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

A few months ago I heard a holistic practitioner arguing that a business plan is a waste of time.  If you don’t need to make money from your business, that’s probably true. But, if you need to earn a living, business planning is one of the most essential ingredients for your success.  A business plan outlines what customers want, and how your business will meet those needs in a way that enables you to earn a living.  If you can’t answer those questions for yourself, your business is far more likely to fail

Most holistic businesses are small shops – you’re either a sole proprietorship or working with just a few staff members. Such small operations don’t need 100-age business plans, but they do need a plan that covers the basics. I used to write business plans for a living, so I have distilled the essential ingredients that you’ll need to answer for your holistic business plan. Depending on the nature of your business, you should be able to answer the following questions in 2-5 pages.

Holistic Business Plan Outline

Executive Summary

This is a several paragraph summary of all of the elements of your business plan.  This may be first in a presentation of a business plan, but it will be the last part of the plan you write. Finish all of the other sections, then summarize the most important points from each in the executive summary. It will give you a chance to crystalize your plan in your mind into its most essential elements.

Customers’ Needs

In this section, you will explore who your customers are, and what needs they have. In order for a business to be successful, it must provide something customers need or want.  Who are your customers? How do you know what they want/need? What aspect of that need do your services/products satisfy?  We’ve been working on this section together in week 1 and week 2 of the GNO515 adventure, here is where you’ll analyze your customers (your target market) and identify your personal market niche.

Products and Services

For most small business owners, this is the easiest section to fill out: what products and services does your business provide? The most important part of the description is how your products and services meet the needs of your customers you identified in the previous section.

Competition

Now it’s time to look at what other businesses in your service area provide products/services that address the same customer need.  Competitors can be other people, or even other ways of addressing the customer need/want.  You need to understand what your competition is, and why your business provides the better solution for the members of your personal market niche.  You need to be convinced yourself that you have what those in your market niche are seeking, if you expect them to believe the same thing about you.

Marketing Strategy

Your marketing strategy outlines how you will reach out to the members of your market niche and tell them about your products/services. Holistic businesses often seem to have the hardest time with this area; we don’t want to appear to “pushy” or “money grubbing.” But we are all in a helping profession.  If your customers can’t find you, you can’t help them! Not only are you not fulfilling your personal mission, your business can’t grow.  This section is continually evolving and changing as we learn new ways to reach out to our market niche, and measure the effectiveness of our efforts. We’ll also spend most of our 52-week adventure exploring marketing strategies for holistic businesses – we’ll be sharing ideas with you and you can share ideas with each other.

Company Structure & Operations Procedures

Imagine you had to hire someone to take over your business while you took a leave of absence. What would they need to know about how it works? In this section you’ll outline how your business is structured. Just a few of the questions you’ll want to look at include:

• Who owns your business? What are your qualifications? Do you have employees? What are their qualifications?
• Do you have an office? What supplies do you need? What products for sale?
• What are your hours? How to you schedule customers/clients?
• How to you track customer history?
• What kind of follow-up do you have in place to keep your customers engaged?
• How do you do keep track of bookkeeping? Inventory?
• Who’s responsible for marketing efforts?

Financial Summary

Another critical piece of the puzzle for business success or failure, you must have a budget forecast that outlines how much your business needs to make in order for you to be able to operate it successfully. As a small business owner, you should not only be making enough to pay yourself a salary, but making a profit that you can use to invest in growing your business or in other future endeavors.  Your financial plan needs to include in detail:

• How much do you charge for products/services?
• How much does it cost you to produce products/services
• How much do you need to spend on operations (Office space? Marketing? Bookkeeping? Taxes? etc.)
• Based on how much you charge for services vs. how much they cost to produce, how much do you need to sell in order to break even? To make a profit?
• If you aren’t selling that much now, how long will it take for you to reach that amount of sales? How much extra would you need to spending on marketing, etc. to reach your goals? If you aren’t reaching your goals, what will you do?

If you can answer these questions for your own business, your chances for success increase exponentially. Depending on where you are in your process and how much information you need to gather, writing a business plan can take a few hours, a weekend or a month.  You may want to go back to the previous weeks of our adventure and review information about your target market and market niche, or spent some time getting your office processes in order. If you would like additional information, the Internet also provides a wealth of other (often free) resources to help you get started.

Even better, recruit some friends and colleges to serve as a sounding board for your plan. It always helps to have a mastermind of people to help you clarify and strengthen your plan.  The clearer your intention, the more likely you will be successful. Perhaps you could trade business plans with a friend and keep each other motivated through the process.

