Posted by Chris Kampfe

In our pursuit to unite business policies with green policies, we’re going beyond simply using public transit, biking to work, and recycling our green tea bottles…which we do anyway. One of our foremost aspirations at PaySimple is to simplify billing processes and empower small businesses to succeed. Taking that a step further, when small businesses and online billing come together, we’re succeeding not only in the marketplace, but also in reducing our impact on the environment.

Small businesses across the country spend thousands of dollars every day on paper, printing and postage to bill clients. By moving all your invoices and receipts into the magnificent, paperless world of the Internet, you are effectively tossing all of those expenses in the compost pile, or recycle bin–or whatever you do with your trash.

In the process of saving your business money, you’ll also be saving trees, water and energy. Think of paperless billing as your company’s way of thinking globally and acting locally.

If you’re wondering just what kind of impact you and your business can have, below is a posting from ElectronicPayments.org, which estimates the environmental upshot if every household in the U.S. paid their bills online.

• Save 18.5 million trees each year, or the amount of lumber needed for 216,054 typical single-family homes.

• Save more than 15.8 billion gallons of wastewater a year, more than that generated by the city of Fresno, Calif.

• Save more than 29 trillion BTUs, more than enough energy to provide residential power to the city of Jacksonville, Fla. for one year.

• Reduce toxic air pollutants by 2.2 billion tons of CO2 equivalents, akin to having 390,326 fewer cars.

• Reduce by 1.7 billion pounds the solid waste generated in a year, equal to the raw tonnage generated by Detroit in a year’s time.

• Save landfill space and curb the amount of toxic chemicals - including methane gas - released into the atmosphere as paper decomposes. A contributor to global warming, methane gas has 21 times the heat-trapping power of carbon monoxide.

Many small businesses are created on a foundation of integrity, but due to budgetary restraints, decisions are often made on a basis of what is “financially sound,” and not necessarily what is “environmentally sound.”

By creating platforms for small businesses to shine, we hope to change the way businesses think, to show that financially and environmentally sound choices are in fact one and the same… and that tofu is nutritious and can actually be quite tasty when prepared with the right seasonings.

Popularity: 14% [?]

Technorati Tags: recycling, small business, online billing, paperless billing, environmentally sound, tofu

Posted by Eric Remer

I recently read an article that compared Entrepreneurs to Artists. Potentially a bit self serving as an Entrepreneur, I immediately gravitated to the message of the comparison. Although I always felt like a creator and knew my business creations had the potential to touch lives, it was the first time I had seen such a comparison, and to be honest, it did serve to provide me some internal validation that my daily activities were much nobler than just “going to work”.

In our society we often look at creative fields—such as artists, authors, actors—with a kind of reverence that these people created something beautiful out of nothing. They take a blank canvas, blank pages, or simply lines and make them come alive. By the way, I am one of the many that hold such pursuits in high esteem, as I get to enjoy their passionate creation along with everyone else they are able to touch.

Can Entrepreneurs really be looked at in the same light? Absolutely!

Entrepreneurs who start businesses also take a blank canvas and stir up their ideas and passions (and often all of their money, resources, and time) to create something that does not exist–often with much more at risk and much more at stake than any other type of creator. Entrepreneurs/small business owners create hope, opportunity, ideas, innovation and serve not only their customers, but provide a platform for others to live their dreams.

Small businesses, started often with nothing more than an idea and a hope, are responsible for over 70% of all net new jobs over the past 10 years. Over 50% of all non-government payroll is provided by small businesses. Just think how staggering those numbers are. More importantly, think about the risks and obstacles that were overcome in the creation process. Think about the people that were touched, the jobs that were created, the products and services provided, the communities developed.

That to me is the true essence of creation!

*Small business statistics from http://www.411sbfacts.com/.

Popularity: 13% [?]

Technorati Tags: Entrepreneurs, innovation, Small businesses, new jobs

How this electronic payments provider can relate to small business

Posted by Evan Berlin

All businesses, large, small and everywhere in between, started somewhere. YouTube started with three guys in a garage, Facebook was developed in a college dorm room, and Nordstrom took more than a few years to grow from family business into one of the most recognized brands in the United States.

