As much as we love paper and ink, Plain White Press hums along on by using the internet to manage our projects and business. We had a conversation with Smart Money Small Business about how we use Basecamp, Freshbooks and other favorite applications.

We’re a small office with more work than we can handle on most days, which, on most days, is a good thing. So we’ve enlisted Ruby (www.callruby.com) to answer our phones and Emma (www.myemma.com) to handle our email. OK, there are lots of virtual assistant and email services, but we like Ruby and Emma’s sense of style and the way they handle business. Even my daughter isn’t sure if it’s Ruby or me answering the phone!

I just returned from an inspiring and contact-filled meeting. What to do with all of those business cards? For the last 3 months I’ve been testing out Highrise (www.highrisehq.com) from 37 signals (the makers of Basecamp and Backpack), and I’m thrilled with this new way of tracking my contacts.

To start, I imported my contacts via a .csv file from my Treo. Once I created the database, I added “tags” and notes to the contacts I use most often. Highrise creates a page for each of my contacts and I can keep all my correspondence here — email, documents, links, to-dos, and follow-up reminders for each. I can even share all or some of my contacts with my team and assign them follow-ups too. Highrise has it’s own email address, so I can forward emails to it, and it matches that email with the appropriate contact’s record. When graphics are attached, they show up as thumbnails in the record — making them so much easier to find than by name!

Two things I’d like to see here: I want to get my contacts back into my Treo for the road, and I think I waste too much time finding just the right image for everyone’s record. I wish the program came with a set of friendly avatars. Nonetheless, in the short time I’ve been using the program, Highrise just keeps getting better, and I’ll never even consider using Outlook again!

The woman who can create her own job is the woman who will win fame and fortune.
–Amelia Earhart

I started this business with the belief that there is a new world of work out there for the bold pioneering women on today’s business frontier. We’re creating companies that have meaning, promote the difficult of balancing modern life, and will innovate the way women in America work in the future. The Plain White Press was proud to receive a Micro-to-Millions award this year from the Count-Me-In foundation. This tremendous organization provides the resources women-owned businesses need to grow to the the Million-dollar level and beyond. Make-Mine-a-Million events are national and statewide competitions to enter your business plan and join the community. New competitions are happening in New York, California and Austin, TX this fall.

Writing a business plan, especially crunching the the numbers and putting it all down on paper was perhaps the toughest part of my first year in business, but once that plan was written, things started to change pretty quickly, and the plan was outdated in no time.

Plan HQ (www.planhq.com) is an ingenious site that makes working on my plan and on my business (actually) fun. I was able to just cut and paste chunks of the plan I’d written, and filling out the plan was a simple step-by-step process that made me (re)think about each facet of how I wanted to run my business.

The graphic site is divided into separate sections for a solution, sales & marketing, and operations. As a creative entrepreneur, I love the idea that I’m using a template to create a plan that will make sense to potential investors and partners, while at the same time it helps keep me on track. Line graphs track budget vs. actuals and when the numbers turn red or green, it’s pretty easy to understand how the busines is doing. PlanHQ offers a free trial to start and then plans (varying on how many people you share the plan with and how many goals you are pursuing) start at $9/month.

A modern answer to scary wiring in my new office that has wiring circa 1930. The PowerSquid not only looks cool, but it is more flexible than a simple outlet box and it matches my color scheme. It also comes with a warranty against power surge damage for my circa 2006 office electronics.

You’ll find these smooth-writing , perfectly-pigmented pens in every room in my house, my car, my desk, my purse. The cool colors: lime, cobalt , navy, orange and forest aren’t so easy to find outside the multi-color pack, but you can buy your favorite color by the dozen at www.boardroomproducts.com.