Earth Day has come and gone, and the Green Festival has blown through the Windy City. So does that mean thinking green is put aside until next year? Hardly! Especially for us entrepreneurs, thinking goes on all of the time, and in many instances it is often labeled as merely saving money.

Last week I was talking with a business partner and she was commenting on the cost of faxing for her, with an aging fax machine and a separate phone line. Asking me how I fax, I told her I use eFax and I don’t have either. The monthly cost is much less than a phone line, faxes come in as PDFs, and with Adobe Acrobat Professional to markup faxes no paper is involved.

I have been striving to be as paperless as possible, mostly to reduce clutter and to organize and index content for future use. Though eFax is nothing new, I have created one convert, who will be getting greener in more ways than one, just as I have been.

What ways do you save money and the environment at the same time?

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Business • Technology • (4) Comments • Permalink

My Internet consulting business does not physically have to be here. In reality, it can be anywhere. Most of you reading this probably are saying, “duh” as you already know that. This message, however, is not clear to politicians who make laws concerning taxes and favorable business climates.

As I write this, I am sitting in the corporate headquarters of my business, Dunkirk Systems, LLC, a 5-year old Internet consulting firm. I founded the business shortly after moving to Chicago from Boston, as I decided to go on my own after then working on the Internet for almost a decade and in IT for over 15 years. As my business would be initially based in my home, the business was established in the city of Chicago, in Cook County in the state of Illinois. I live here, my business lives here.

But I don’t always work here. As my computer can travel with me, I have done work in cities like Minneapolis, Oshkosh, Helsinki and Copenhagen. I have done work at 30,000 feet over the Atlantic Ocean and in the basement of friend’s houses. All I need is an Internet connection and I can connect to my clients and provide the Web site strategy, design and development services they pay me for.

It is one thing I can work from anywhere, but my clients can be anywhere as well. Most of my clients are outside of Chicago. This is not specifically by design, though, as my business has mostly grown by referrals from existing clients. As well, some of my clients have relocated to other states. Even for the clients I have in the Windy City, I typically work with them by email and phone. Don’t get me wrong, I am a very social person and prefer to personally work with my clients. I don’t always have to, which is the beauty of it.

I bring this up as there is talk in the Illinois legislature about imposing taxes on software and Internet services. Though no particular bills have been presented as I write this, apparently legislators are trying to see what they can “get away with” as far as a bill, one that would pass rather than be defeated.

As much as I strive for The Hot Iron to not get into the abyss of politics, it is almost impossible today. It goes without saying that such laws to add taxes on the services Dunkirk Systems, LLC and other similar firms in Illinois provide would have a huge negative impact on my business, not to mention on clients. There is the administrative impact on my business for calculating, collecting and paying such taxes. I have all that I need to do for employment taxes! Then there’s the additional line item on client invoices. When people and businesses are doing all they can to pay their bills, here comes more to pay.

Will my clients simply accept a tax without a peep? Hardly! Who knows what the tax rate would be, but I am sure some will start to look around for other providers in other states whose rate – including tax rate – is lower. As I try to competitively bid on projects, the fact I will be charging a certain percentage for tax will be a bad mark on my proposals. Not to mention the higher cost I myself will have for technical services I get from other individuals and firms. This, on top of the myriad of high taxes and fees including the highest sales tax in the United States at 10.25%, put me in a huge disadvantage against other capable consulting firms around the country and the world.

So what will I do? This blog post is my first step, as I plan on also forwarding it to my state legislators. However knowing the political climate in Illinois, I hardly believe it will make a difference. Beyond that, I can only react in the short-term as to any passed tax laws. In the long-term, though, if it does have a true negative impact, I may be forced to move Dunkirk Systems, LLC from Illinois, which would more than likely mean I would be leaving as well. My business moves, I move.

Taxing our way out of the current business environment will not work. Tough cuts and imaginative thinking are needed to recover to the greatness we are capable of. I will continue to do my part, though it may have to be from someplace else.

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Business • (10) Comments • Permalink

Business cards. For some, it is a straightforward decision on their design, layout and information to be presented. For others, it is a process more agonizing than it should be. When I designed my initial cards for Dunkirk Systems, LLC, I was somewhere in the middle, and eventually went with the recommendation of my designer. But over time, you see other cards or people comment on yours, and you agonize once again.

The other day I came across this video, and needless to say it made me think. Watch the video below or view the video on this guy’s business card.

Just like I do not review books, rather identify takeaways from them, I am able to take-away ideas from this guy. A quality business card with style stands out. Do I need to have a die-cut profile of myself on it? My guess most people would agree with me that I should not!

What do you think?

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Business • (11) Comments • Permalink

The next likemind will be Friday, May 15, 2009 in dozens of cities around the world.

In Chicago, it will be at Argo Tea, 140 S Dearborn St. at the corner of Adams and Dearborn Streets in the Loop from 8:00 am to 10 am.

I call likemind a gathering of creative-minded people, from various disciplines including Internet, advertising, art, social media, et. al. For more information on likemind, you can read this great article on likemind from the New York Times.

No RSVP is required. You are also welcome to join the likemind Chicago Facebook group.

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Business • Diversions • Technology • (0) Comments • Permalink

For me, it is more fun reading and replying to comments on my blog The Hot Iron than it is writing the blog posts themselves. Where I do enjoy writing, reading comments means someone was interested in something I had to say, for whatever reason, and was compelled to join the conversation. I also enjoy commenting on posts on other blogs for those very same reasons.

Once I have commented on a blog post, I sometimes forget about it, or forget to go back to the post and see how the conversation has evolved, if it has at all. These challenges of following blog comments – and as a result conversations – means I am missing out on something, from alternate ideas to if anyone is interested in the topic at all.

Many blogs have functionality built into it to help users following the conversations on a blog post. One form is email notification, where if you posted a comment and opted-in, you can receive an email every time someone else posts a comment. This is handy as you can follow without having to revisit the Web page. Most all blogs which offer this also allow you to unsubscribe, though I have found some blogs that do not and I continue to get emails from them. I have heard larger, more popular blogs don’t offer this as the potential for large volumes of email could be viewed as spam by some email networks. This is an option on The Hot Iron, and as the blog owner I get emails for every comment posted.

Another way to follow along is by RSS feed. Some blogs have a link to subscribe to the comments of a blog post. This is nothing I have tried myself, as I wondered if I would truly be able to follow along. The opt-out of the RSS feed by unsubscribing is very clean. This is not an option on The Hot Iron, yet. I will try this out and am hoping with using folders in Google Reader it will be easy to manage.

There are 3rd-party services for hosting and managing blog comments. One I have heard of is Disqus. I do not use this myself and have had some reservations about turning over all of my comments to another service I have no control over. I would be interested in hearing from others about how this has worked for them.

The purpose of this particular post is to get ideas, as I am not sure how to best proceed with following comments. Please feel free to share what works – or doesn’t work – for you. And please check the checkbox to get informed on what others say.

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Technology • (9) Comments • Permalink