The biggest problem that I found using Evernote is to organize the notebooks for different usefulness for entrepreneurs. There are too many things that an entrepreneur can make with this tool, and I would like to obtain as much as possible ideas how entrepreneurs can organize themselves for the better utilization of Evernote.

I will start with the improvement ideas that I think is something very useful. Why we need to start with the improvement ideas? First, entrepreneurs are people full with ideas about everything around their businesses. Many of the ideas can be easily forgotten if they are not immediately translated into actionable steps. But, some of them are worth now, while others are for the future. On the other hand, you can’t accomplish everything that you dream in the same time. It’s not possible.

#1 Create Notebook for Improvement Ideas

First thing that you need to do is to make a notebook called as Improvement Ideas. The notebook is a collection of many notes. In your case, when you want to use Evernote to improve the business, this is the place where you will collect each idea from everywhere without analyzing, or thinking about the idea.

What you can put in this notebook?

For example, you are probably reading different online media as websites, blogs, news, tweets… Every time when you think that something that you are reading can be used to improve your business send to this notebook. You can use your Google reader to send ideas into the notebook, or you can use different tools that have integrated possibilities to send to Evernote. For example, I will mention some of the useful tools that you can use with Evernote:

• Mobile or tablet Evernote application which will help you to have all of your notes everywhere with you.
• Evernote Web Clipper will enable you to save interesting stuff from the web through your browser.
• You can email notes directly to your Evernote account and what is more important you can send the note to exact notebook that you want.
• If you use an app as a web reader, the most of them have the possibilities to integrate with Evernote. I am using Reeder for Mac and from the application I can send the page to the Evernote.

This is only the short example, but there are plenty of possibilities for integration in your everyday entrepreneurial life. Another thing that I need to mention is that you can also save audio and picture notes. For example, if you’re driving a car, we know that when we are driving our creativity is on the larger level, you can simply talk to your phone and save audio notes about your ideas for improvement. In such a way, you can’t forget what your creativity brings to your mind.

#2 Create the Stack About Improvements

Now you have notebooks full of ideas about improvements. But, you need other notebooks that you will use for the implementation process about the ideas. Because of that  it is better to have better organized notebooks in your Evernote account.

One useful feature is to make a stack that will cover all of your notebooks connected about improvements. You can name the stack whatever you want. In this example, I will name it as Improvements.

#3 Create Other Notebooks in the Stack Improvements

You already have one stack called Improvements and one notebook in the stack called Improvement Ideas. Improvement ideas is something as a pull of informations about possible improvements that you can make in your business.

For the process, you will need additional notebooks that will clean up your process. You want to prioritize the ideas. You will have something that you need to implement tomorrow, but something probably is not important for tomorrow and because of that it can be placed on the waiting list.

After prioritization, you need to plan your future steps about possible improvements that come for each idea. Your job will be to translate each idea into the actionable steps because ideas as ideas are not worth without making them reality. The first step in making ideas reality is to brainstorm future action steps about improvements.

For these purposes, I will use following notebooks:

