Bootstrap Babes

10 Tips to Green Your Home-Based Business

Save the Planet and Some Money, Too!

In honor of Earth Day, I'd like to share some tips on how we can all reduce waste and be more eco-friendly in our home-based businesses.

Of course, respecting Mother Earth is a worthy goal in and of itself. But frankly (and perhaps a bit selfishly), I have additional motives. With two businesses, I'm sick of the sheer volume of paper that comes into the house. It's driving me nuts! And being a Bootstrap Babe, I'm always on the lookout to save money.

Here are 10 tips to help you green your home-based business:

Save more trees by reducing paper waste.

1. Buy paper products made from recycled materials.

2. Eliminate junk mail. Contact the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) and sign up for their Mail Preference Service (i.e. "do not mail" list). Reputable marketers who are DMA members will check their list of names against this database before sending out a mailing. 

Also, you can eliminate those pesky pre-screen pre-screened credit and insurance offers -- and reduce your risk for identity theft -- by signing up at www.optoutprescreen.com or call 1-888-5-OPT-OUT (1-888-567-8688). 

3. Reduce paper use by paying bills online, printing on both sides of your paper, re-using those orphan sheets of paper from web print-outs that only have one or two useless lines of text on them, and saving/sending more documents electronically. Be sure to use a good, automated backup system, of course. (I use Carbonite.)

What Every Freelancer Should Know

Catherine Price Offers Practical and Funny Tips for the Self-Employed

My DC Web Women colleague Chris Raymond shared this article with me today, and I wanted to share it with you. In her piece "What Every Freelancer Should Know", Salon.com's Catherine Price offers 13 handy tips for self-employed people. There's lots of good info here, including tax preparation, personal finance, health insurance, and maintaining your sanity while working from home.

My favorite is Tip #11:

Do not own a coffeemaker. I know this goes against the wisdom of those budgeting articles (the money you save on lattes could pay for your child's college education!). But it's critical for your mental health to leave the house at least once a day and interact with real, live humans -- even if you are only talking about Starbucks. So here's a compromise: Identify the cheapest drink that you enjoy. Then calculate how much it costs -- in my case, $1.50 for iced tea -- compared to a $100 therapy session in which you talk about how lonely and depressed you are. My guess? That iced tea is a bargain.

Good stuff!

Wine and Dine Your Clients without Breaking the Bank

5 Easy Ways to Stretch Your Client Entertainment Dollars

Meeting and entertaining clients is a necessity if you're in sales or a service business. (Shoot, every entrepreneur is in sales!)

But what to do if you're on a tight budget?

Here are my five tips to save on meeting your clients over food: 

1. Remember that lunch is cheaper than dinner, and coffee is cheaper than lunch.

2. Become a regular at one or two local spots. That way, the wait staff gets to know you and is more likely to give you great service and the little extras that stretch your dollar further and impress your client.

3. Donate to your local public radio station and get a MemberCard. In 170 U.S. cities, this card will get you two-for-one entrées or admission at local hot spots –- there are more than 12,000 participating restaurants and entertainment venues, including opera, theater, and golf.

Missing Money: Recovered At Last!

I Love It When Money Finds Me (And How It Might Find You Too!)

I was doing some spring cleaning the other day and I found a crumpled piece of paper entitled "Notice To Owner Of Unclaimed Funds" from the Comptroller of Maryland, the state in which I once lived. The undated Notice said that I was entitled to $146.96 in "unclaimed insurance proceeds."

I called the Comptroller's office to confirm that it was not a scam, and the receptionist directed me to their website where anyone can enter their name to find out if it is on a list to receive unclaimed funds.

Sure enough, there I was. It was a bit spooky to see my name and former address in a public database (so much for privacy in the age of new technology), but I was happy to see that it was not a fraud. The receptionist directed me to a link to download the unclaimed property form, which I filled out and am mailing today. My refund should arrive in about 4 weeks!

How to Snag a Good Deal on a Merchant Account

Accept Credit Cards, But Don’t Pay the “Sticker Price”!

For more entrepreneurs, accepting credit card payments is a crucial part of doing business.

A merchant account is an agreement with a bank or payment processor that enables you to accept credit card payments. There are so many merchant account options that it can be confusing to select the right one for your business.

In my experience, women business owners often end up paying more than men for merchant accounts. Why? Because all too often, women accept the “sticker price” for merchant account rates and don’t negotiate.

Everything is negotiable. Not just merchant accounts, but everything!

Here’s how to get yourself a good merchant account deal: 

1. Start with your own bank.

Whatever banking institution holds your business checking account -- and for tax purposes be sure to have separate accounts for business and personal checking accounts! -- has an incentive to keep your business. Get a quote on their small business merchant account.

When your bank provides a quote, ask: "Is this the best you can do for me?" (Always negotiate!)

Big Marketing Bang, Little Marketing Bucks

Bootstrap your way to professionally printed marketing materials!

Need to boost your brand with beautiful business cards, brochures, postcards, and other marketing materials, but have a limited budget?

Don’t be tempted to save money by cutting quality! Your brand is important to your business, and giving out cheap, homemade-looking materials will make you look like an amateur. That may be fine for a hobby, but when you are trying to do business, the “I printed these business cards myself at home on cheap tear-off sheets and you can see the perforated edges” scream I’m not a real professional! Can you afford for that to happen? 

