Monthly Archives

April 2010

PayTrust is My Secret Weapon

paytrust_logoI hate bills. I don’t just hate paying them…I hate getting them. I hate writing checks. I hate licking stamps. I hate mailing payments back.  It is just annoying. I also travel a ton, which makes managing timely payments challenging to say the least. The solution? I don’t pay my bills. I let Paytrust pay them for me.

I have been a Paytrust customer for about 8 years. I have no other relationship with them, I am writing this post simply because I love the service.  It is the single service I don’t think I could live without. While most banks have the ability to do online payments they don’t do it like Paytrust. Paytrust takes care of all payments, including companies and services that don’t accept electronic funds transfers (EFTs).

How it Works:

When you signup for Paytrust they give you your own P.O. Box. You switch the billing address for all your bills to this new address. When a new bill comes in they scan it and send you an email alert. You can then login to Paytrust and make a payment or set it up to be paid automatically. Paytrust can do EFTs like your bank, but the cool thing is they will also mail a check to companies like your lawn service or doctor that don’t typically accept EFTs. You can view and download all your bills online and you can purchase a CD at the end of each year with all your records in PDF format. Between Paytrust and my ScanSnap my records are almost completely digital.

Paytrust lets you put all your bills on autopilot. It is well worth the $12.95 per month I pay for the time I save (not to mention the cost of stamps). I never miss a bill and I always pay my bills on time.

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I’m Starting a Business

Ted the Little Business ManI get a lot of emails from first time entrepreneurs looking to start a company. Almost every email I get sounds something like this. “I am thinking of starting a business doing X. I am really passionate about X, I want to take control of my life and be my own boss. I am looking to raise capital and I was wondering where to start.”

My Simple Advice

If you are so passionate about X stop talking and start doing. Commit your own dollars to getting your business concept off the ground and bootstrap it for as long as you can. Few investors will put money in to a company without some significant financial and/or resource commitment from the entrepreneur.

You will be hard pressed to raise capital these days without at least one of the following:

1. A proven track record as an entrepreneur.

2. A functioning business with a business model that investors can help scale with cash.

3. Some rock solid intellectual property.

Can you start your own business? Hell yeah you can! Can you raise money? You bet! But don’t expect any investor to put up money until you have some skin in the game. If you are successful in raising capital remember that business is like marriage and you have make a commitment to your backers. The notion of “I want to take control of my life and be my own boss” is all wrong. The business is the boss, at least until it gets to scale and profitability.

Tripit is My New BFF

Tara told me about Tripit a long time ago. It sounded interesting but I have been using Orbitz to book and manage my travel for so long that I never really checked it out – until now. I don’t know why I waited this long…Tripit is easy, awesome and I can still use Orbitz or any other site.

Here is how it works:

1. Book your travel on any website.

2. Forward your confirmation email from that website to Tripit.

3. Let Tripit consolidate all your trip information in an intelligent way.

This tool is a godsend for people that travel a lot and need to share their travel schedule with friends and co-workers. I often book my airfare and hotel on different sites, I love that Tripit merges the information together. I upgraded my account to monitor my flights, enhance the sharing features and centralize the management of my frequent flyer/hotel points.

I am a bone head. I should have been using this for months.

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