• Improvement Ideas. Something that we make in the first step, and that represents pull of information.
• High-Priority Improvements. When you check your improvement idea notebook the first thing that you need to do is to prioritize each of the notes about possible improvements. This is your everyday job to clean everything from the improvement idea. When you find the note about improvement that you think have high priority for implementation you can right click on the note and chose Move to Notebook and then choose High Priority Improvements. High priority means that you need to start with the planning implementation process as soon as possible, probably tomorrow, or this week.
• Medium-Priority Improvements. This is the second prioritization notebook that will collect notes with ideas that have medium priority. When you check improvement idea, everything that you think will have medium priority you can move to this notebook. Medium priority means that something needs to be implemented but not tomorrow or this week, it can wait until you finish everything in the high-priority notebook.
• Low-Priority Improvements. The third notebook is the one that will collect improvement ideas with the low priority. These types of ideas are not something that must be implemented as soon as possible, but they are something worth being implemented in the future when you empty everything from the high priority and medium priority notebook.
• Action Steps. Another notebook is about action steps that you, and your team needs to take to implement each of the improvement ideas. You can use separate note for each idea in the previous mentioned notebooks. Start with the notes in the high-priority notebook. Remember that these action steps are action steps that you as an entrepreneur need to take for the implementation process. Sometimes they will be something like: Define action steps for the implementation process, delegate tasks to employees, follow the implementation process and check the results from the implementation process.
• Delegated Tasks. Another useful thing that you as an entrepreneur can make is to use the share functionality of Evernote to delegate tasks to your employees connected to improvement ideas. When you finish defining your action steps you need to make action steps for your employees. You are not alone in your business, and you can’t make everything alone. In this notebook, you can make different notes for different employees and their tasks connected with the improvement process and can be shared with their Evernote account. In such a way, you will use Evernote as a collaboration tool and to-do list for you and your employees. This will allow you to follow the implementation process.

Now, your improvement stack will look like this:

#4 The Whole Process

If we summarize the process, it will look like this:

• Collect ideas for improvement from everywhere and send to improvement idea notebook.
• Every day check everything in the improvement idea notebook, think about the ideas and based on prioritization send the ideas into the high, medium or low priority notebook.
• Start with high-priority notebook and chose one idea, send to action step’s notebook and add your own action steps that you need to take.
• For the same improvement idea in the notebook delegated tasks make a different note with the tasks for different employees.
• Share that notes with the employee responsible for the implementation of the tasks.
• Follow implementation process and make action steps for the next idea in the high-priority notebook for which you need to repeat the process.
• When you empty all notes form high-priority notebook, continue with the same steps for the medium priority notebook. When a medium priority notebook becomes empty continue with the low-priority notebook.

This process is only as ideas how you can use Evernote in the improvement process of your business. You can make a better process, because the purpose, here is only to give you the ideas to become more productive and make continuous improvements in your business.

If you have something to say for the improvement of the above proposed process do not hesitate to share through the comment section below.

Probably, each of these questions will be answered as yes.

Today, I would like to talk a little bit about membership site and their incorporation in your business model.

In today’s environment, it is important for you as an entrepreneur to use as much as possible channels to communicate with your customers, but in the same time to make them feel special.

On the other side, one of the best businesses models today is business models with a recurring revenue stream that means each month customer to pay a subscription fee.

Let’s talk about ideas or benefits having your own site with members.

How Your Business Can Benefit From Membership Sites?

There are many benefits, but I like to mention some of them, especially as ideas that you as an entrepreneur can use to support, or in some case to build your business.

• As a first idea, or benefit is if you have something worth saying and build that in the form of a site with members, you can sell subscription to your site and add additional recurring revenue stream for your business.
• You can use special membership site only for your best customers as members. There you will provide additional value for them in the form of useful information about your products and service, discounts, how to videos… Your goal will be to encourage a desire for your customers to become a part of your site that can be called as “Club of the Best”.
• You can use special membership site as a part of your customer’s service. All customers can become members of that site where they will have access to the instructions, manuals, video materials and different type of material to help them to use your products or services.
• You can build and use free membership site for your potential customers as a part of your lead acquisition process. The goal is to have more subscribers giving them valuable free material in your site and try to explain and educate about your products and services. In such a way, you want to build credibility and trust into your potential customers, so they can easily decide to buy from you.

As you can see there are many ideas and benefits to have your own membership site.

How You Can Build Your Own Membership Site?

What you need to build your business’s membership site? It’s simpler than ever before.

First you need to know what will be your membership site? What content will be published there? How much membership levels you will have? Do you want to charge subscription fees and for what level?

Second, you need the technology where everything can be easily managed. One of the best solutions, and in the same time the simplest solution is to use Word Press site with Wish List Member plugin (affiliate link) that will perfectly fit into each business model or design of your site.