Next Week: Budgeting for Your Business

Questions for Discussion:

• Have you written a business plan for your holistic business. Why or why not?
• Looking over these elements of a business plan, what do you think are the most challenge sections for you? Why? What could you do to make it easier?
• Who do you know who would discussion your business plan with you? Who do you know who needs to write one of their own?

Curious, I did some checking and discovered that there’s a business search engine called Zoominfo. Zoominfo’s automated searchbots scour the internet for every scrap of information on professionals and professional organizations then centralize the information into a searchable, publicly accessible online database.

This means there’s probably a file on you. I had two, and both had entries that were wildly (and sometimes amusingly) incorrect.  But since other internet sites are pulling information from Zoominfo, the errors multiply throughout the internet.

Fortunately, Zoominfo allows you to claim your own profile (for free), and clean up the information. Just go to the site, search for yourself/your business, claim your profile(s) and follow the instructions. Zoominfo gives you the opportunity to decide how much (or how little) you want your profile to say about you, plus a listing of all of the Internet sites Zoominfo has found that mention you.

Yes, we live in a strange new world. It’s our job to be smart and make the best of it. But if you’re in the market for clients (or looking for a job), definitely get your Zoominfo profile updated. It will tell you a lot about your current web presence.

Successful people are those who learn to harness information in a way that propels them toward the fulfillment of their definite chief aim. Last week we discussed the first step in this process: how to clarify your definite chief aim. This week we’ll look at the next step: creating the space in which to manifest your heart’s desire.

The creative force is the cosmic “YES!”  Unfortunately too often when someone speaks of their dreams, their story is “Yes, I want to do that, but…”  This “Yes, but..” attitude often stalls our manifestation plans before they even get off the ground.  So this week, we are going to clear the decks of all the pesky “buts” so we can ride the waves of “YES!”

Don’t multitask. Do one thing.

In our high-speed world, the temptation to try and do multiple things at once is enormous. But study after study has shown that productivity dramatically decreases when multitasking. The mind flits from one tasking to another, lacking the mental force to accomplish any of them.

Practice cultivating mindful attention by doing one thing at a time. Start with something simple. For example, when you do the dishes; do the dishes. Don’t think about your grocery lists or tomorrow’s meetings or yesterdays arguments. Just do the dishes. Pay attention to the water, its temperature, the weight of the dishes, the sounds.

Through practice, you’ll develop you’re powers of concentration, which will serve you in all areas of your life. You’ll also realize that you can recharge your mind in any moment just from being completely present in that moment.  Try it for yourself, and you’ll see what I mean.

Love it, Use it or Lose it.

Clearing out physical clutter can be an act of sympathetic magic for clearing out mental clutter. In order to manifest something new, you need to make space for it to occur. If you don’t love something or use something, why are you wasting energy by holding on to it?  Let it go.

Set aside some time each day to clear out the physical clutter from your life. Get three boxes, one for “give away/sell,” one for ‘recycle” and one for “trash.” Go through your work places, living spaces even your car.  If you’ve got a lot of clutter, you may need to divide up the project – one room at a time or one hour at a time.

Hold the intention that by removing the clutter you are making space in your life for something new and you will create a vortex that begins attracting new energies and possibilities that support your goals.

Everything has a Place,  Everything in its Place.

Now that you’ve gotten rid of the inessentials, it’s time to organize your resources to support the accomplishment of your “definite chief aim.” Books on getting organized and time management boil down to the same advice: create a structure where everything has a place and everything is in its place.

Why is this structure important? Because it has to do with how we project our clear intentions into the physical world.  Like a tea ceremony in which every action has significance, our everyday space can become infused with intentions which support us toward the achievement of our definite chief aim. Also, the act of showing up at the same place or the same time for something makes it easier to form the habits that carry us along like a river’s current toward our goals.

Create a workspace devoted to your business, a room or a corner. Look at what tasks you need to perform (email, writing, reading, etc.) and create workstations for these tasks. Your workstation should include all the items you need for the task close at hand, so it supports you in your task.

