How to (Not) Start a Business

Starting a business can be difficult, confusing, and overwhelming.

It doesn’t need to be and that is the frustrating part.

Before we discuss my idea, let’s take a quick jaunt of the past few years.

A (very) short history of Nerd Girl Industries

In the early days of the internet boom, I was teaching intro classes for the internet service provider I was working for. These were the days of dial-up and taking 20 minutes to download a single MP3 file. The digital world was big and overwhelming and who better than to teach how to navigate it than someone who worked in it?

Eventually, I moved into more challenging roles at larger companies with teaching became a major component of my day-to-day work life. As my education and career progressed, I started doing tech support for friends and family and writing best practice guides if someone needed a reference. People responded well to my endeavors (which is probably why I was constantly doing support) because I could explain things in clear language without the jargon and double speak of the nerd world.

(May I add I was doing this all for free? Not that I didn’t think what I was providing didn’t have value, rather, I didn’t think anyone would pay for my services! )

As I mentioned, with my background, experience, and knack for teaching, when I was laid off in the fall of 2023, Mr. Lisa thought it was a good idea to turn what I was offering for free into a business.

It starts with an idea

So, what exactly does Nerd Girl Industries do and why would that make it a suitable business model?

When deciding what to services to provide, we looked at what I was already doing such as content strategy, WordPress migration, keyword research, social media management, and more. I knew that social media managers existed but I was offering more than that. I dug deep online to see if others were offering similar services, and if so, how much were they charging.

Turns out there is a market for my expertise, but I needed to narrow down my offerings to be cohesive as a brand.

How do I do this?

Choosing my services

I originally started offering social media management services without content creation. I created my own calendars, content strategy guides and audits, and more. I kept up with industry news. I knew that what I knew was the latest information and that could help someone.

But in order to sell that service, I decided to volunteer one service to a group/person to fine tune my process and get a recommendation. A writer’s group I was a member of had a call out for social media person and viola!

(Recommendations are the lifeblood of any service, company, or product. I knew by showcasing recommendations on my website that it would cement my expertise level.)

I put in a lot of hard work for that group’s social media and blog. I updated the tags and categories, created a schedule, solicited content from members, and in short, turned their digital presence into a more active and vibrant community.

The president of the group was so thrilled, she had no problem writing me a glowing recommendation. (Thanks Leslie!)

After about six months of managing the digital presence of the writers’ group, the president asked if I was willing to teach a workshop on the topic? Since I loved teaching, and I could make money from it, I agreed!

Thanks to her, I screwed up the courage to approach other writers’ groups, conferences, non-profits, and small businesses. I started with that one workshop and by the end of 2025, I had created and taught ten different workshops from social media to getting your books into libraries and bookstores.

(And for 2026, I’ve booked nearly 30 workshops and it’s not even the end of February!)

Word spread and people started approaching me to teach for them rather than just me cold emailing. I started selling my slide decks on the side since many people didn’t want to attend the workshop but wanted the information. Not a problem.

As the workshops took off, I started looking at other avenues outside of writers’ groups where my workshops would be of some value. I signed up with SavvyAuthors and Indie Author Training to teach with plans on presenting the workshops on my own to control date, time, pricing, and structure.

Now the hard part!

With all of this going on, it all sounded positive. Word was getting out about my services, I was booking workshops and selling products online. I was doing a lot to sell the business, but the administrative side? No fecking clue!

I researched with simple queries like “how to start a business” and it got overwhelming fast. Consultants and “experts” in the field would give partial answers but would provide more if you coughed up money. Then there was the registering myself with the state. Am I LLC? S-Corp? Something else? Did I need a business license? What about banking and legal issues? How do I handle taxes? What’s an EIN and did I need one? How do I handle paying myself?

The list went on and on.

I conned a friend who is also an solo business owner about what he did to begin his business and we started setting up regular virtual coffee klatches. Every couple of months, we get together and I bombard him with questions and he would lay out what he did and how it worked. He was pretty straightforward that it took him a few years to get his head around running his own business before he went full time as self-employed.

I decided to write an ongoing series about my experiences starting a business with the hopes it will bring clarity to people’s questions, provide guidance, and take the frustration and confusion out of the equation

As a librarian, I’m a big proponent that information shouldn’t be hoarded or siloed. It should be easily available and accessible.

Hence, this blog series was born.

The series will be ongoing with a post dropping at least once a month. I’ll cover everything I’ve mentioned above and more.

Thanks for coming along with me on this ride and I’ll see you soon!