CEO's first mail

One of the first things you want to do when starting a business is register a business entity in your state such as an LLC, nonprofit, or corporation. Having a business entity allows you to cosplay as that entity to accomplish various tasks without putting your own name on the line, such as racking up credit card debt on new office chairs or selling user data to sketchy third party advertisers.

If I had a lawyer they would probably tell me at this point to disclaim that these more personal blog posts are my own and don’t represent the opinions of Social Directory LLC. So let me just state that I am not cosplaying as I write this and these are my own opinions.

On March 23, I filed for Social Directory LLC. And with the public announcement imminent, I paid an extra $100 bucks for 24hr processing and they approved it within 3 hours! I had originally filed for a nonprofit on March 17 and still have yet to hear back on it. Money really does talk.

You can register new businesses in North Carolina on the NC Secretary of State website, which, as you can see, is a masterclass in UI design:

Every link you click on this website seems to take you to another page of tiles. It almost feels like walking through a forest of AI hallucinations, even though most of these thumbnails don’t seem to be AI generated at all. Albeit mildly frustrating, at times navigating this website gave me the same kind of nostalgia that you get visiting grandma’s house or looking at a poster made lovingly by a boomer with microsoft text effects.

Anywho, about a week after my LLC was approved, I got my very first letter addressed to Social Directory LLC!

What I thought was a simple approval notice, actually appeared to be a threat from the government: If I don’t buy a labor law sign and post it in my “office” I’m subject to a $16,000 fine!

To be clear, I’m all for mandating labor law signage, but for single-member LLCs? “Regardless of the number of employees”? Filing for the LLC itself was $125 and nowhere did they warn me I’d be forced to pay an additional $115 for a sign!

Was this the work of some republican that couldn’t prevent a law from passing so instead decided to do whatever it takes to make small business owners hate labor laws?

Alas I am a sucker for large fine threats from the government, so as the deadline approached, I finally sat down to buy the damn poster, already thinking about the blog post I would write about the new adornment to my living room. Luckily my sense kicked in when I started typing in the website and realized it wasn’t an nc government site at all… The observant reader may have already noticed the “important notice” at the bottom of the letter…

So yeah, you can print these labor laws for free from labor.nc.gov and I’m not even required to.

I have yet to receive any legitimate mail to my LLC and since incorporating I’ve received two more scam letters, an insurance offer and an offer from Chase bank. It made me realize scammers, banks, and insurance companies (oh my!) are watching out for new small businesses the way traffic lawyers scan police databases for new speeding tickets.

Until next time,

~ Cecilia