When starting up a business, one of the main steps is to open up a business bank account in order to separate your personal finances from work finances. Many factors go into this decision such as monthly maintenance fees, minimum balance requirements, etc. In our quest to find the right bank to use, we ran into some issues.

First, it was nearly impossible to find a solid comparison of banks showing the pros and cons of their business accounts. I should be a little more specific, it was nearly impossible to find information on American banks. There are lists for European banks all over the place.

After a little googling and a lot of reading, we have decided to go with Washington Mutual. They are the one with the commercial with all the old bankers pissed at the young guy. Lame commercials, but good deals. They have a free business checking account with no minimum balance, no maintenance fees, no bullsh. Just what we need in order to get started. If anyone has any comments about the best banks for business, feel free to let us know.

Greenroots has recently acquired hugecrab.com, an novelty site dedicated to archiving evidence of huge crabs throughout the world. Really hilarious and definitely worth a look. We placed an ad for The Adventures of Nate Grace: Tucson Underground at the top, be sure to check it out.

We also now have an ad on the TorrentSpy website, you have to scroll down a ways, but it is there on the right side. Check it out.

These are just the beginnings of our marketing plan, we are working out the details as we go. This is our first venture and it is all very new and exciting, but at the same time, we make a lot of mistakes that we must learn from quickly. If anyone has any free/inexpensive marketing ideas they would like to share, feel free to shoot us an email.

This morning I woke up and went to the Tucson Underground website to find that our extras section was not loading. This is a huge deal for us as the majority of our updates throughout the week are loaded directly into this section.

Our entire website was created and designed by a company called Mindsmack based out of the east coast. We are based on the west coast. News reports and businesses are always talking about outsourcing, how much money it saves you, how flexible it allows your business to be, etc. It has been a very interesting learning experience to try and do business with people accross the country that I’ve never met face to face. However, as is true with all learning experiences, there have been many problems.

The major problem is that it is difficult to convey your ideas to someone over the phone or over the internet. You only have so much time and you can only say so much with words. I cannot even imagine trying to deal with companies who speak another language.

Two other problems I have experienced are time differences and really just a lack of understanding of what is going on “on the ground”, to use the military term. The time issue is obvious, I find issues with the site at 2pm and it is too late because it is 5pm on the east coast. As far as the situation on the ground, without being able to step into the office and see what is happening, it becomes difficult to know what is really being done.

This is by no means a criticism of Mindsmack. We have had a great experience with them and we would be nowhere without their help. As a first time entrepreneur, this is just one of the many obstacles that we must wrestle with on a daily basis. I am providing this example to perhaps help others to realize that while outsourcing sounds like a good idea, it has it’s fair share of pains.