Small business owners should be taking advantage of all the free services offered to help them grow their business without impacting their expenditures. I use many of these free services myself at www.johnlizotte.com, and I’m always surprised at how many business owners aren’t aware of just how much they can accomplish for their business, absolutely free! Useful free services that you can use include things like email, expense tracking, invoicing, mobile contact management, and more. I’ve decided to do a series of articles detailing some of these services and how they can help you grow your business without costing you a cent!
One thing most of us hate to do is accounting. No offense to all of the accountants out there. Part One of this series is featuring free online accounting from Outright.com. I use this service myself to track my writing income and expenses, and I love it. You can see my online business profile there at: http://entrepreneurs.outright.com/john-lizotte. I’d recommend it to any small business owner who isn’t comfortable managing their own numbers. Outright has plenty of great features, and I’ll talk about a few of them here, but I strongly encourage you to check it out for yourself.
Read more... (1005 words, 1 image, estimated 4:01 mins reading time)
The short (professional) version:
I’ve been involved with business development and technical writing for over 15 years. I’ve owned several different types of small businesses including data networking, e-commerce, and marine surveying. I’ve done more than my share of copywriting, web content, brochures, newsletters, business plans, and white papers during that time for both myself and others. I’ve also written as a correspondent for my local newspaper, the Galion Inquirer. I’ve worked as a Police Officer, then Investigator in Washington, D.C.; as a Network Engineer for a major telecom; and even did a few years working on the railroad. How’s that for diverse?
“So…what do you do?”
That’s pretty much one of the first questions anybody asks when they meet me. The short answer (the one they are looking for) is that I help small businesses make money.
In my head, though, what I do doesn’t fall into a neatly defined box. I want to answer about who I am, what my passions are, what’s important to me. What I do is follow my passions. Helping others, spending time with my wife (who is a creative genius), my dog (that’s Biscuit in the pictures), sailing, kayaking, scuba diving, hiking, reading, learning, helping others, mentoring, restoring old boats…this is what I do. Even trying to learn to play blues on the harmonica. Like that’s ever going to happen. LOL.
Read more... (689 words, 2 images, estimated 2:45 mins reading time)
