New & Improved Bookkeeping System

I just finished work on a tutorial for the new “Bookkeeping in a Box” turnkey record-keeping tool for my customers.  If you’re still looking for a bookkeeping system, or are shopping around for something that’s a little more streamlined, this might be for you.

Visit http://www.keeterconsulting.com/forms to download a .pdf version of the tutorial or of the various forms included in the kit:

1. Daily Checklist (Verifies you’re tracking everything you need to be tracking)
2. Money In Log (The name really says it all, doesn’t it?)
3. Invoices
4. Set-Aside Worksheet (Helps to make sure you’re earmarking enough of your revenue for taxes and future expenses)
5. Money Out Log (If you liked the Money In Log, you’ll love the Money Out Log.)
6. Mileage Log (Track your business travel)

But wait, there’s more!

I’ve also added updated versions of several other popular forms and templates to the Keeter Consulting Toolbox page:

1. Business Idea Evaluator (Is your idea a good one?)
2. Generic Business Plan Template (A great starting point)
3. Generic Revenue & Expense Forecast Template (Ditto)
4. Vehicle Expense Calculator (Helps to estimate your business travel costs: fuel, oil changes, tire rotations and tire replacements)

  If you check out any of these tools, please let me know what you think of them.

How to be a good public speaker

I was fooling around on LinkedIn earlier today and responded to the following question in their Answers area:

It dawned on me that public speaking is an activity that small business owners frequently encounter and that I’d never addressed the issue in my own blog. I decided to share my response to the question here as well:

Know your subject matter intimately. Self-explanatory.

Know your audience. Tailor your language, how in-depth you get, and how you incorporate humor and audience interaction to their specific needs and preferences.

Don't write and rehearse a scripted speech. If that's all a speaker has to offer, I can just download his presentation notes or an MP3 recording of his lecture. Even a well-written, well-delivered, scripted speech is boring to the audience. Public speaking is essentially another form of live theater. What makes it exciting is the chance of something going wrong, or an inspired moment of improvisation.

Plan out the key points you want to make during your presentation, and the order in which you want to make them. Then rehearse discussing those points in a conversational manner. The focus here is on developing the pace of the presentation and honing your language; if you happen upon a clever turn of phrase or a good analogy, make a note of it so you an include it in the actual show.

Be entertaining. look for topical, interesting or humorous anecdotes when you need to illustrate your point.

Be factual. Back up what you say with objective data and hard numbers where possible. Nobody cares that you THINK that shiatsu massage can help with preventing migraine headaches. Bring data to support your position.

Be concise. You're not being paid by the word. Keep it tight. The Gettysburg Address was only 271 words long.

Learn from the best.

• Conan O’Brien’s 2011 Commencement Address at Dartmouth College
• Mike Rowe’s Presentation at TED

Relax and have fun with it. Presenting a topic in which you have some degree of expertise, and hopefully passion as well, to a room full of smart, interested people should be a very fun and rewarding experience. Enjoy the ride and your audience will as well.

Repost: Gov. Snyder Encourages Mentors

Although I’m still waiting for Governor Snyder to publicly retract his claim that he’s a nerd (see my open letter to the governor from 3/16/11 for details), I’m 100% behind his call to experienced professionals from all walks of life to seek out opportunities to volunteer as mentors for the newer workers coming up behind them. In fact, I posted on this same topic back in 2009:

(Click here to read my blog entry dealing with mentoring)

(Click here to read Gov. Snyder's letter)

I’m rather passionate about this topic. It’s especially important for the growing ranks of newly self-employed people, who are encountering an entirely new set of challenges.

As any of my customers who’ve gone on to start and run their own businesses can tell you, there’s a huge difference between having technical expertise with the products or services that your business offers and having the management expertise to operate your own business. The latter involves an endless series of decisions regarding cash flow, marketing, recruiting and managing employees, sales, risk management, etc.

Leveraging your experience with running a small business, even if your business is very different from that of the person you’re mentoring, is an invaluable resource to them.

You don’t need to have all the answers. You just need to be a sounding board who helps them to stop and take a critical, objective look at their choices before they plunge headlong into an under-thought decision.

