When it comes to getting business credit, its important to setup your business properly so that you are setup right from the start and don’t have to worry about doing anything later. Setting all this up will allow you to get business credit under the EIN of an entity vs being under your name. It all starts with setting up the business so you can get your Dun & Bradstreet number which will allow you to build up a D&B Paydex score.

That being said, it would seem that since Covid, a lot of the things shared on this list that USED to be cold hard facts with these institutions have softened up and they aren’t as strict as they used to be. For example, business email, phone number and location used to be hugely important pre-covid and you 100% couldn’t use a PO box or your home address, now it would appear that some of these things are laxed at some banks/institutions. Personally, I would again rather just set all this up correctly (based on the norm) from the start.

1. Setup Your Entity- This is either LLC, S-corp or C-corp depending on the business and protection needs. You can get these setup yourself by registering and submitting with the state or you can use a service like Northwest which charges just $39
2. File with Your State- After you register your entity, you will need to get an EIN number (think of it like a social security number for your business) and you do this by filing in the state you registered in and submitting to the IRS. This is usually $80-$150 depending on the state.
3. Business Profile Setup
   1. Business Phone- Setup a local phone number and/or an 800 number through a service like Grasshopper or Phone.com, so you can use this on your Google My Business, Yelp, 411 directory listing. DO NOT use your cell phone number for this, bureaus like D&B and even businesses have access to directories and can tell if you are using a cell number or not. Plus its hard to keep track of phone calls you are getting. During covid this seems to not be such a make or break, but usually you can’t even setup your D&B profile without one and many banks will reject you without it.
   2. Business Address- Stay away from registering your home residence as your business, especially on public sites and profiles because its not smart from a personal security/operational security standpoint and during non-covid times, banks and institutions frown upon this and deny for not having a real business address. The same applies for a po box, or UPS store, many will note right on the application or registration to NOT use a po box of any kind. Its best to either rent space from somewhere like WeWork, Regus or use your lawyers/business advisors address as a mail forward.
   3. Business Website- You should have a website setup for your business, whether you setup and host yourself some CMS like WordPress or you setup a Squarespace or similar type site you should have at least a generic site with home, about, contact, services, etc pages/sections on it.
   4. Business Email- You should also have a dedicated email address that is NOT a hotmail, gmail, yahoo, protonmail etc but hosted on your domain so myname@walletmonkey.io for example. This is important for setting up profiles.
   5. Google My Business- You should setup one of these profiles, which are free to do as they will help tremendously with getting local traffic and is a great place to send people to give you reviews etc.

4. D&B Profile- Setting up this profile is a must have for many banks and lenders in order to extend you business credit without needing a PG. This profile usually requires a real address, business phone number and email- again due to covid I have heard laxed rules on some of this from certain people. You can submit for free, it takes about 30 days to get reviewed and set up. This is what 90% of tradelines report too for your business credit. https://www.dnb.com/duns-number.html

5. Digital Payment Gateways- These are usually easy to get, meaning you just need your EIN, business name and address and you can get setup. I suggest to at least run 10% of your business through either Stripe, Paypal or both because this will help season your credit profile but also those regular ACH payments hitting your business bank account is huge for getting business credit cards with higher limits and loan products.