With WishList Member, you can easily:

• integrate with your Word Press site,
• create unlimited membership levels,
• sequential deliver your content,
• control who will can view what,
• integrate with the most popular shopping cart…

More important is that now WishList Member runs Christmas promotion where anyone who buys WishList Member before the end of the year, will get a:

• 1000+ Custom Drawn Icons
• Custom Membership Site Graphics
• Additional Premium Plugins
• 3-Module Membership Site Basics Course

You can read more about the promotion here.

The Business Software Alliance recently declared its support for the Stop Online Privacy Act (SOPA). This was a bold move, and some of the organizations that belong to the alliance are already protesting. A few of the big names that make up the Business Software Alliance are Apple, Adobe, Intel, Sybase, and Dell. Only time will tell how individual consumers will react to the alliance’s support of SOPA. You may see an increase in Dell coupons as Dell tries to win back customer support, despite their allegiance to SOPA. Kaspersky Lab, a long-time member of the Business Software Alliance, announced today that they would cut all ties with the alliance over concerns about associating with the Act. Here are some reasons why many businesses oppose SOPA:

1. Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo, and Google all oppose the Act. If the bigwigs of the internet industry don’t support it, why should other businesses?
2. SOPA has the potential to dramatically alter the internet. Most of the content we read, watch, and listen to violates copyright laws. If the Act were passed, all of this content would be taken off the internet, even if it was content that just included a clip of a song or a quote from a book.
3. Measures to prevent piracy don’t usually work very well. In fact, efforts to prevent copyright infringement often lead to more underground copyright infringement.
4. If the Act is passed, legislators will prosecute overseas pirates first. Proponents of SOPA say that most infringement happens outside of the U.S. Opponents say that the Act unfairly targets people who don’t live in the U.S.
5. SOPA ultimately won’t protect the people who need the most protection. The Act does not aim to support the rights of independent artists. Those who enforce the Act will do so in the name of major record labels, TV stations, and movie producers, since hotshots in the entertainment industry are the people behind the legislation.

Debates over SOPA are heating up, and it seems like everyone is taking a side. Where do you and your business stand?

This is a guest post from Margot. Margot is s guest post writer on the subjects of business issues and resources.

You want to manage your current customers to ensure that everything is ok, and they are satisfied.

You want always to expand your business with new customers, contacting your potential customers.

How you can do this, simple but important tasks for your business? You need Customers Relationship Management – CRM system.

Why Are You Need CRM?

The purpose of your CRM system is to enable your business to:

• Identify and target your best customers.
• Make segmentation of the customers.
• Manage different marketing campaigns for different segments.
• Tracking conversion metrics.
• Build personalized relationships with customers to improve their satisfaction and maximize your profits.
• Increase knowledge about your customers.
• Learn more about your customers.
• Know what they want and what don’t want.
• Know exactly who are the customers, and who are the potential customers.

Gmail as CRM Tool

If you don’t have enough resources to buy some commercial products that exist on the market, a good starting point for your business can be a simple Gmail account, especially if your biggest need is simply to track who you contacted, when you contacted, what was the subject of contacting, what was the answer and what will be the future steps of your company.

What you can easily make with a Gmail as a CRM tool for your business?

• You can collect informations about your customers.
• You can collect informations about your potential customers.
• You can simply segment your customers.
• You can track your marketing activities with each of them.
• You can learn more about them.
• Build better relationships with them.

Let’s take a look how you can use these activities within your Gmail account.

Collecting Informations

You need to collect contact informations from your customers and potential customers. Because, today one of the most-used forms of contacting is emails, this job with Gmail becomes much easier.

Contacts in Gmail

Each Gmail account comes with a contact database that can automatically store contact details from anyone with whom you have some type of correspondence.

You can also import external contacts or add them manually.