It can be a fair amount of work, depending on the arrangement you make with your “mentee”, but rest assured, it provides equal benefits to the mentor as well as the mentee:

Mentoring will expose you to marketing and management issues that you probably haven’t encountered previously. It will sharpen your thinking and communication skills. It will help to position you as a leader in the self-employed community. And it will help you to expand your personal and professional networks.

So take it from Governor Snyder or me (whichever of us seems the most impressive to you): making yourself available as a mentor to someone is a no-brainer. It benefits you, them, and the state as a whole.

Lastly, if you’re a newbie to running your own business, take the initiative to seek out a mentor to help you learn the ropes as you enter this new phase in your career.

How to Get Started:

Gov. Snyder’s letter includes a link to the Mentor Michigan web site (part of the Michigan.gov site), but if you want to dig a little deeper:

Aspire Collaborative Services posted a great overview called How to be a Great Mentor Without All the Fuss that’s well worth the read.

To get connected with a mentor or volunteer as a mentor, some good starting points are the Service Corps of Retired Executives (SCORE), chamber of commerce, Michigan Works! Service Center and/or your local Michigan Small Business Technology Development Center. You might also mention it on your LinkedIn profile.

What has your experience with mentoring/being mentored been?

Harnessing the Power of Pessimism

I have a confession to make:

I'm a pessimist.

A huge pessimist. The sky is falling. The end is near. Anything that can wrong, will go wrong, and at the worst possible moment. Yep, that's me.

I have a near-zero tolerance for financial risk. I've pretty much convinced myself that our economy will remain weak and unpredictable, and probably get worse, over the next few years and decades.

Thus the creation, and ongoing success, of Keeter Consulting is the very definition of the word "ironic."

Entrepreneurs are, of simple necessity, optimists. To be willing to risk one's time, money and sanity on a new business requires a person to believe in the possibility - no, make that probability, even inevitability - of success and of catching more than a few positive breaks as the business grows. It's not a lifestyle for the timid.

So why would I, the most pessimistic, risk-averse person alive today, choose to be self-employed? And not just self-employed, but working to help other people pursue self-employment? Why would I opt to earn my livelihood in an optimist's world?

Actually, that's a pretty good question.

First, a little background on how I got started:

• Risk factor #1, “Will I be able to obtain enough business to sustain my business?” was pretty well addressed from the get-go.  Based on my prior work with the CMU IBIE (formerly the CMU LEC) when I was an MRS counselor, they stated their willingness to single-handedly provide me with enough work to keep Keeter Consulting afloat. They already had a decade-old working relationship with MRS to support their ability to do that.
• Risk factor #2: “How will I obtain start-up funds, and what will I do if the business fails?” was also a non-issue.  Since CMU's program handled most of the marketing work, my start-up costs amounted to little more than a notebook PC, printer, file cabinet and some business cards. I had very little money tied up in launching the business.  That meant that I didn’t need to worry about losing a bunch of money invested in the business, or about having a big loan to pay off.
• Risk factor #3: “Am I actually qualified to do this?” I’d already written several reasonably good business plans, and worked in a home-based, self-directed setting in the past, so there wasn’t much uncertainty in my mind on this point.

In short, it was perhaps the lowest-risk small business start-up in human history save for opening a beer store next to a fraternity house.

Next, there's no denying that I probably feel the anxiety that accompanies launching small businesses more acutely than my optimist colleagues.

However, there's also a lot of value and satisfaction that goes with being a sort of "outsider" working in a world of optimists.

As a pessimist, I'm probably predisposed to overestimate the chances of potential problems occurring, and also of overestimating the severity of those problems should they actually happen.

But I'm also more attuned to identifying potential problems than my optimistic counterparts. I think that lets me help my customers approach their business ventures with a more complete picture of the risks and rewards that they entail. It also helps them to recognize an plan for "show-stopper" events, and to make sure they at least something in place to mitigate the range of less likely or severe developments.

