1847 Blake House Inn B & B

Cool Business Tools & Free Stuff

Saturday, March 14th, 2009

I’m finally coming into the 21st century, technology-wise. Prior to owning a business, I was computer literate and learned new programs quickly. Every job I had after college required computer work so I was familiar with the standard applications plus any company-specific programs.

Well, for the past three years, most of my work has been inside the B&B and using the least amount of computer applications as possible (i.e., Quickbooks, Word, Excel, my reservation software, etc.). When I first started, I took all reservations over the phone, but within the first 6 months, I had started using SuperInn and the majority of my reservations started coming in over the internet.

In the meantime, I’d hear all kinds of stuff about social networking programs (Facebook, MySpace, blogs, etc.), but never really had much interest in any of them. Well, the recession it, and BOOM! my thoughts changed.

Probably the biggest change has come because I finally got a laptop and can work pretty much all day long, in front of the TV, and in bed, instead of having to go downstairs to my cold office to work.

Since January, I have spent more time on the computer than I did almost all year long and I am so glad I have because I have come across a lot of goodies, for personal use and business use, many of them FREE!

If you have a small business, work from home, or want to start a business, check out any or all of this stuff:

• Facebook – not only is this a social network, you can advertise on the site and target your audience based on the types of people you want to reach. Your Facebook profile is free, advertising is not, but you choose how much you want to pay on a daily basis. Plus, you can put your business info. including your website address and/or your blog address in your profile and that’s free advertising for anyone who reads it.
• Gmail – powered by Google, this is free and you can forward any other email accounts to this one account. You can access your account from any computer, anywhere, at any time. Yahoo and others also offer free email accounts, but I really like Google because there are so many other programs that operate in conjunction with Google.
• Blogger – blogs are becoming essential to businesses for many reasons, one of which is that it seriously helps your rankings in the search engines. Blogger is supported by Google and it’s free and easy to set up. I figured it out in a very short time (although I’m still figuring it out). You can also earn money by including Google ads on your blog (you set up how many and where they appear) and any time someone clicks on an ad, you earn money. I already participate in GoogleAds so my account was set up. GoogleAds you pay for and like Facebook ads, you determine how much you are willing to spend on a monthly basis. You can set up mutiple ads too (it’s so cool). I prefer GoogleAds over Facebook ads because I think I get more bang for my buck.
• LogMeIn – this is probably one of the coolest FREE programs I have been using. It allows me remote access to my desktop PC from anywhere and I can work on documents and programs from my laptop that are on my PC. I can also print documents from the PC and they are waiting for me to grab them whenever I want.
• Mozy – this is another FREE program that allows me to back up my files to a third party. I no longer need to back up to a CD, an external hard drive, or pay another third party service to back up. You get 2GB of space with the free package, but you can pay $4.95/month for the next level up if you need more space. You can set up the program to run automatically, at whatever time you want.
• Zoho – this is another free service that offers all kinds of applications that you can use plus you can create up to 3 applications yourself. I just signed up for this one and plan to use it to create documents that would normally be created in Word, Excel, etc. I don’t have Office on my laptop so this free program is perfect for me. It also looks like you can import documents made in other programs. It’s free so I’m giving it a try.

Programs that are just cool. Here are some programs or services that I just like and want to share them:

• The Switchboards – cool resource for women business owners (mainly crafters, artists, and jewelry makers); however there are web designers, copy writers, and other business women ready to support each other, offer services, barter, answer questions, etc.

• Green America Today – if you want to go green, this is a great resource.

• Kick It Back – shop online and get kickbacks. There is a list of online stores that you can shop at, with ebay being a big one. Enter the sites through your KickItBack.com account and you will earn money on every purchase you make. Each business offers a certain percentage back, but just think of your credit cards that offer a cash back program. This is just like that.

• GoodSearch – Yeah, I love Google, but I do all of my online searches through GoodSearch. That’s because every time I search the internet, a little money goes to my charity, the Asheville Humane Society. You can designate what charity you want the money to go to and you can set this up as your default home page whenever you open your browser.

