Social media and online marketing freak many entrepreneurs out, but with this video, I will break down the best online tools and resources for you to promote your business and polish your professional image.

Whew! Another tax season has come and gone (or you’ve filed an extension at least!). How do you feel? Was it a rushed job? Did you spend hours pulling together all your financial documents?  Here are three things that help me get through tax season without breaking a sweat:

1) Have a good filing system. Paper, electronic, or a combination – it doesn’t matter. However you choose to store your information, create a system that keeps things organized. That way when it is time to do taxes, or hand your documentation over to your bookkeeper or accountant, you don’t have to spend hours of work just so THEY can do their part to help YOU. I can’t say enough about having a good filing system. You’ll definitely have piece of mind when you can put your hands on the piece of paper you need in less than 10 seconds.

2) Get a good invoicing system in place. Many people use Quickbooks, a popular software, to keep track of their finances and invoice clients. Definitely a robust system that can work for service or product based businesses.  I currently use Freshbooks, an online service. They provide awesome customer support, the design is excellent, and it’s super easy to use. Excellent for service providers. There’s also reports you can quickly run (also an option with Quickbooks). Lots of my clients use Freshbooks too – it rocks! Just starting out in business or not working with many clients? Freshbooks even has a free option for those without many clients. If you want to do your invoices manually, make sure you file them appropriately on your computer or keep hard copies in the awesome filing system you’ve got going.

3) Keep track of your expenses – especially those in cash if you pay with cash often! You can keep track of expenses in Quickbooks and Freshbooks. There’s also a groovy system I like called Outright that keeps track of your money and can help with reporting around tax time. They’ll even tell you what your estimated taxes are! I like Outrightbecause it integrates with Freshbooks – I love to keep things streamlined! 

Why am I sharing this with you now? Because now that you’ve got this year’s taxes off your mind, you can start planning ahead so you don’t flip out every time you sit down to report all your financial info! It is not too late to set up solid systems for your business. The longer you wait, the more you’ll have to process, shuffle, search for, etc. That takes time away from you MAKING money and doing the fun stuff in life. Start as soon as possible – you’ll feel much better. I promise!

So here’s what you’re going to do now, because you’re super savvy and know that financial health is important to any growing business (and to your personal life as well!):
1) Figure out the best way to organize your financial documents. Can’t start the system now?  Take a few moments to write down the plan  so you’ll know what to do when you’re ready.
2) Keep track of your income – even if you don’t send invoices to your clients, you need to keep accurate records for yourself.
3) Schedule a session with me to create a plan for you or get the job done. Don’t stay stuck – seriously, it will only make your job harder and keep your business from growing. And talk to the financial professionals in your life about your money specifics. We’re all here to help!
Speaking of money, if you want to boost your business or improve financially on the last quarter (or the last year!), you’ll definitely want to check out The Biz Panel: Mind Over Money event that I will be part of next week.  In addition to sharing tips and advice, I’ll also be doing some free one-on-one mini-strategy sessions with a few lucky attendees.  Hope to see you there!

Check out this article on Mashable.com, highlighting the changes Facebook will once again be making to their privacy features:

http://mashable.com/2010/05/26/facebook-new-privacy-features/

It’s a short article and a good one to check out if you’re a Facebook user and want to know what’s in the works…

(Published in the CAM Green Solutions Newsletter, June 18, 2008.)

Dealing with work related emails (as well as personal ones) can become less frustrating if you make sure to make these tips part of your email reading routine:

Answer email promptly. Avoid allowing your email inbox to get cluttered. In many ways, dealing with email is like dealing with papers and other physical things – you save time by handling it as few times as possible. When reading emails, go ahead and take a moment to respond to the sender while information is fresh in your mind.

Flag things to follow up on. If you can’t respond right away to an email for a particular reason (you need to do further research, you need to talk to someone else, etc), flag the email for follow up. Gmail let’s you “star” emails, which is a method I use for personal emails to highlight things I need to follow up on. When using Outlook, you can flag an email and assign a follow up date to it – a reminder will be placed on your calendar, which makes it less likely you’ll forget to respond to the email.

Delete messages instead of storing them. As mentioned above – keep your emails from becoming clutter. If you’ve responded to an email and the issue is resolved, go ahead and delete the emails. If you think you might need a paper trail, create folders to store the emails in. One thing I love about Gmail is their archive feature. When I am finished with an email, I archive it, clearing up my inbox. But, if I ever need to search for an email, or any content within it (like a phone number, address, or something else), I just use the search box to enter what I am looking for. Folders and archiving are best used for emails you might have to reference again. If the email really isn’t important (old newsletters, invites for meetings that have already passed, etc) – go ahead and delete it!

My last post gave you some information on how to use your values or commitments to figure out what your priorities and next actions are. But maybe you have to take a step back and figure out what your commitments are.

I’m involved in various projects and organizations and sometimes it’s good for me to map everything out so I can see exactly what’s going on. If you are like me, you have a lot to think about, and if you tried to list everything out in your head…well, you might skip a few things.

I’ve been aware of the process of mind mapping for a while, but recently a colleague of mine mentioned some software she came upon called FreeMind. It’s a fantastic free mind mapping software. What is mind mapping? Well, I am no expert on the subject, but for me, mind mapping is a way to get everything out of my head on a certain subject so that I can track what’s going on. I called my first mind map “commitments,” and listed everything I could think of that I was committed to – my business, my networking group, a class I am currently taking. Each one of those commitments had subcategories. For my business, some subcategories were advertising, this blog, client relations, administrative work. Using the FreeMind software helped me to work out the details of each commitment I have. It also made me realize – boy, I need to cut back on my commitments!

Try a little mind mapping of your own. Mind maps can be used for all kinds of things – planning meetings, book reports, speech outlines, plotting story ideas, and general note taking. You can do it on paper in list form or in brainstorm form, whatever works for your brain. Or you can click on the link to the list of available mind mapping software I have included below. You can also visit this Mindmaps Directory for a list of 100s of examples of mind maps. Also, the Innovation Network has a great eight step plan to help you understand and get started with mind maps.

For more information on mind mapping:

• Mind Map
• List of Mind Mapping Software
• Mindtools.com
• Innovation Network: Mindmapping in 8 Easy Steps
• Mindmaps Directory

*Originally published in Sorority Factor Magazine September/October 2007*