You have other options. Instead of cutting quality and damaging your professional image, look at low-cost printing solutions like VistaPrint.

At VistaPrint, you can get 250 quality business cards -- full-color on 100-lb. cardstock -- for just $19.99 plus shipping.

But it gets better!

VistaPrint regularly offers discount coupon codes that can save you up to 80% off selected items. With one of those codes, those 250 business cards drop from $19.99 to only $3.99!

How to Get Free Office Supplies at Staples

(And Save the Planet, Too!)

When I first liberated myself from Corporate America at the end of 1996, I was in for a few surprises. 

First I discovered the joy of not wearing control-top pantyhose every day. That was a wonderful surprise!

Second was the cost of office supplies. Uh oh. You mean I had to actually buy my own ink cartridges, software upgrades and -- heaven forbid -- reams of paper?? 

Buying your own office supplies can add up quickly, and it’s often an expense that new bootstrapping entrepreneurs forget to include in their budgets.

One way to cut back on expenses -- so you can invest the savings into growing your business -- is to recycle your old printer ink cartridges. 

Time Is Money

But When You Don't Have A Lot Of Money, All You Have Is Time

Since October 2007, Bank of America has charged my business account a monthly $10 online banking fee by "accident." Every month, I call them and get the fee refunded. I am outraged of course.

This morning, between being on hold, transferred around and having to answer 20 questions to verify my identify, it took me 57 minutes and 42 seconds to get $20 refunded for January and February 2008.

I believe that this is one of the many ways banking institutions make money. They charge you a small fee by "accident," and deliver your bank statement hoping that you won't notice. If they charge 4 million customers $10 a month, they probably gross about $39,999,990 million.

Who is going to spend an hour on the phone to recover a $20 fee? Bootstrap Babes, that's who! Check your bank and credit card statements with a vengeance. If anything does not belong there, get it taken off. And fast. It's time consuming, yes. But when you're bootstrapping, sometimes all you have is time.

How to Save on Amtrak Travel

Just this past weekend I went to the big Toy Fair in New York City. It’s the toy industry’s biggest trade show and I wanted to do a little networking and check out the trends in children’s products. The hot new toys you see this year most likely will have made their big debut at Toy Fair –- all the buyers from the biggest national toy chains to the smallest independent gift shops scout out new merchandise here.

I decided to catch the train up to New York for the day. Being a budget conscious Bootstrap Babe, I always use discounts when buying a ticket on Amtrak. This time, I saved 10% off the total fare -- about $17 -- by using my AAA membership discount. 

In the past, I’ve saved as much as 25% off the total rail fare by using little-known discount codes. Before I book my rail travel, I always check both Amtrak Hot Deals and the FlyerTalk forum to see if there are any special rates on the route I’ll be traveling. 

And of course, I’m also a member of Amtrak’s Guest Rewards program, so that any trips I take accumulate towards points that I can redeem later for free travel.

Saving money on the Amtrak fare allowed me to indulge a little. So after the Toy Fair, I hopped on over to Broadway to see Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Just 15 minutes before the show, I snagged a sixth row seat! The performances by Terrence Howard, Phylicia Rashad, and James Earl Jones were phenomenal! 

Coupons Keep Your Bootstrap Strong

You Can Put More Money Back Into Your Business When You Coupon

As Bootstrap Babes, we have to pay ourselves a salary. But when you're Bootstrapping, if you can minimize what you pay yourself, you can maximize the funds that can be used to bootstrap your business into the black. That's why you have to learn to shop for your personal needs at places that sell them at the lowest prices. When it comes to groceries, this means couponing.

When I focus on couponing, I easily save about $2,000 per quarter by buying things are on sale, sending in cash rebate forms and using coupons. For example, if the regular price of tooth paste is $2.50 and it's on sale for $1.75, I can use my .75¢ coupon, which is doubled at my local grocery store, and get the tooth paste for .50¢. In this way, I get a $2.50 tube of tooth paste for just .50¢. And depending on the type of sale, I can sometimes get tooth paste for free.

How awesome is that?

One thing that's disappointing, however, is that organic companies don't issue a lot of coupons. At first blush, this may seem to make it nearly impossible for families to save money and be healthy at the same time. But as with most things, it all depends on how you look at it.

My family is on a self-employed budget since my husband and I own Indie Business Media, LLC, the company that supports everyone. The business is profitable and we pay our own health insurance and life insurance, and make deposits into our children's 529 savings plans, our retirement accounts and our emergency household accounts. When I coupon for things like paper products, trash bags and other non-food items, the combined savings are so tremendous that they allow me to buy organic fruits, vegetabales and meats without busting the grocery budget.

It also helps that a few relatives mail me coupons from their local papers. This helps me take advatage of georgraphic promotions that companies are using elsewhere that they are not running here.

So here, what you do:

1. Use coupons and rebates for non-food items so you have more left to buy organic produce
2. Ask relatives who don't coupon to send you coupons from their local paper. Also, exchange coupons with neighbors.
3. Coupon when an item is on sale to multiply the savings.

Before you know it, you'll be saving money all over the place and you'll have more left over to invest in your business.