There are many more informations that you can add than only email and name. You can add birthday, relationship, URL to their web sites, but what is the best is that you can add a custom field according to your business needs.

Adding Contacts

Segmenting Customers, Tracking Activities

The best thing when it comes to Gmail and using it as a CRM for your small business is the groups. Groups are something that will enable you to make different segments from your contacts. For example, you can have customers group, prospects group, partners group…

Groups in Gmail

Adding Contact in Specific Group or Segment

Another way or addition to your segmentation with groups is to use different folders for different segments.

If you want to track your activities, you have several options. One is integrated here in Gmail account and other is to add them to a task or appointment in Google Calendar. I like to use Add Note field on each contact where I can write about when was the person contacted, what was the subject of contacting, what was the answer and what will be the future steps that I need to take.

Learn More About Them and Build Better Relationships

One of the best solutions to learn more about your customers and potential customers, and thus to build better relationships is to use free 3rd party browser plugin called Rapportive as a tool that will add social media data to your contacts. When you know that data, you can simply go to one step ahead in your relationships with your customers from your contact list.

Now that retailers have a tablet that boasts a great user interface, reasonable price and doubles as a consumer media device, small boutiques and chains alike have been putting a lot of time and money into researching point of sale solutions for the iPad.

Software Advice has recently compiled a guide to the iPad Point of Sale (POS) software market. The full guide covers native iOS applications, web-based software that can be accessed via iPads and payment processing apps such as Square and Intuit GoPayment. You can check out the full guide here: iPad POS Software | A Guide to Mobile Point of Sale Applications.

For individuals who want an application that runs on natively on the iOS operating system, here’s a list of ten solutions to start your search.

1. Celerant. Pricing: Software license. iPod Touch, iPhone, and iPad compatible. Offers POS, warehouse management, CRM and inventory management features.
2. Epicor. Pricing: Software license. iPod Touch, iPhone, iPad and Windows Mobile compatible. Recently announced, integrates seamlessly with Epicor Retail Store V6 and above.
3. JDS Solutions.Pricing: Software license. iPod Touch, iPhone, and iPad compatible. Offers POS, back office integration and analytics.
4. LightSpeed. Pricing: Software license. iPod Touch and iPhone compatible. iPod versions work on iPad but have a smaller resolution. POS and inventory management built on familiar iTunes backdrop.
5. POSLavu. Pricing: Monthly subscription. iPod Touch, iPhone and iPad compatible. Great for restaurants. Offers POS and inventory management. Can integrate with cash drawers and ticket printers.
6. Revel Systems. Pricing: Monthly subscription. iPad compatible. Great for restaurants as well as small retail operations. Offers POS, inventory management and reporting functionality.ж
7. Radiant Systems CounterPoint. Pricing: Monthly subscription. iPod Touch and iPhone compatible. Great for line-busting when busy times of the day. Can integrate with third-party barcode scanner / card reader cases.
8. SalesVu. Pricing: Free*. iPod Touch, iPhone and iPad compatible. Includes sales processing, reporting and can integrate directly with Facebook. Company offers a free card reader with deployment.
9. SWIM. Pricing: Monthly subscription. iPad compatible. A jeweler-specific application. Offers POS, customer relationship management (CRM), order customization, and price quoting.
10.  ShopKeep. Pricing: Monthly subscription. iPod Touch, iPhone and iPad compatible. Great for specialty retailers, including food service and gift shops. Can also integrate with a vendor’s web-based application.

*Single-device license is free. Additional devices are $9.95 a month.

Beyond native applications, retailers also have two other options for successfully using iPads as checkout terminals in the store:

1. Web-based POS software. Web-based solutions can be run on the iPad’s Safari web browser. Some of these applications are difficult to navigate however, as the iPad has a touchscreen interface and on-screen keyboard; many of these solutions were designed for a traditional mouse and keyboard setup.
2. Credit card payment apps. For users that only need to process credit card transactions and do not require advanced inventory management features. Applications such as Square, GoPayment and Swipe are great and offer competitive credit card processing fees.

