Tomorrow we’ll be giving away 15,000 copies of Business Plan Pro Premier to any Oregon resident who can make it to one of 80 giveaway locations throughout the state.

We’re giving away the software to Oregonians, says Berry, “So that they can develop their business plans, and we at Palo Alto Software can contribute to the economy in Oregon, which has been great to us for 17 years now. So this is really giving back.”

If you can’t view this video, click this link.

It’s been a few short months, and in that time I have become a Twitter evangelist.  Thanks to Guy Kawasaki, I was able to hone in on my niche (successful men) and learn more about their current lifestyle trends and interests.

I didn’t know who Guy Kawasaki was prior to joining Twitter.  However, when looking at the follow lists of a few key people in my niche, I noticed the majority of them followed Guy Kawasaki.  I placed a search on him via Tweetdeck and immediately had a steady supply of niche men at my fingertips.   Searching by job title or subject wasn’t as effective for me.  Searching by a major twitter icon gave me a wider spectrum of opportunity.

Twitter has turned out to be  a powerful business communication tool for me.  I have clients tweeting me with scheduling and clothing requests, style questions and just general business relationship messages.  Some of my clients don’t read emails (or if they do, mine seem to end up in the spam folder).  Twitter seems to be an effective platform for me to communicate with them.  It’s like they have a special, red phone sitting directly on their desk.  I can bypass all the noise of email, phone calls, texting, IM and go straight to the “red phone” via a direct message on Twitter.

Most importantly, Twitter helped me grow my blog and business.  Twitter is an effective means for promoting my blog and promoting my role as a style expert for the Trunk Club.  PR is worth every penny in my opinion, and it’s fabulous that Twitter helps you promote for free!

How can Twitter help you?

• Twitter is like a search engine-networking hybrid.  You can find and connect with people far easier with Twitter than Facebook or LinkedIn.  Twitter is worth the time and effort.
• Twitter is a very effective way to start a dialog with someone you don’t know; but want to know.
• Twitter is a fast and efficient way to directly communicate with someone who is following you.  I have scheduled interviews, Trunk Club consultations, and business meetings via direct tweets much faster than if I had attempted via email in certain cases.
• Twitter is a helpful tool in promoting your blog or events.
• Twitter.com is painful and slow to use.  Use one of the applications like Tweetdeck instead.
• If you are trying to find or promote to a specific niche, look through the follow lists of a few niche people and see who they all commonly follow.  Then, do a twittersearch on the big tweeter.  You will instantly see an up to date collection of people in your niche, who tweet about and re-tweet this person.
• To be the most successful at Twitter, you have to regularly tweet (think once a day at least).
• Twitter is one of my best networking research tools.  If I need to know facts about a particular subject, I google it.  If I want to know who is interested in a particular subject or niche, I twittersearch it.
• Twitter helps you keep up to date on the interests and happenings of people.  Which in turn helps you stay connected and up to date.  Good business is based on maintaining the relationship.

Lisa’s Twitter Etiquette

• Twitter is a helpful tool in promoting yourself.  However, put a real picture up, not an icon.  Start building relationships honestly.
• Fill out your Twitter profile as completely as you can (name, links, job description, interests perhaps).  People don’t follow a mysterious nobody.
• Unless you are Guy Kawasaki or a truly professional tweeter, balance your tweets of links, re-tweets, and promotions with a few tweets about you.  The “you” tweets don’t necessarily have to be all telling and deeply personal, but should at least help people get to know you a little.  Help build the relationship.
• Unless your niche is “quotes and thoughts,” don’t bore everyone with an endless barrage of zen-like thoughts and quotes.  Do unto others as you would have them do unto you!
• You won’t get followers unless you follow others first.  However, don’t waste people’s time.  Select carefully and responsibly.  Be wary of the “get thousands of followers in ninety days” schemes.  They can make you look sleazy in my opinion.
• How to re-tweet another re-tweet: Retweet the original author and then give credit to the re-tweeter at the end “via @…” (RT @wasabinights: Despite the economy I see growth & innovation. Good times makes us fat and lazy & tough times force us to be creative. via @heykeenan)
• A dialog that begins with a reply to one of your tweets should quickly move to direct tweets if the content isn’t a benefit to your followers.  Otherwise, it’s like the obnoxious person in the room who thinks everyone needs to hear his personal conversation.
• Ultimately, if you are using Twitter for business reasons, keep your tweets business-friendly.  “Yo Slobs!” tweets don’t offer anyone much value and communicate a sloppy image.