Here's how I "harness the power of pessimism" in a way that reduces the risks of self-employment without scaring myself or my customers so badly that we scrap the whole thing and just curl up in a ball in a corner somewhere:

• Don't risk what you can't afford to lose. Even the most promising business idea, just like the most promising employment opportunity, can fail. Jack Parr, Johny Carson and Jay Leno had each hosted The Tonight Show for literally decades when it was turned over to Conan O'Brien. Who would have imagined that despite managing good ratings, he'd be fired from the show after only a few months? Well, it happened. While Conan's income was never at risk (he was already a multimillionaire), his professional career was, as were the livelihoods of many of his staff who left New York to follow him to L.A..

Pessimist Question #1:

If your business tanks, can you and your family withstand the financial, personal and professional hit you'll take?

Because even when it's highly unlikely, failures can happen. If you know you can survive this, you'll have fewer sleepless nights.

 

• Of all of the things that could go wrong during your first year of operation, SOME of them will.

Gas prices could go up. Taxes could go up. New competitors could enter the market. Customer needs and preferences could change. Natural disasters, terrorist attacks, trade disputes or labor strikes could disrupt your supply of products or raw materials. You could experience a personal or family health problem or other emergency that disrupts your ability to work. Laws governing how your product or service is made, delivered, or to/from whom it can be sold or provided can change. Technological innovations could make your product/service obsolete (iTunes and iPods killing off CDs and record stores; web services like Orbitz and PriceLine killing off travel agencies).

 

Will you face a perfect storm where all, or even most, of these catastrophes occur? Of course not. But it's a virtual certainty that one or two of them will happen to some degree during the early stages of your business's existence.

Pessimist Question #2:

In a realistic "worst case scenario," would your business still be able to stay solvent and generate enough income to meet your family's basic needs?

Failing that, would you be able to walk away from you business in a (personally/professionally/financially) tolerable manner? Do you have an exit strategy?

 

• "Born under a bad sign / If it wasn't for bad luck, I wouldn't have any luck at all."

Pessimist Question #3:

Does your business plan count on a lucky break somewhere during the process?

Because that's just stupid.

If your plan relies of a some law being passed or revoked in a specific time frame, or a bank loaning you a given amount of money when that's a far-from-certain outcome, you've got a recipe for disaster.

"Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win." - Tsung Tsu (from The Art of War)

The point here is the notion of "We'll cross that bridge when we come to it" or "I'm sure some opportunity will present itself" is the Achilles Heel of the optimist's mindset. By all means, hope for the best, but always plan for the worst.

In the end, let your optimism open your mind to the possibilities that surround you. There's tremendous creative energy you can tap into with your can-do attitude.

Let your pessimism help you to spot, and plan for, potential pitfalls.

But don't stop there. Finally and most importantly, let your pessimism and optimism serve as checks and balances on one another to make sure that you're progressing "eyes open" with full awareness of the risks as well of the rewards.

You wouldn't be an entrepreneur if you weren't already leveraging your optimism. Now harness the power of pessimism. It will increase your chances of success, improve your profitability, and most ironically of all, it will help you to sleep better at night.

Bottom Line:

It can't be done.

Now go out and do it!

Other impossible things:

Inc. Magazine: How to Prepare and Launch Your Start-Up

I just ran across a good article discussing launching start-up businesses from a “30,000 foot” perspective.  It’s well worth the read.

Topics > Start-up > Writing a Business Plan > Writing a Mission Statement > How to Prepare to Launch Your Start-up Preparing to launch your start-up means more than simply making sure you have a viable product and potential customers. Here are five tips on how to prepare yourself to be a founder. By Matthew DeLuca | Aug 29, 2011 Click here for the full article

Here are the comments that particularly stood out to me, along with my usual editorializing:

“Really do your research,” (Brenton) Hayden advises any entrepreneur, whether they are starting their first company or their fifth. Don’t rely on a great idea, he says. “I call great ideas the death of your company and your personal finances. Often if you’re starting up they’re both going down the drain.”

Ideas are like noses.  Everybody has one.  Always bear in mind that the human race has gotten along just fine for about 100,000 years now without whatever product or service you propose selling to them now. 