The same goes for managing your time. Time is like space, only it manifests sequentially rather than simultaneously. Time-boxing is a system that encourages scheduling your tasks in specific segments of time to maximize efficiency.  Some highlights of the time-boxing method:

• Set aside quality time to work toward your goals every day.
• Set time limits for how long you will work on a task. Learn when things are “good enough” and move on to the next item on the list.
• Eliminate procrastination. If it’s important, just do it. If it’s not, get rid of it.
• Bundle small tedious tasks together to keep them from interfering with more important tasks
• Schedule times to read and respond to email and phone calls. Turn off email and your phone during the blocks you’ve assigned to high-importance tasks

There are many tools available to help you manage your to-do lists and schedule. Because they sync across my iPhone and laptop, I use Google calendar and Toodledo. I also use a 31-day tickler file for items that involve paper.  Find something that fits your personal style to help you stay on track.

Stick to Your Plan

Once you’ve cleared the decks, and set up the spaces and schedules to work toward your definite chief aim, now you need to work the plan. Each day, outline your chief aims for the day.  Then concentrate on doing those things. You’ll be exercising your metal muscles all the way from intention, to concentration of effort to manifestation. With each successful completion of a task, you’ll be more adept at mastering the next task.

When new information or opportunity comes your way, you can use the following rule:

• If it doesn’t aid you in attaining your “definite chief aim,” toss it.
• If you can do it in 2 minutes or less, just do it.
• If it takes longer than 2 minutes, schedule it

For larger projects that seem insurmountable, break them down into smaller components and tackle them one at a time. If you devote a little time each day, you will eventually achieve your aim.

To stay organized, schedule 15 or 30 minutes each day to check in with yourself. How did you do on your definite chief aims for the day? What adjustments do you need to make? What are your new aims for the coming day? Writing down your goals and your progress is the single best way to guarantee your successful achievement of them.

Focus on the Positive

Taming information overload in your life is an ongoing process.  Some days will be more productive than others. Never waste time beating yourself up. Instead maintain a positive outlook and focus on your successes. Make tasks a game, and see how much you can get done. Always reward yourself when you finish a task, meet one of your goals or your milestones.

Cultivate Balance

In this 24/7 world of instant communication, we all struggle to keep work and the rest of our lives in their places. If you do some of your work at home, keep work in your workspace. If you’ve got work spread all over your home, you will feel like work is overrunning your life. Same goes for your business hours; make sure you make time for your personal life and stick to it with intention as well. There’s nothing sweeter than playtime savored with your full attention!

Questions for Discussion

• What are the “buts” in your life that keep you from saying Yes! to your success?
• What tools have you found helpful to manage information overload?
• How do you reward your successes?

Next Week:Essential Elements of a Business Plan

RSS stands for Really Simply Syndication. By signing up to receive the RSS feed from a website, when new content from that website is produced, it will be delivered directly to you.

There are two main ways to read RSS feeds. The first way is via email. Some sites allow you sign up have notifications of new content sent to your email inbox.. Just provide your email address, and the site will take care of the rest. This is the best option for those who only want to receive a couple feeds.

The second way is using a feed reader. Feed readers (sometimes called a feed aggregator) collect all of your feeds and present the information to you in a newspaper-like format.  Feed readers let you organize your feeds by subjects, search by keywords, star items for reference, or clip articles for storage.  Feed readers are the best solution for those managing multiple feeds, someone doing research or producing a blog, or just information junkies.

Feed readers can be plugins to web mail like Gmail or Yahoo, or web browers like Firefox and Internet Explorer. There are also free stand-alone feed readers such as FeedDemon.  CNET has an article on how to choose the best feed reader for you.

Once you’ve decided how you want to read an RSS feed, all you have to do is sign up. Go to your favorite website, look for an orange icon on the website that looks like this:  Click it and follow the directions.

The GNO515 Studios RSS button is in the Network Channels box at the top of the right-hand sidebar. Sign up today!

I’ve recently finished reading “The Law of Success” by Napoleon Hill. Written in 1925, this groundbreaking work is the forerunner to all of today’s popular books on entrepreneurship and the law of attraction. Hill conducted extensive research and interviews with business and industry leaders of his day in order to distill their common traits into 16 key ingredients for success. “Singleness of purpose,” what he also called a “definite chief aim,” tops his list. Hill explains why:

[Each person] acts always in harmony with the dominating thoughts of his or her mind. Any definite chief aim that is deliberately fixed in the mind and held there, with the determination to realize it, finally saturates the entire subconscious mind until it automatically influences the physical action of the body toward the attainment of the purpose. … The subconscious mind may be likened to a magnet, and when it has been vitalized and thoroughly saturated with any definite purpose it has a decided tendency to attract all that is necessary for the fulfillment of that purpose.