I see comparisons of Twitter versus Facebook versus LinkedIn all the time.  However, this blog article by Jim Keenan struck me as  current  and accurate.

Personally, I wish I had more time for Twitter.  I know I could build a large following and maximize Twitter’s value for me if I just had more time to spend on it.

Want to learn more about Twitter?  Think you know everything about Twitter?  Read this blog post by Koka Sexton to find out everything you ever need to know about Twitter. I am willing to bet even the seasoned Tweeter will pick up something new and useful.

-Lisa

Lisa Bruckner is a  Trunk Club Expert – helping men buy their clothing the way they always wanted to!  She writes for two men’s blogs: Wasabi Nights and The Trunk Club Blog and spent twelve years in the research sector before switching gears to follow her passion for fashion.
Trunk Club
Wasabi Nights
Twitter

Here is another example of how what you put up on the Internet is no longer yours to keep. On June 10 the Associated Press reported on a U.S. family photo becoming an advertisement in the Czech Republic.

The family is from Missouri. The picture of mom, dad and kids was for the 2008 holiday season greetings. They posted it on a blog, gave it to a few friends, and uploaded to some social networks.

Then this past May a friend was traveling in the Czech Republic. There, in a Prague grocery store window, was a life-size picture of the family, pitching Euro-foods. The store owner got the photo from the Web, and didn’t think they were real people.

The family and the store owner appear to be settling the issue amiably. Yet, nobody seems to know how the photo got into the Internet’s broader public domain, but it points up that nothing on the Web is as secure as we think and wish it is. And certainly nothing uploaded to social networking platforms is private and secure.

So before you become a publisher, and splash your words and pictures out where everyone in the world can see them, think very, very carefully. Anything you say or show, can and will be used against and despite you.

Todd Pearson

Todd Pearson learned this early in his path to business ownership. After 11 years at the same company, Pearson decided to open his own distribution/import company. In 2002, he started Global MRO Products, which assists companies with the international procurement of MRO (maintenance repair operations) products.

“Our clients are either manufacturers or distributors/resellers who then sell to manufacturing. What they have in common is that they need internationally manufactured parts for their factories’ equipment,” says Pearson.

When he started Global MRO, Pearson thought he’d be seeking funding from investors. “For this, I needed a business plan,” he remembers. When he started working in Business Plan Pro 2002, he learned a great deal about his business. “It really puts things into the right perspective. Using the software made me answer questions that I had not really thought of in much dept. It made me take a harder look at some of my ideas.”

After shopping his business plan around, Pearson determined that going the venture capital route wasn’t the right fit for him. “I found out that unless I was willing to give away a large portion of my company to a venture capitalist or deal with bank rules and issues, my best bet was to use the equity built in both my partner and my homes,” he says. But he was impressed with the feedback he got on the plan he had been presenting. “They were shocked at the level of my business plan. I even had one venture capitalist ask me if I had the business plan professionally written and by whom!”

The work Pearson had put into the plan wasn’t wasted just because he hadn’t used it to secure funding, however. “Eventually, the plan was used more as a tool to gauge success and to map out the next step,” of his company, he says. Over the next few years, he found himself going back to his plan, updating the numbers to reflect what was actually happening. “The results gave me a very good indicator of where we were headed compared to what we had projected,” and allowed him to make adjustments as needed.

The difference between working for somebody else and owning his own business is like night and day for Pearson. “It is fun to come into work each day — which by the way stopped seeming like work since it is my company — and look for new ways to increase sales, customer satisfaction, or make my employees just a little bit happier!”

Pearson’s company has been doing well, and he says doing what he loves is at least part of the reason why. “You will be married to [your business] and will be giving it all the spare time you have. It is taxing and until you reach a point beyond profitability, it sucks every extra minute out of your life.” If you don’t truly love what you’re doing, it won’t seem worth it. Pearson is also a strong advocate for having a business plan, which he says “will help you see where you are succeeding and where you need to perform better.”

The one downside to his company’s success, according to Pearson, is that it “cost me the time to continue the important practice” of revisiting and revising his business plan. “However, I now need to secure new financing to help support two new business ventures. Once again, I find myself needing one of the most crucial documents a business needs. Hello Business Plan Pro 2009!”

Marketing Plan Pro Tip: Changing colors — Want to customize the look of your charts? This post provides step by step instructions.