This is a guest post by Michael Koploy. Michael writes on various ERP topics, with particular interests in supply chainmanagement and retail industries. In his free time he enjoys the food and live music scenes in Austin, Texas. Michael is a recent graduate of the University of Texas with a BS in Psychology.

Image from ShopKeep’s Press

When I first read about virtual company that was at the last days of the previous century. I have a project at the faculty about virtual company, and my task was to collect different sources of scientific materials about virtual company.

In that time, I can’t believe that this will be possible soon. I think that such a company is science fiction.

However, today I see that we can work on one document without a need to be in the same office. We can communicate quicker than ever before. We can collaborate on the projects without physical location. We can have meetings without meeting room. We can share ideas and receive proposals in a seconds. We can manage our production machines without need to be there.

Everything that I think was science fiction become my everyday reality. But, more important is that this way of work is available for all of us without limits. It can be free or with low costs.

There is plenty small business softwares that works in the cloud and brings us freedom because our business becomes real virtual companies.

Here, I want to mention several small business software that can increase your entrepreneurial productivity and bring you more freedom.

1. Google Docs

Productivity is the primary key of a successful business, and Google Docs is something that can bring it to you and your business. This small business software suite will bring you the office suite that makes online collaboration between you and your coworkers much easier.

2. Survey Monkey

Survey Monkey is a web application that will allow you to design online surveys, to spread them and analyze data from them. The free option restricts you to 100 responses and 10 questions per survey.

3. Aweber

Aweber is a cool small business solution that can take care about all your needs with email marketing campaigns. There are many features that will bring your email marketing campaigns one step further. And that’s not all, because the reports system can involve your business in the cycles of continuous improvement of your campaigns.

4. Sales Force

Sales Force is one of the best cloud-based CRM services. If your business is dealing with customer’s accounts, this can be the perfect solution for you.

5. Dropbox

Dropbox is a service that enables you safe storage and easy file sharing between different devices. With this service, all of your data can be accessible everywhere where you have an internet connection.

6. Skype

Skype is a tool that has changed the world. With voice, video calls and chat system, file transfer and conference calls Skype has become a tool that must be used by entrepreneurs.

7. Evernote

Evernote is a tool that can help you in increasing your own productivity in relation to your ideas or events that are important to you, and you want to remember something to use it in the future.

There are numerous advantages to having an online fax. The following list will cover the most important.

• Fast Setup – To set up your online fax services takes very little effort. There are many different websites that offer this service, so do a little research and find one that fits exactly what you need. After you decide on the service that you want, sign up and pay for it. The company will provide you a local fax number and login information. At this point, you should have immediate access to the website and your account.
• No Fax Machine Required – One of the most obvious benefits of owning an online fax service is that you won’t need the machine taking up office space. Everything is done via the internet through a personal computer. Need I say more about this? More space gives you more room to put other things in the office, and it also is nice to have a little extra room to work.
• 24 Hour Availability – When you decide to sign up for online fax services, you will have 24-hour access to your fax account. You will be able to send a fax at anytime in the day or night. You won’t have to make any extra trips to the office or even leave the comfort of your own home.
• Advanced Speed – An online fax machine is much faster than a traditional fax. When you send a fax, you will receive a response back within seconds that confirms or denies that the fax went through.
• No Repair Costs – Some people constantly have issues with their fax machines. As a result, they are taking repetitive trips to repair their fax machines. These repairs are time consuming and costly. With an online fax, you won’t have to worry about these costs anymore. There is no fax machine to repair!
• Business Efficiency – Most importantly, fax machines will give your business another resource to make it more efficient. Business efficiency is the most important factor in such a competitive market. Your business needs any advantage that it can get. Spending a few extra dollars a month on an online fax service can greatly increase your workflow processes, overall work productivity, and offer new creative methods to produce work.