Room Refresh – Lilac Room

Thursday, March 12th, 2009

Some innkeepers will pick one room each year that they update or renovate, but I find that too difficult because things come up throughout the year that need to be fixed or I see something that I want to add to a room or an idea I see in a magazine that I’d like to try and sticking with one room just wouldn’t work. Besides, with seven rooms, that means each room only gets renewed once every seven years. So, I update as something comes to me. I have also found that as I start a small project, it quickly escalates into something bigger. Take the Lilac Room for instance….

What started out as simply switching a heavy bulky TV for a newer flat screen, turned into needing to repaint the room. Here’s how it happened.

I decided to take out the 26″ TV that was housed in an entertainment center and replace it with a 26″ flat screen that I could put on the fireplace mantle, thus taking the entertainment center out and making more space in the room. Simple, right? Not so. One of the benefits of having the TV on the fireplace mantle is that the cable cord would be much closer to the cable jack. Where the TV was in the entertainment center meant that I had a 50′ cable cord that ran from the cable jack, up the right side of the mantle, across the mantle, down the left side of the mantle, along two short walls, around the molding of the bathroom door, and along a portion of another wall to reach the TV. All of the cable cord was in cord covers so you didn’t see it hanging out. Well, when I removed the cord cover from all over the wall, especially around the bathroom door area, it took off a large portion of the paint. Of course, I had not thought of this and realizing that I had guests coming to stay in that room in a few days, I took as much of the paint chips as I could to Lowe’s and matched (or thought I had matched) the paint perfectly. In fact, when the chips sat on top of the paint sample, there was no difference. NONE! Not so when I put it on the walls.

You know, I really knew in the back of my mind that it wouldn’t be an exact match because who knew how long the paint had been on the walls (certainly more than 3 years since that’s how long I’ve had the Inn), but I guess I was hoping for a miracle. Anyway, it was very obvious that the new paint is just slightly lighter than the original paint. So, I went back to Lowe’s and bought 2 gallons and decided to repaint the walls. I started seeing all the dings and scuff marks on the walls as I was painting them so this turned out to be a good thing because the walls look refreshed.

In addition, I wallpapered a section of the wall behind the bed to give the walls a little pop and I built a topper between the tops of the windows. I used some of the left-over material from the daybed bedding, some of which I had used to extend the curtains since nothing in this house is standard sized. Without the entertainment center (I subsequently sold it on ebay), the room feels even larger than it already is. I’m lucky that I have larger than normal rooms, and the feel of this room works even better with the TV on the mantle where guests can watch it either from the bed or from the armchairs at the end of the bed and in front of the fireplace.

Spring is in the air

Saturday, March 7th, 2009

Today saw temperatures in the 70’s. Pretty amazing when less than a week ago, we got about 6″ of snow, a rare sight where we are in the valley of Asheville. The next several days are looking to be in the 60’s which makes me very happy. I am definitely a warm weather kind of person.

The daffodils and hyacinth are starting to come up and this year, I am happy to report that they are EVERYWHERE on the property. Last year, whether because of the drought or a late cold spell, I did not get many spring bulbs.

I’m leery of putting my indoor plants outside yet and will wait another couple of weeks, but I can just tell that they are ready to be back outside. The photo on the left looking inside one of the dining room windows is of one of my Amaryllis bulbs. I planted it just after New Year’s and the flower finally bloomed last week. It’s gorgeous with about 8 flowers in bright red. I planted 5 other bulbs, but other than growing long green leaves, none had blooming flowers. I’ll store them and hope that they bloom next winter.

It’s also about time to go clean out the waterfall which has been turned off and neglected all winter and rake up the leaves from the fall that ended up in the bushes and all those not-so-easy-to-reach areas.

I am getting psyched up to start doing some hefty yard work and to begin planting new bushes, plants, and flowers. I just bought a rain barrel and hope that using rain water will help save on my watering bill this year. I’ll have to remember to compare my bi-monthly water bills to see if there is a difference. More rain this year will help so I’m not sure how accurate a comparison will be. But capturing rainwater is a good way to keep going green and I’m happy to do it.

Now, if I can get myself to start growing fruits and vegetables, I will be accomplishing A LOT!