1. Find out how people are currently meeting the need you intend to fill.  Can you (profitably) provide them with an alternative that they’ll prefer?
2. Dig deep to really understand your customers.  Apple did this when they invented the iPhone, learning how the design of the phone, both aesthetically and ergonomically, could be improved upon before actually finalizing the product.  They also uncovered their customer’s desires for ancillary products and services that accompany the iPhone such as iTunes, the App Store, and now iCloud.  Make sure you’re providing the best, and most comprehensive, solution possible.

“The first thing when you look at the bottom line when you go into this is you have to think one thing and one thing only, and that’s ‘I will not fail,’” (Jeff) Brinkhoff says. “And you have to be careful that it is not ‘I will not fail’ while you’re going down the wrong path.”

Never bet more than you’re prepared to lose.  Before even starting the business, determine how much time, cost and risk you’re prepared to accept, and what your exit strategy will be if you reach that limit.  Make sure that “Failure is not an option” is a statement about your personal motivation to make the business success, and not a statement about how a business failure would destroy you, financially or otherwise.

“Many entrepreneurs I speak with have great ideas and even a great plan, but 99 percent of them have no practical industry-related experience,” (Brian Janeczko) says.

As I’ve stated repeatedly in past blog entries, on-the-job learning and starting a new small business are fundamentally incompatible concepts.  Your ability to find efficiencies, spot market opportunities, and anticipate potential pitfalls is critical to your business being competitive.  You can only do those things effectively if you’re dealing with a product, service and industry with which you’re already very familiar.

“Get counsel from different sources,” (A.W.) Pickel says.

Many people understand one or two facets of a business or industry reasonably well.  Very few people are truly expert on the entire picture.

Even the “gurus” who do have a broad understanding of a particular type of business may have different approaches to success (which may or may not align with your own style) and different tolerances for risk than you.  Or they may simply be working from inaccurate or incomplete information. Get several opinions, then form your own.  Double-check the information you get from one source against other sources.

“I find that often the biggest and most healthy businesses look very different from what the founders first envisioned,” Bradberry says. “They responded to what the market was telling them and it was something they could execute on.”

Let the numbers, and your actual customers, tell the story.  Be open-minded to your business model evolving in unexpected directions.  For instance, maybe you envisioned running a video arcade in an old storefront in your town, but the real market demand ends up being for a mobile arcade that can be set up in churches, schools and community centers.  Chase the money.

Just be confident enough and alert enough to recognize when the business is evolving too far away from your original concept for you to still be comfortable with it.

What were your take-aways from the article?

How to Get More Out of Google Searches

First, a quick thanks to my high school classmate, Tom Dana, of Digitalsea.com for Tweeting about this on Twitter:

A fun web site that I check out from time to time, www.lifehacker.com, recently posted an article about getting the most out of Google searches when doing research. 

You can read the whole article by clicking here, along with an “infographic” from www.hackcollege.com detailing the tips and tricks, but the infographic is a 15 slide presentation all strung together in a single, really long image, so it’s awkward to view and print.

However: since everyone knows that a business has to add value to something in order to attract customers, I took the liberty of “adding value” by converting the image into a 15 page .pdf document that you can download here.

Even if you’re pretty slick with your internet searches, it’s well worth checking out to see if you can happen upon at least one new trick to add to your bag.

What other tips and tricks do you have to pass along to others for improving the speed and quality of their internet searches?

Partnerships: A Few Things To Consider

Common sense says that you would never enter into a business partnership with another person unless you and they already had high levels of mutual trust and respect as well as a clear and common vision for the direction of the company. Doubtless both partners don’t envision any future circumstances where they wouldn’t be able to find mutually agreeable solutions to implement. And ye those circumstances always seem to turn up sooner or later.

While sometimes a person you know, like and trust will suddenly reveal him- or herself to be unscrupulous, lazy or incompetent, that’s not usually the case. What is a much more common occurrence that can have equally significant consequences for a business is when one partner’s general life circumstances change unexpectedly, or when two honest, ethical, and well-intended partners simply disagree on some critical business decision.

• What if one partner wants to buy the other partner’s share of the business?
• What if one partner wants to sell his share of the business and leave?
• What if one partner wants to bring in a third partner?
• What if one partner perceives that he/she is taking on more of the work, cost or risk of operating the business than the other partner (whether this is an accurate or inaccurate perception)?
• What if both partners have different opinions on a major decision regarding the company such as
• Relocating?
• Expanding/Downsizing?
• Shifting the focus of the customers they serve, or the goods and/or services they provide?
• “Going Public” with the company by issuing stocks?
• Selling the company?

