While investigating my options, I discovered that Windows 7 has speech recognition software built into the operating system.  It’s easy to enable the software: just follow the instructions on the Windows website, take a simple tutorial, reboot your computer, and your computer will respond to voice commands as well as take dictation.

If you want to write blog posts or newsletters, or make notes about your clients, but have not learned touch hyping, speech recognition software may be exactly what you need.  In fact, I’ve written this entire post using the speech recognition software on Windows 7.  Just open a document in your word processor, and start talking. I’ve found the software to be quite accurate in transcription, though a little slow.

If you are using Windows 7, and speech recognition software sounds intriguing, it’s worth playing with—especially since it’s free!

P.S. For iPhone and Blackberry users there’s also a free application from Dragon Naturally Speaking which turns your phone into a dictation machine.  You could take notes on a client on your phone, e-mail the notes to yourself, and save them in a client folder.

This year, I fell in love with a monkey. MailChimp, which has been around since 2007, has rapidly become one of the top email-marketing solutions on the market. Its features include:

• Management of multiple email lists
• Easy to customize sign-up forms for websites, Facebook and other sites
• Pre-designed or DIY email temples for professional-looking mailings
• Integration with Facebook, Twitter and other social media
• Simple reports to track and analyze the success of your email campaigns
• Too many others to list here

Even better, there’s a “Freemium” plan  – up to 2,000 subscribers and 12,000 emails a month – is absolutely free! For many holistic business, this is more than you’ll ever need from your email service.

If you don’t have an email marketing solution yet, I highly recommend you sign up for a free MailChimp account and get started. (If you don’t have a website of your own yet, you can put a form on a Facebook page and start collecting names there.)  If you do have an email marketing subscription, check out MailChimp and compare; you may save yourself several hundred dollars a year.

P.S. We’ll talk more about email marketing in upcoming weeks of the GNO515 Adventure, so consider this a sneak preview.

Understand Your Income and Expenses

The first step in creating a financial plan for your business is in understanding your sources of income and expenses.  You’ll need to make a list of your sources of income and expenses to begin building your budget

From the business plan we started writing last week, you should have a good idea of your sources of income. Your primary income will come from the services and products sold by your business. For a holistic business, examples of products and services may include:

• Sessions/Consultations
• Providing services at special events
• Workshop or class registration
• Speakers fees
• Writing Articles
• Books
• Audios/Videos
• Sales of goods

While calculating your estimated income, if you are a holistic practitioner you’ll soon realize that the number of service hours you can provide is fixed — there are so many hours in a day.  So, if you plan to increase your revenue, you’ll either need to raise your prices, or diversify what you provide by hiring additional staff to provide services, or by selling products.

In addition to understanding your business’ income, you must understand the expense side of the ledger.

As the owner of a small business, your business should pay you a salary, your payroll taxes and benefits. Budgeting to pay yourself a salary is essential to the sustainability of your business.

Your business will also have a variety of fixed and variable expenses related to the operations of your business. Common operational expenses for a holistic business include:

• Advertising (includes website, business cards, paid advertisements, etc.)
• Auto/Fuel
• Bank Service Charges
• Certification/Continuing Education
• Conferences
• Dues/Memberships
• Donations/Contributions
• Entertainment
• Insurance
• Library/Subscriptions
• Licenses & Permits
• Loan Interest
• Maintenance
• Office Supplies
• Postage/Shipping
• Professional Services
• Rent
• Taxes (Federal/State/Local)
• Telephone
• Travel
• Utilities
• Other

Depending on the nature of your business, you may have additional expenses that affect your business balance sheet. These may include:

• Capital expenses (Computers/software, fixtures/renovation, furniture, office equipment, etc.)
• Inventory/cost of goods sold
• Loan principal
• Owner’s Draw (when the owner withdraws profit from the equity of the company)

Creating a Financial Forecast

Once you’ve mapped out your income and expenses, you’re ready for the next step: estimating your cash flow over time. It takes time to build a business: you’ll need to build your client base, set up your business processes, and develop your marketing campaigns.  In order for your business to succeed, you’ll need to be realistically estimate the speed of the growth of your income, as well as control costs.

If your business is just starting up and your income is still small, you’ll need strategies to reduce your expenses. Cost-cutting measures to consider while you are just starting out:

• Keep your day job. Work on your business start up as a second job until it’s financially sustainable.
• Work out of your home, or share office space with a similar holistic business.
• Use no frills business cards and other marketing materials
• Lease or buy used furniture and equipment
• Market to people you know and avoid large advertising expenses.
• If you sell products, sell on consignment so you don’t have to invest in inventory.
• Do as much of the work for your business as you can yourself. Hire professionals only when necessary.

