We’re in an economic crisis. Yes, I’ve heard that and felt that, and I know how it affects me and my family personally. But thinking about my company, I realized I had to rework the way I think about business spending. Here are a few things I’ve decided in order to keep more cash flowing in than out, even as the flow in slows down while everyone is tightening their belts.

1. Rethink company expenditures. I used to never think twice about putting a lunch on the company card or picking up a piece of equipment or a peripheral on the company’s dime. Instead of simply using the company card for company expenses, we’ve switched teh process so now we use our personal money for business expenses and then submit an invoice. Suddenly, what seemed easy and painless has become something that I think twice about before spending. By making your team - and yourself - dig into your own pockets for smaller expenditures and then submit receipts for reimbursement, everyone gets a quick dose of reality in terms of how they are spending. We still put larger travel expenses on the card.

2. Reassess your monthly auto-pays. Like us, you probably have at least half a dozen products and services that you’ve put on autopay and basically take for granted that money is being sucked out of the company on a regular basis so you can use those tools. Our autopays include 5pm for project management, eFax for Web-based faxing and LibSyn for podcast hosting. We recently cut monthly expenses by shifting from Freshbooks back to Quickbooks Pro (at the behest of our bookkeeper). But we had to add more expense to upgrade our 5pm account to accommodate more team members. Just make sure that you list out your auto-pays, and make sure you have the exact service plan that you need. In some cases, you can downgrade and save some money.

3. Hold off on most purchases. While we could all benefit from buying an updated version of Microsoft Word (I’m working off a 6-year-old version on my 6-year-old PowerBook that is holding onto life by a thread), we’re waiting a few more months before purchasing it and some other pricey software. I do have a newer MacBook but none of the latest software on it. I’d love an even newer, lighter-weight and faster computer but that has been put on the back burner. Weigh out productivity costs when looking at big expenditures. If you can point to real savings by making a big purchase, then go for it. But you really have to look closely at when you will actually start saving.

4. Go free where you can. When I was equipping my MacBook with all the software I needed, I went for the free open source solutions such as NeoOffice to stand in for the Microsoft suite of office tools. 99% of the time it serves me well, but it is becoming the 1% of the time that can be a real stickler in productivity. Still, go free when and where you can. Got a PC and want to avoid Microsoft? Try OpenOffice. Need PhotoShop-like functions? Try G.I.M.P. There are many open source options out there for just about any software or service you need - just do a Google search. Make sure you have at least the minimum functionality that you know you need or free will end up costing you more in the long run.

5. Justify your travel. I am traveling more and more for business but now look at each trip through the lens of “how can I make money for the company while on this trip?” This could be a short term hit like speaking engagement honorariums or a longer term infusion like a warm lead to a new client or meeting face-to-face with a potential strategic partner who can bring you in on new projects. I’m going to Izeafest in Orlando and Dreamforce in San Francisco and was able to get legitimate writing assignments for both that will help me offset the travel expenses. Not everyone is a published freelance writer, but if you have a popular, high-trafficked blog, you may be able to get into an event as media for free or at least get a nice discounted pass from the event host.

Tightening your company’s belt should not mean loss of productivity. It simply means thinking twice - or even three times - before whipping out the company credit card to pay for something.

How are you tightening your company’s belt these days?

I am still in love with my iPhone. It has been over a year now since I finally got out of a ridiculously binding two year cellular phone contract with a local provider (no moving clause so when I was moving out of cell service range, I was still going to have to pay monthly fees for the phone). The moment my contract expired, I raced to the AT&T store to join the ranks of iPhone devotees.

My iPhone is packed to the max with apps, four screens for me, four filled with educational games for my toddler (spelling, animals, colors, shapes, jigsaw puzzles, drawing, numbers). My iTunes is jammed with dozens of more apps that won’t fit on my iPhone but that I swap in and out depending on my current needs.

On any typical day, I use my iPhone for far more than just phone calls.

Here is what yesterday looked like for my iPhone:

8am - Sync CalenGoo app with my Google Calendar

9am - Tweet about heading to Anchorage. Give kudos to my favorite podcasters.

10am - Check email once more before heading out on the road for the seven hour drive to Anchorage.

10:15am - Call business partner before getting out of cell range.
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guest blog post by Gina Blitstein

Women wear many hats - some we love and some we loathe, yet we wear them nonetheless. It seems every day requires more of us as we pursue the many roles we play, be it partner, mother, businesswoman, daughter, sister, friend, good citizen…the list goes on and on. It often feels like it requires superhuman effort, endurance and speed to fit all we want to do into a mere 24 hours.

How do our lives get so crazed? If we step back and take an introspective look, we’d see that a lot of it is of our own doing. We tend to take on too much, never admitting that we have limits or boundaries that even we ourselves need to respect. So why do we think that we need to be “Superwoman” - and for that matter - that any woman is or needs to be?

Kathy Caprino, psychotherapist, women’s work-life expert, career and life coach, speaker, and author of the new book Breakdown, Breakthrough: The Professional Woman’s Guide to Claiming a Life of Passion, Power and Purpose, describes the phenomenon she calls “overfunctioning” in women. Kathy defines overfunctioning as “doing more than is necessary, more than is appropriate, and more than is healthy.” Sound familiar? Kathy explains that “Women are addicted to overfunctioning out of fear of not being in control, or not living up to someone else’s standards, or being judged negatively by others.”
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I’m growing me a company. It is a bit of a seedling at the moment, but by golly, it will be an amazing tree or even forest before you know it.

The truth is, growing from a company of one to a virtual team of 9 has been exciting and painful at the same time. I brought on a business partner earlier this year, emphasis on business. She’s savvy, financially intelligent, ambitious, motivated, seasoned, all the ingredients of a great business partner. Plus, we really like and respect one another.