Hill made it his own definite chief aim to help others uncover their purpose in life and fulfill their potential. He believed our best chance for success in life comes from the pursuit of what we love to do. Consequently, he interviewed thousands of people to help them discover their definite chief aim, asking questions like:

• What do you love to do?
• What can do better than anyone else?
• What makes you unique?
• Remember a time in your life when you were happy and satisfied. What were you doing?
• Visualize your ideal life in 1 year, 5 years, 10 years. What inspires you most?

For a holistic business, having a “definite chief aim” goes hand-in-hand with identifying your particular niche market. Says Peter Geisheker in Niche Marketing Strategy: “A niche market is group of consumers or businesses that all have a very specific need or want.” By providing exactly what customers are looking for, demand for products and services naturally follows.

Laura Lake in Defining Your Niche Market suggests some questions for better understanding your own niche:

• What is it that your current clients have in common?
• How do you set yourself apart from the competition?
• What is different about the services or products that you offer?
• What are the “extras” that you bring to the market?

Also consider your geographic area — if your services are hands-on, your niche may be more local. But even if your business can sell worldwide, don’t be afraid to focus narrowly. It gives you a way to concentrate your efforts and meet the maximum number of true potential clients — the ones who are looking for exactly what you offer.

And now it’s time to write down your niche statement. Your niche statement needs to communicate how what you offer will help improve your clients’ quality of life. It speaks not about what you do, rather about what your clients’ need and how you can help. The distinction may seem subtle, but it makes all the difference in the world to your eventual success.

Susan Reid in How to Define Your Niche for Your New Business shared a fabulous formula for writing a niche statement.

“There are just four things you need to include in your niche statement: your niche, their problem, your solution, your promise. Stated simply, the niche statement formula: niche + problem + solution + promise = success. Here’s what it looks like in more detail:

I/we work with __________________________(your niche),
who haven’t/need to ____________________ (their problem).
If you’re ready to/it’s time to _____________ (your solution),
I/we can/will ___________________________ (your promise).

In going through this process, you may discover that you have several market niches for different aspects of your business. That’s normal. But for purposes of this Adventure, I suggest you start with just one.  It will help you harness your power of concentration if you focus your energy on a single, “definite chief aim.” Once you’ve mastered the principles on one aim, you can confidently move on to another.

Once you’ve written down your clear and concise statement, place it where you can see it. Look at it every night before you go to sleep and every morning when you awaken.  Since your subconscious is more open to suggestion at the threshold between sleep and wakefulness, these two times of the day are the magic moments for impressing your desires deeply into your mind.  Do this every day, and in just a few weeks you’ll begin to see shifts occurring in your life.

In upcoming weeks we’ll begin to formulate a plan to bring your “definite chief aim” into reality, so stay tuned!

Questions to Consider

• What is your definite chief aim in life? In business?
• What is your niche marketing statement for your holistic business?
• How has focusing on your niche marketing statement  changed your daily routines?

Next Week: Eliminating Clutter and Increasing Productivity

Since one of the best parts of the GNO515 Adventure is the company we meet along the way, why not attach a face (otherwise known as an “avatar”) to your comments you leave on our blog? Plus, if you’re marketing your services and building a following online, it’s far more compelling to associate a face with your comments, rather leave it to a default faceless, grey placeholder graphic to represent you. So this week I’ll show you how to add a picture to go along with your words of wisdom.

Having your picture show up on blog comments only takes a few minutes to set up. A free service called Gravatar (which stands for Globally Recognized Avatar) makes it super simple. Gravatar links your picture to your email address, so whenever you leave a comment on WordPress or other commonly used blog platform, your picture will appear.

Even better, if you’re like me and are wearing multiple hats with multiple emails, you can set up and manage multiple gravatars in a single account. Whichever email address you use when you post a comment, the information you’ve associated in Gravatar with that address will automatically appear.

All you have to do is go to the Gravatar website and create a free account. Once you verify your email address and upload a picture, you’re done!  If you ever need to change your gravatar picture, it will automatically change on all places where you’ve left comments using that email address. (And, if you ever change your pictures on Facebook, Twitter and other places, if you want to be consistent don’t forget to change your gravatar too.)

Once you’ve set up your account, try it out and leave a comment below. We’d love to “meet” you.

(If you have any questions you’re just dying to know the answer to, send them along and I’ll feature them in an upcoming Tech Secrets Revealed.)