The ramifications of this type of thing can ruin an otherwise good business and devastate what may have been a lifelong friendship between partners.

There is a simple precaution you can take to avoid, or at least mitigate, these types of potential pitfalls: Drawing up Articles of Partnership.

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ARTICLES OF PARTNERSHIP

The name given to an instrument of writing by which the parties enter into a partnership, upon the conditions therein mentioned. This instrument generally contains certain provisions which it is the object here to point out. Read Full Entry…

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Articles of Partnership are essentially a “pre-nuptial agreement” between partners that detail the exact expectations of, and for, each partner. They also include agreements on how a wide variety of potential situations (like trying to buy out the other partner’s stake in the business), so that when one of those situations arises, or is under consideration by one partner, both parties already know the agreed-upon plan for addressing that contingency.

To do this right, it needs to be legally binding, and it needs to be well-thought-out to avoid accidentally missing certain potential situations and to avoid including agreements that may have undesirable, unintended consequences. For that, you need to bring in an attorney, preferably one with expertise in this area.

However, you can save yourselves and your attorney a great deal of time (which means saving you a great deal of money as well) by drafting a preliminary, simple-English, layman’s terms, version of your Articles of Partnership prior to even approaching an attorney.

Each partner can voice their concerns and share their ideas for how to resolve specific conflicts. Often solutions to most potential conflicts can be mutually agreed upon prior to hiring a lawyer, or at least headway can be made on both partners understanding (though not necessarily agreeing with) the solutions that the other is presenting. If nothing else, this will help both partners to determine what their key questions are for the attorney.

Everything outlined above is just general “best practices” material for your consideration. Now I’m going to shift gears and offer some opinions based on my small business experience as well:

With very few exceptions, I’m usually opposed to partnership arrangements and advise against entering into them if at all possible.

• Invariably one partner will begin to feel that she/he is working harder than, or assuming greater risk than, the other partner.
• Inevitably there will come a point where both partners cannot find a mutually acceptable answer to a key business decision.
• More often than not, there comes a point in the life of the business that partners will disagree on how to divide business profits or business assets if the business is being liquidated.

Lastly, while we all like the old adage “two heads are better than one”, we’re less enamored with the prospect of surrendering some significant portion of our control over our lives, our finances, our careers and of course our businesses.

I tend to prefer an arrangement where one person is the clear “owner” of the company and therefore is recognized as the final word when making decisions and the other person is a major stakeholder with a high level of influence but is ultimately a subordinate. This lets the business leverage the knowledge, experience, expertise, professional contacts, and other assets of both people while avoiding the partnership pitfalls described above.

Ultimately it’s a personal decision that each entrepreneur has to make for themself. Bottom line: only consider a partnership with someone with whom you have a long-standing relationship with mutual trust and respect. Give serious consideration to other potential non-partnership arrangements that might be possible instead of a partnership. If you do establish a partnership, spend the time and money to get Articles of Partnership drawn up.

What has your experience been with partnerships – either your own, or those of employers you’ve worked for in the past? What advice would you give entrepreneurs on this topic?

Creating a Professional Web Site (On the Cheap)

Wow, things have come a long way in 17 years!

Back in 1994, when the internet was just beginning to enter public awareness and businesses were starting to create their initial presence on the World Wide Web, to make even the simplest web site, a person needed costly software (Microsoft FrontPage was probably the simplest and least-expensive “professional grade” option at about $300) that required at least some formal training to learn to operate. Plus to get the web page just the way one wanted it, he or she really needed to know some HTML as well.

Adding to the fun was the complexity of uploading one’s files via FTP (File Transfer Protocol) and the “one-way” nature of communicating through the web…businesses posted stuff on their web sites, and customers were limited to emailing questions or comments or adding them to a low-tech “guest list” page.

Having your web site, even a very small one, hosted on a web server might cost $20.00 per month or more.

That was then. This is now.