Why did I decide to grow from an easy peasy single employee consultancy to a fast-growing virtual team? Because I felt I was on to something. Last year, I approached my friend/now business partner with this revelation:

I feel right now the exact same way I did when I started Cybergrrl, Inc. back in 1995. There is something happening with social media that hasn’t been seen since the introduction of the Web, and I want to ride this wave the right way instead of making the same mistakes I made back in the 90s.

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Guest Blogger:Lisa Finan is a writer and Creative Director of getGlobalized™. She has been traveling and writing for 25 years, speaks French, Italian and Greek, and welcomes all comments and can be reached at crossculturalpro@yahoo.com. More information can be found on the company’s website at www.getGlobalized.org.

Unless you’ve been living in a cave lately, you’re probably experiencing considerable anxiety about the economic condition of the United States. This emotion is immediately followed by further panic when recruiters or employers are asking you to “go global” to make yourself more marketable. That’s if you still have a job.

How and when is all this supposed to happen? Is this a form of outsourcing? I mean, it’s not like you’re ever really going to live or work outside the United States, right? So, why should going global concern you?

It’s Official: Wake Up and Smell the Outsourcing
With the stunning realization that America’s financial crisis is the world’s crisis, the biggest misstep an American woman can make, is to think that fluttering of her entrepreneurial wings does not affect the rest of the world. Or the reverse, that what is happening around the world, doesn’t affect your business. Today, when one country sneezes, very often we all catch a cold.

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I’ve worked in many rural areas including Lander, Wyoming (Pop: 7800) where if the wind blew just a little too hard, my Internet connection went down - and you know how the wind blows in Wyoming! I’ve even worked from an old RV on the road, in state parks and at other campgrounds. And soon, I’ll be working from my new home in Tok, Alaska (Pop: 1800) along the Alaska Highway.

Here are some of my tips for working from remote and rural areas. I also turned to a Twitterfriend, Becky McCray, who provides some additional tips. I’ll introduce her after the jump.

Doing Business in Rural Places

1. Invest in fast Internet access. Sometimes it has to be satellite which can be pricey, but you can write it off your taxes as a valid and essential business expense.

2. Identify wifi hotspots - or Internet-enabled locations - in your area. If my Internet connection went down, I’d drive into town to connect at a cafe or restaurant or even a hotel or campground. Some McDonalds and Wendys even offer wifi so find out which businesses are wired and use them as backup when your access goes down.

3. Stock up on car chargers. Even when house power went out - particularly in my RV - I could rev up the engine and power up my essential tools and gadgets including computer and mobile devices. Invest in a USB car charger to charge your handhelds such as the SynCh from Malleable Devices.*

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Why does it seem like switching banks is as hard - or harder - than switching health practitioners? Sometimes, we seem to have an irrational loyalty to others who are supposed to be in the business of helping us even when they are doing more harm than good. That’s how I’ve felt over the last three years.

Logically, I knew that my business bank was doing nothing for my company. I didn’t have a relationship with any one person, nobody knew my name or anything about my company, and when push came to shove, they weren’t there for me when I really needed them.

Now I’m in the process of switching banks. I’ve decided to go with Key Bank, and they’ve been holding my hand every step of the way, and these days I seem to need a lot more hand-holding than usual.
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Applying for a line of credit, like any financing, can be a stressful waiting game. After a series of rejections from my existing corporate bank and a few more from my potential new bank, I was feeling incredibly discouraged. I knew I had a booming business. Why couldn’t a bank see that?

Wednesday Update

Cindie Harrington, Relationship Manager Key4Women promptly contacted me on Wednesday, a day after the most recent rejection. I had been approved for a line of credit of $15,000.

I was floored. Speechless. I think I stammered for a few minutes. After all of headaches and heartaches I had gone through trying to provide my corporation with a cash flow cushion, I couldn’t believe a bank was actually going to help me. I knew I wasn’t a bad financial risk, but my financial past had seemed too checkered for me to be given any credit.
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Taking a chance on a new bank, I first met with Cindie Harrington, Relationship Manager Key4Women at the midtown branch in Anchorage on a Friday afternoon. I brought a pile of folders with all of my financials - the same materials I had provided my current bank - including three years of corporation federal income tax returns and three years of personal income tax returns.

First, I briefed Cindie about the details of my financial situation and recent experiences with my corporate bank of three years. Then I explained what I wanted for my business - a line of credit and NOT business credit cards - and what I thought I needed to help me through the occasional cash flow crunch - $15,000.

Cindie proceeded to fill out a loan application form for me. She then mentioned that Key Bank would love to have my business if I’d like to open a business checking account with them. I thought about it for a moment. At that moment, I had a checking and savings account with my existing bank with my husband’s name on it and then another checking and savings account that I was told to open up with only my name on it. I hadn’t started using the new checking or savings account yet. Did I want to open up yet another account?
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In my previous post, I talked about how I was recently unable to get a line of credit with the bank I’d been using for my corporation for the last three years. I had obtained the original corporate credit cards under my husband’s name and his credit rating while he was an officer of the corporation.

In order to use my husband’s credit rating - which I had to do while working to build up my own credit - we had to make him the majority shareholder of the company even though it was my company and revolved completely around my work.

More recently, we agreed he should no longer be involved in the company because he just wasn’t entrepreneurial and was uncomfortable with irregular payments from clients and juggling things to manage cashflow. As a serial entrepreneur and freelancer, I’ve had plenty of experience with handling finances without a regular paycheck, and it doesn’t freak me out anymore.

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