Depending on the nature of your business, you’ll want to create a financial plan to cover the first 1-3 years of operations. You may break down your income/expenses on a quarterly or monthly basis, so you can plan for your growth, and track your progress toward meeting your goals.

To help you with your forecasting download the GNO515 Adventure Budget Worksheet excel spreadsheet to help you. Just add and subtract income and expense lines to match your own list.

Set Up and Maintain a Bookkeeping Routine

To manage your small business finances and determine whether you are meeting your income and expense targets, you will need to create an accounting system that allows you to collect, aggregate, report and analyze your financial transactions.

There are numerous software solutions on the market to manage accounting for small businesses.  QuickBooks, one of the most commonly used accounting packages, offers a free version (Simple Start QuickBooks) for new businesses.  There are also online software-as-a-service products such as Kashoo. Take some time to do some internet research to find a product that meets your business needs and budget.

Once you have chosen your accounting platform, you’ll need create a schedule for keeping your business books up-to-date. A simple calendar may include:

• Weekly – At the end of each week update deposits and expenses, file receipts
• Monthly – At the end of each month reconcile bank statements and pay monthly bills
• Quarterly – Check in where you are on budget goals and estimated taxes
• Yearly – Close out your annual books and pay taxes

If you keep track of your finances as you go along (as opposed to saving everything up until the last minute), you’ll be able to quickly assess how well you are staying on track toward your financial goals, and make adjustments as needed.

Seek Professional Financial Advice

This weeks GNO515 Adventure gives advice on how to get started with your business financial planning, but it’s no substitute for professional financial advice. There are books available on small business accounting. A bookkeeper or an accountant can advise you on local or state regulations affecting your business, help you set up your financial recordkeeping and advise you on tax schedules.

One of the best ways to find a financial professional is to talk to other members of your holistic profession and ask for a referral. Many cities also have a small business assistance center, who often have a list of bookkeeping/accounting professionals who specialize in small businesses. Business coaches are also another source of referrals for financial professionals.

Even if it is an additional expense, hiring a professional, especially in the start of phase of your business, can help you avoid pitfalls and errors that can cost you far more later down the line.

Next Week: Marketing 101: Basics of a Marketing Plan

Questions for Consideration:

• If you’ve been a holistic business owner for a while, how long did it take you to get your business off the ground? What advice would you give a new holistic business?
• If you own a business, what financial recordkeeping system to you use? Do you have a special routine? Would you recommend it to others?

Below are five steps in a computer cleanup routine. The applications listed below are (almost all) free tools that can be downloaded from CNET, the most respected internet site for software downloads and reviews. The programs below are appropriate for Windows-based machines; those using a Mac can find similar tools as CNET for a Mac. Instructions for how to use the apps are found on their CNET page, as well as in the application’s wizard.

While your firewall and antivirus software should be set to run continuously, you will need to set aside time weekly, biweekly, or monthly to perform these additional steps. Many of these scans take time to run, so they can easily be set to run overnight, or while you are taking care of other activities.

Step 1: Protect

Computers need protection from viruses, spyware, identity thieves and various other trouble makers.  Make sure you have computer firewall installed and turned on, that your antivirus software is up-to-date and running. You run malware software removal tools on a routine basis to make sure your computer hasn’t been compromised.

Firewall: Windows Firewall
Anti-virus: AVG Anti-Virus
Malware Removal: Malwarebytes, Adaware, Spybot Search and Destroy

Step 2: Backup

Even with the best of computer maintenance, accidents happen. To recover from computer catastrophe, you need a system in place to back up your computer files so you can recover from a crisis. You can back up your files to a local external hard drive or use a backup service to store your files on the internet.

Local backup software: Easeus ToDo Backup, Windows 7 Backup & Restore (Windows 7 only)
Internet backup system: Carbonite (15-day free trial, then $60/year unlimited disk space)

Step 3: Clean

With regular use, computer files get frayed around the edges. To keep your computer running smoothly, you need to regularly remove temporary and junk files, clear internet caches and clean the registry of broken links.  Computer optimizing utilities can help you manage these routine maintenance tasks.

Optimizing Utilities: CCleaner, Glary Utilities

Step 4: Update

In order to improve functionality, as well combat changing security threats, many software companies release regular updates and patches for their applications.  When you install new software, you can often select “automatically scan for updates” so you will be informed when new updates are available. You can also download update managers to help you find the latest versions of the applications on your computer.

Update Managers: Windows Update, CNET TechTracker

Step 5: Defragment

As computer files get moved around on your computer, the parts of the files are separated one from another on the hard disk, which makes it take longer to run your favorite software. Keep files organized and running efficiently by defragmenting the computer on a regular basis.

Defragmentation Utilities: Smart Defrag