Now many businesses, including Intuit, Google, Vistaprint, Comcast and GoDaddy (just to name a few), offer free, or very inexpensive (under $10 per month) web site hosting services as well as free, web-based (read: no expensive software, no special training required), template-driven (read: everything’s automatically formatted to look professional and consistent) web page building tools.

With WSYWIG (what you see is what you get) page builders that use pretty much the same features that people are already used to from working with Word, Outlook and Internet Explorer, with many very powerful features like adding a blog, a poll, an embedded video or a “follow me on Twitter” button as easy to insert into your web site as clicking an icon, suddenly anyone with painfully middle-of-the-road computer skills can be creating a company web site in an hour or two in a way that will cost the business under $120 per year to keep live.

But don’t take my word for it.

Hey, I like this stuff, and I like Star Trek. When I say something’s easy to do on your computer…I can’t be trusted. I’m too much of a geek to maintain true objectivity in the matter.

So give it a shot for yourself: Intuit (the company behind Quicken and Quickbooks) is now offering a free web hosting for a 3-page web site, including the web-based pagebuilder tool and domain name registration (GoDaddy will ding you for about $11/year to register a domain name) for one year, and then just $6/month after that. (Special thanks to Tom D’Ambrosio of Oak Forest Sales and Consulting for alerting me to this offer)

I tried it out and was impressed. While the end product isn’t nearly as polished is what a professional web developer armed with a high-powered tool like Dreamweaver could create, for 99% of us one- or two-person, very small businesses, it’s a more than adequate solution at an amazing price.

Check it out here: www.michigangetonline.com

$72 per year still a little too steep for your tastes? No problem. There is still a cheaper way to get your business online.

Just create a blog using one of the free blog services like Wordpress or Blogspot, then register your domain name with Godaddy and point it at your blog’s URL. $11 per year for the domain name, and everything else is free.

Questions:

1. Does your business have a web site?
2. If you answered “no” to question #1, proceed to question #3, otherwise skip to question #4.
3. What are you, nuts?
4. How do you use your web site? Is it just to share basic information like driving directions and business hours? Is it an ecommerce site? Do you use it to interact with your customers through a blog, a social media site like Facebook, or a threaded discussion?
5. How important do you think your web site is to your company’s ability to attract new and repeat customers?

Worth Following: Changing Gears

I spend a lot of time on the road driving to meet my customers all over Michigan.  One side-effect of that aspect of my job is that I end up listening to a lot of NPR radio programs.  NPR’s local affiliate, Michigan Radio, has been running a segment for the past couple of years called Changing Gears, which covers the ideas and efforts underway to re-invent Michigan (the whole Midwest region, actually) as a post-manufacturing economy.

Changing Gears is a great project.  It highlights the enormous number and variety of efforts underway to remake our state and thus generate the new jobs we need and attract and retain more businesses and families to the area.  However, Changing Gears tends to focus more on the “big” projects and companies at the expense of telling the stories of the very small businesses that are springing up as well…the stories of the kinds of people I work with.

Michigan Radio is constantly soliciting story ideas from listeners about their experience with this re-invention process, and a few weeks ago I finally took the bait and sent in my story.

I talked about the kinds of successes I’ve seen people have with self-employment when they have assistance from programs like the CMU IBIE, Michigan Rehabilitation Services, the Michigan Commission for the Blind, the Dept. of Veterans Affairs, local Community Mental Health programs, local chambers of commerce, local SCORE chapters, the PASS and Ticket to Work programs, and the Michigan Loan Fund.

Here’s why I think those successes are more meaningful than many people appreciate:

1. Ignoring any time needed for retraining (6-48 months?), it's currently taking well-qualified candidates 12+ months on average to find new jobs.  A small business can be planned and launched in 3-6 months, usually at costs comparable to, or less than, retraining.
2. In the new economy generous salaries or "gold-plated" benefits are rapidly disappearing.  That makes the earning potential, even in the initial 12-24 months, for self-employment much more competitive with traditional employment in many situations.
3. In the new economy, job security is non-existent.  Any employee, regardless of their work performance or time with the company, is vulnerable to losing their job at any time.  The old social contract of "do a good job and you'll have it for a long time" has been abandoned.  In comparison, a self-employed person who sub-contracts their talents to several businesses, or who can rapidly adapt to changing market conditions, has a much higher level of job/income stability.