Online fax has a lot of great benefits, but I still recommend you do your research to find out more about the technology. Research will also allow you to plan out how you will integrate this technology into your business.

This is a guest post by James Kim. James Kim is a writer for Choosewhat.com, which provides product reviews and test data for business services and products. Choosewhat.com’s goal is to help small companies make informed buying decisions on business solutions that help their business.

Do you listening to your potential customers?

The type of small businesses that we know from the past slowly but surely vanish from the scene of today’s business world.

Some of them are transforming and start using new tools for doing business. Some of them simply expire because don’t want to accept the changes. Some of them will expire if they don’t start to change themselves.

You must start listening to your market.

Listen Your Customers and Potential Customers

Now your customers and potential customers are more powerful than ever before. They are armed with the social media tools that enable them to spread the word with the speed of light. They can help your company with a good word about you, but also they can attack you and bring bad publicity about your business.

Because of that you must always be close to the people that are your customers or potential customers. You need to start to listen to them everywhere where they are, answer and communicate with them.

You need to help them if they try to find the solution for their problems, you need to communicate with them about themes of your expertise. You need to excuse about some of your mistakes when they talk about them and offering them possibilities to fix the mistakes.

Listen Your Competitors

On the other side, there are also your competitors that you’l need to listen. What they say, offer, use, how they communicate with their customers and potential customers…? All these questions are worth for you and your company because they can be used in the process of learning and improving the business for the future.

For example, you can find conversation of your competitors and their unsatisfied customer. Why not to start the conversation with that customers and try to convert them into your satisfied customers.

This is the new type of intelligence that can increase your business potential energy.

What You Need to Listen?

You need to listen to everything about:

• Your brand,
• Your company name,
• Your company name plus adjectives,
• Industry,
• Products and services,
• Main competitors,
• Competitors products and services,
• Your current customers and their names or company names,
• The conversation of your current customers…

As you can see listening become one of the most important business activities today. It’s the new function that brings new and increases current business potential energy of your small business.

What you think about listening as a business function? Did you use listening and what you listen for your company?

This means that we already use dropbox to share our files. We already use Google Docs as something more then document processing tools.

I just give a try on the newest Kindle Cloud Reader as HTML5 apps for reading and buying books from Amazon.

My opinion is it looks great.

Now I can read books on my PC and laptop without the need to install the application. Furthermore, I can buy the books through Safari browser on my iPad.

Something that I really like about this is that it allows you to read online or to download books if you want to be able to read it without internet connection.

Kindle Cloud Reader is compatible with PC Windows, or Mac, or Linux computers using the Google Chrome or Safari web browsers, on Linux computers using Google Chrome, and on an iPad using the Safari web browser.

Here are my first impressions through images.

When I go to the Kindle Cloud Reader, I need to sign in with my Amazon account.

After login my books are there, ready for reading.

Offline Reading

My Books

I can download the book for offline reading.

Downloading Book

The readability is great.

Great Readability

The same setting from the application is here (font size, margins and color modes).

Settings in the Kindle Cloud Reader

Books can be downloaded locally for offline reading. This is important if you like to read your book on the places without internet connection.

Each Book Can be Downloaded for Offline Reading

Downloaded books in the Kindle Cloud Reader

Overall it is great step forward for Amazon, especially because the limitations rules against Amazon and other e-booksellers of the Apple.

Before several months, I found useful application for iPad that help in the process of planning several projects. Project Planner HD ($5,99) is a planning application that makes it easy to track multiple projects and tasks.

I will not go in detailed description of the application and in the next part of the post, you can see some photos of the application.

Adding New Project in the Application

Adding New Tasks in the Application

Adding New Tasks Elements in the Application

You can add Tasks, Summary of Tasks and Milestones

Each Task is Presented on the Chart

Dependency of the Tasks

Human Resources Allocation