Records Retention Schedule — Knowing what records your company needs to keep, and for how long, is an all-around good idea.

Managing Email in Beantown — A trip to the Internet Retailers Conference and Exhibition in Boston recently confirmed it: e-commerce companies need email management solutions.

Well, there is a growing chorus of entrepreneurship bloggers sounding the alarm that policy makers are focusing too much on the VC model when talking about economic recovery.

Less than 5% of new companies ever take on any venture funding, yet there seems to be such an incredible focus on VCs in the start-up world. There is a whole group of people who don’t think a business is even interesting — if it can not get venture funding. Really? This is also why the VC myth is so heavy-handedly taught at business schools and ingrained into MBA students. They are basically taught that anything worth starting must be able to get venture funding. Again from the same post at Campus Entrepreneur:

I find the growth of business plan competitions so odd. Why prepare students for pitching to Venture Capitalists when most of them will never do it?

Now, I don’t find the growth of business plan competitions to be odd, I love it. What I find odd is that the students who enter them, the advisers who help students, and the professors who teach students in these programs think the business plan has only one purpose: to COMMUNICATE with the VC. What a missed opportunity for all these MBAs. This is why I am often frustrated when dealing with a recent MBA grad — they have such a surreal grasp of the real entrepreneur, and the real start-up. It is not just about the dog and pony show, and wowing important people in suits. Entrepreneurship is actually about creativity, innovation, and HARD WORK. It is also about KNOWING what your plan is. Not because that plan will actually be exactly right, or because that plan can actually lead you, step by step, to success, but because the process of creating the plan, understanding your market, knowing your strategic focus, and setting up goals to accomplish your overall objectives, is what will make your company successful.

Often times I hear people say that they “don’t have time to plan.” Or that the “plan will just be outdated too quickly and not be right – so why bother?”. Yes, especially for a start-up, things will constantly change. But you should still have some long-term (12 month, 3 year) goals for your new company. How can you possibly reach and aim for those long-term goals if you don’t do any planning? And if what you plan turns out to be way wrong, you adjust your plan, and more importantly you LEARN what went wrong, and what went well. What do you have to compare your actual numbers to — if you don’t have a plan? How can you analyze what is working and what is not — with perspective– if you don’t have a plan? The biggest myth out there is that the a plan is useless because conditions change. Of course conditions change. But planning makes you THINK, RESEARCH, and REACH for specific goals. It’s like setting out on a long trip without taking the time to plan it out. Of course stuff will change. There may be roads that are closed, or towns that you decide at the last minute that you really don’t want to visit. But having an overall plan, gives you a place to start, and a place to end.

So why can’t they teach this in business school? Why can’t anyone teach the idea that doing your homework, and being well prepared, with a plan, is more important then ONLY learning how to write a plan for a venture capitalist? And why can’t the general entrepreneurial, small business community get behind the idea that business planning is good for ALL businesses, not just a certain few? Especially when there are statistics that show that a new business is 60% more likely to still be around in two years if it has a plan. Those are odds I would like on my side if I was starting a business — regardless of what funding I did or did not need.

-Sabrina Parsons aka MommyCEO

The good news is that we really don’t have to keep all those records forever. Yes, some we do need to keep forever. Some we keep only until the IRS has had their way with us. And some we need only keep for a few years.

Telling which record needs to be kept, for how long, is a little harder. And properly disposing of temporary records is not as simple as just tossing the papers into the recycle bin.

Here is where the Records Retention Schedule comes into play. This document lists the types of records your business produces (financial, personnel, contracts, operations, etc.); identifies any legal requirements for how long the record must be kept and the requiring authority, such as the IRS or the Sarbanes-Oxley Act; will note how long the record is generally actively used in business operations; and may contain other information as well, such as noting that the records contain sensitive personal identifying data; and if microfilm or digitally scanned copies are acceptable legal alternatives to the paper document.

Search the Internet and you will find plenty of information about Records Retention Schedules and samples, such as this one kindly offered by Millennium Records Management. Remember, however, that a sample schedule is just a generalized representation of what one looks like. Your Records Retention Schedule will be tailored to your type of business, where you are located, in what state(s) and/or countries you do business, whether you are privately owned or trade shares on the stock market, are a public institution, hold government contracts, and a myriad other factors.

You will want to work with your accountant, legal counsel, and/or a professional records management company to develop and establish yours.

