that you may have in regards to registering your business or selling on Amazon as a non-resident of the United States. Below we’ve collected the most common questions and answered them to help you quickly find the answer you need. 

How do I Open My Amazon Seller Account? 

Go to sellercentral.amazon.com and click the “Register Now” button. On the next landing page you’ll click the “start selling” button, which will prompt you to login to your Amazon account. If you already have an Amazon account of any kind you can use this login to access the seller services. However, we recommend creating a separate account from any personal uses of Amazon. 

You’ll then be taken through the steps of providing the information we discussed above to register your seller account. Once you’re verified you can start creating product listings and selling to the masses. 

How do I Get a FEIN Number if I Don’t Register a Business?

You can obtain your FEIN number by filling out Form SS-4, as provided by the IRS. You don’t need to have any legal status in the country in order to get this number. Once you have the number you can sell products on Amazon as an individual instead of registering your business. If you’re registering a business, then you should wait to get your FEIN through that process. 

What Types of Businesses Can Non-US Citizens Register When Selling on Amazon?

Currently, if you’re not a citizen or a resident of the United States you can only create two types of legal business entities: an LLC (limited liability company) or a C-Corp (or corporation). You can also create an S-Corp if you’re a permanent resident of the country, even if you’re not a citizen. 

There are many factors you’ll want to take into account when choosing between an LLC and a C-Corp. To learn more, check out our article on choosing the right business entity. 

Do I need a Visa to Register a Business in the U.S.? 

No, you don’t need a visa to register a business, however, the registration process doesn’t give you a right to travel to the country. This is why many foreign business owners choose to apply for a visa when they register for their business. The E-2 Visa is a common one applied to by startup business owners registering in the country for the first time. 

Register Today

You can get started with registering a business today so that you can sell on Amazon under an official business. The process only takes three steps and MyCompanyWorks will do all of the legwork to get your business registered and obtain your FEIN. Select the company type and state that you want to register in and get your the process of creating a business entity started immediately!

Below is an excerpt from our book Startups Made Simple: How to Start, Grow and Systemize Your Dream Business. Learn more about the book here. 

“Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare.” – Japanese proverb

Vision includes not only the ability to see things clearly into the future, but also how you envision your company, including an obsession with building a great product. Those with great vision can often think ahead to where they want to be and reverse engineer the steps needed to realize their vision, starting with their next logical step.

Superpower #5: Clear Vision

Having a big or clear vision is almost synonymous with being an entrepreneur. Whether you think big with your ideas or not, you more than likely have a pretty clear vision of what you want. You want to develop this skill as much as possible by thinking in a very detailed way. Walt Disney didn’t imagine your average county fair carnival when he imagined Disneyland; he dreamed up something magical. 

Don’t just think that you’ll have a cool business in a few years; instead, write the very specific details of what it looks like, how many employees you have, what the offices are like, what you do all day, and how you feel. Get excited about this, and then make sure you clearly communicate this vision to your team. That’s pretty much it for Vision. Think big, think clearly, and communicate this to everyone on your team. We’ll go over this much more in Step 1: Imagine it. 

The problem is that a lot of visionaries are procrastinators and are even worse if they think really big because they’re paralyzed by the enormity of their vision. This is why you must focus on one idea and make it a reality via execution, which we discuss in the next chapter and why Part Two has six distinct steps to take you from idea to a fully systemized business. 

This was an excerpt from our book Startups Made Simple: How to Start, Grow and Systemize Your Dream Business. Learn more about the book here or see our previous excerpts here.