At the end of the day, every time a person becomes self-employed, even if they are their company's only employee, is once again earning an income, stimulating their local economy, paying into the tax base, lessening the overall demand on government assistance, and planting one more seed that might turn into the next big thing.  Apple Computer started with two guys in a garage; same with Amway.  Even if only one in 100,000 *very* small businesses grows into a giant, it's still a huge boon to Michigan every time a new one starts.

More Must-Have Apps for Your PC (updated 10/07/11)

I originally posted this on 5/29/11, but was compelled to update and repost it based on my personal experiences.

I realize at times that this small business blog sounds more like a blog about computers and all things techy, but since most of our small businesses are so reliant on our computers, and since most of us also rely on all-too-easily stolen or damaged notebook PCs, I think that any time I run across a good resource to help mitigate the threats our computers face, it’s worth passing along.

I have some good ones today:

First up is PREY (www.preyproject.com). Prey is a free, open-source program that installs on your PC that allows you to track your PC and what’s happening to it if it’s ever stolen, so long as the thief ever connects it to the internet. I installed Prey on my work notebook PC today and flagged it as stolen and within 20 minutes I was emailed a link to a report that showed me where my PC was on a Google Map, a webcam photo of the thief (me, in this case), a screen shot of what was happening on my PC, and numerous details about what programs were running and what files had been altered.

Pretty slick, eh? It’s free, super-easy to install and configure (took me under 5 minutes) and equally easy to use (flagged my PC as stolen and accessed my Prey report the first time without any instructions at all). Highly recommended.

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But what do you do when the thief gets the bright idea to wipe all of the data off of your hard drive before you can get your PC back? Or if your PC falls into the swimming pool, gets trashed by a nasty computer virus or something else like that?

That leads us to cool free program #2: Dropbox.

Dropbox is a wildly popular online file storage and backup tool with fantastic compatibility with other computers, smart phones and similar devices.

The free program is downloadable to most PCs (Windows, Mac, Linux) and smart phones (Blackberry, Android, iPhone, Windows Phone). Once you have Dropbox installed on your device, you automatically get 2GB of free web-based, secure “hard drive” space where you can store files, folders, sub-folders, etc., and then add to or retrieve that information from any other Dropbox-enabled device. You can purchase additional storage space if you wish.

What makes it really cool, however, is how it behaves: Dropbox looks, acts and behaves just like any other folder on your PC. You can open files from it, save files to it, drag and drop files into it, etc. exactly the same as you normally would with any other folder.

Also useful is that you can opt to share certain files or folders with other people if you want.

There are other free and for-purchase alternatives to Dropbox, however:

Windows Live Mesh from Microsoft. This is another free application that is quick and easy to download and install. Windows Live Mesh lets you select specific folders on your PC (like My Documents, My Photos, My Music, etc.) and have them automatically synchronized with your associated (and also free) Windows Skydrive account. That means your data is backed up regularly without you doing anything. Not only can you use that to recover files if your PC is lost or damaged, but it also lets you access those files from any other PC if you need to get at them when you don’t have your own computer with you.

Both Windows Live Mesh/SkyDrive and their main competitor, Google Docs, offer the same free 2GB of storage space and comparable functionality to Dropbox, but for sheer ease of use and overall compatibility, Dropbox can’t be beat.

Finally, a for-purchase alternative to Dropbox that is also very popular is Carbonite.

Science Fiction geeks (like me) fondly remember carbonite as the imaginary material that Han Solo was frozen in in Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back.

While a lot less cool than that, the Carbonite backup tool is infinitely more useful for protecting your data. It simply runs in the background, constantly backing up your files online in a secure folder. It’s insanely simple, requires zero attention once it’s operating, and is about as secure and reliable as a Jedi Knight. Well worth the expense if you need a “fire and forget” backup system.

Anyone else aware of any good, free (or cheap) software, services or peripherials that can help protect a person’s PC and its data?

Are these PC tips and tricks useful, or should I stick to stuff more directly related to small business?