You implement the Records Retention Schedule officially so everyone in your company knows about it. This helps ensure that your vital records are actually kept in the first place. Later, say you have several file cabinets of Accounts Payable invoices. Your Retention Schedule says you need to keep these for 6 years, but experience shows you really only get into them for 3 years. Knowing this, you can free up your business/office floor space by transferring these records to secure off-site storage or an alternative storage media.

Once you have records that reach the end of their retention period you can dispose of them. But, as I said, you can’t simply toss them into the recycling can. You need to have an established process for their disposal. Yes, you have to create more documentation to get rid of old documents.

You will want to have the people who generated the records sign off that they no longer need the records. You should note that the records have reached the end of their retention period according to your established Records Retention Schedule, and check that their retention period has not been extended due to audits, litigation, etc.

You will want to certify when, how, and by whom, the documents were destroyed. This is easier today, than in the past, when I spent many hours hauling boxes down to a loading dock and feeding paper into a shredder next to a dumpster. In recent years mobile shredding companies have proliferated. They will drive their big truck-mounted confetti shredders to your business, haul your boxes to the truck, let you witness their destruction and give you a certificate of destruction.

Establishing, implementing, and following a Records Retention Schedule will go a long way to ensuring that your company keeps and maintains the vital records you need to continue in business. And, in a worst case scenario, should you be caught up in litigation or the like, prove that your records are kept and destroyed in a regularly occuring, established, approved, documented process, and not in a midnight burn out behind the barn in an amateurish attempt to avoid culpability and responsibility, or obstruct the legal process.

Steve Lange
Senior Editor
Palo Alto Software

As just one example among many, how many ways can you misspell restaurant? Recent visitors who were searching one of our sites for sample business plans for eating establishments used these misspellings in their searches:
  restaraunt
  restauraunt
  restaurent
  resteraunt
  restruant
  restrunt
  resturant
  restuarant

Not getting any results, they also tried the plurals of these not-words by adding s and es as well. Maybe these were merely sloppy typing errors, or perhaps the searchers really do not know the correct spelling.

In a sad way it really doesn’t matter. Internet users are becoming less literate every day, and we are enabling them to do it. They don’t need to know how to spell correctly for a successful Internet search. Anything that is a close approximation of a word will do.

That is because we owners, hosts, developers, webmasters, and editors of websites collect, track, and analyze all these bad searches. Then we add the misspellings into keyword fields and other code, behind-the-website-scenes, so that from now on anyone who makes a half-hearted attempt at spelling will still arrive at our sites.

And truly, I can’t say this is wrong. Sad yes, but not wrong. With so many gazillion e-merchants out there, search engine optimization is essential to our success and survival. We must use every opportunity, every tool, every search to entice, suggest, direct, link, and otherwise bring potential customers in to our websites where we can sell them our products and services.

To continue with my example, now, at our same site, a search on any of those misspellings they will produce a list of free restaurant business sample plans, because I’ve added them all into the keyword search fields.

If you are not including misspelled search terms in your website’s SEO process you are missing out on connecting with many potential customers.

Steve Lange
Senior Editor
Palo Alto Software

This Just In: Bacon and Email Are Basically Brothers — A lighthearted look at the unlikely similarities between the communication tool and the porky breakfast side dish.

The Real Secret to Becoming a Popular Blogger — There’s no point in writing a boring blog. Copyblogger writer Johnny Truant suggests how to be interesting.

1. It’s draining
2. It’s incessant
3. Almost everyone has a suggestion about how to manage it

I’m going to go out on a limb and postulate that you’ve faced a few email issues of your own. How do you manage it, both personally and professionally? How do you use it to provide the kind of customer service you’d like to be known for? How do you support your brand with email?

These are all big questions, some with intuitive answers and others that require a bit more thoughtful digging. If that’s not digging that you’re interested in doing, you’re in luck. We’re handling that for you at the Email Center Pro blog.

Of particular interest might be a recent series we completed, entitled “Stop the Madness: Manage Email to Grow Your Business”. The posts provide insight on things like brand identity and the value that you provide through email. If you’re trying to figure out how to make better use of the time you spend wrestling with this communication channel, the Email Center Pro blog is the place to do it.

If you just want some interesting insights and a bit of a light-hearted look at email, you’ll find that there, too. We’d like to think that we’re a full-service solution.

Jason Gallic,
Product Manager, Email Center Pro