Regardless of what stage your business is at, PaySimple can relate to where you’ve been and where you’re going. PaySimple’s own story lends itself to challenges that I’m sure many of you have faced or will face as your business grows. With less than 100 square feet of office space, we’ve grown very close to each other in our cozy lower-downtown (Lodo) Denver loft (see picture to your left – we’re in the middle).

We don’t have parking spaces, our executive team is sharing offices, and everyone else is sharing corners and any place we can fit a desk. Let’s just say personal space is low on importance.

So why did some of us trade in comfy corporate offices for cubbies and a leaky roof? It might be because we have a FedEx Kinko’s to our left or a Mexican restaurant with great margaritas to our right. Or, as Eric discussed in last week’s post, it might be to build platforms to help stars shine. Everyone has a different answer as to “why,” but I came to PaySimple to be a part of something very special.

A portion of our customers are brand new businesses. While they might not be startups in the Silicon Valley sense, they are Americans with a great idea and a dream to control their own destiny. That is certainly a special notion. The idea of helping to build a company from the ground up has always been a dream of mine and now, as part of my job, I get to interact with a variety of small business owners.

The best part of my day is hearing inspirational stories from customers who leverage the PaySimple Solution to simplify what is typically a frustrating part of being a small business owner – getting paid. To be a part of a company whose goal is to create a product that makes life easier for small business owners is what gets me up in the morning. On top of all that, with our team of amazing professionals and inspirational mission—this is one fun place to work.

If you’re in Denver for work or play, or both, come see us sometime. We’d love to say hello and buy you a cup of coffee…or a margarita.

Popularity: 7% [?]

Technorati Tags: electronic payments, Lodo, startups, small business, getting paid, inspirational mission

Posted by Lisa Hephner

It seems we’re always hearing some pundit or other forecast of the demise of a familiar piece of our lives as a result of a “new technology.” These forecasts are sometimes extremely shortsighted and never come to fruition (think Radio) or so much on target that we wonder why it took us so long to realize the truth (think 8-Track tapes).

So how do you know what to believe? Think about it this way—if a new technology is demonstrated to meet current needs better than an old technology, and if it makes business sense for all parties involved, then it has a very good chance of taking hold, and displacing an older way of doing things. This is the case with paper checks.

Paper checks cost money to print, cost time and money for businesses to manually deposit and record, cost time and money for the individual banks that process them, and also generate significant costs for the regional Federal Reserve Banks that serve as a clearinghouse for all checks. Additionally, as occurred on 9/11, an infrastructure interruption can cause delays in processing of hundreds of thousands of checks—impacting billions of dollars of consumer and business transactions.

Eliminating the submission of actual paper checks for processing, in favor of ACH and other types of electronic payment processing, not only streamlines processes for businesses, it also saves money for banks and for the Federal Reserve, and has the added bonus of helping the environment by reducing paper use and saving trees.

Thus, banks have a financial incentive to eliminate paper checks, and the Federal Reserve System has a financial incentive to eliminating paper checks, and large businesses (particularly those handling large check volumes) have a strong financial incentive to eliminate paper checks—which I believe amounts to an overwhelming market force that will ultimately prevail to eliminate the paper check.

So what happens to small businesses that rely on paper check payments? And what happens to consumers who like receiving copies of their canceled checks? Unfortunately for the latter, they will simply have to adjust. For the former—there is help.

Companies like PaySimple are dedicated to helping small businesses not only adjust to technology changes, but also leverage them to streamline processes and enhance revenue. We make the transition easy, and our simple system enables even the novice computer user to easily convert paper checks to electronic transactions and set up other electronic payment processing services that can help eliminate the need for collecting paper checks altogether.

So, embrace the disappearance of the paper check, and view it as an opportunity to utilize new cost-saving technologies that will improve your business.

Popularity: 5% [?]

Technorati Tags: new technology, paper checks, Federal Reserve, small businesses, business

Posted by Eric Remer

Why do you do what you do? This was a question a good friend asked me during a recent trip to NY. Why? Such a simple question, but also a question that most of us fail to focus our energy on. Most of us can tell you what we do. How we do it. But very few can answer the question of Why? Why do we do what we do? Not just in business, but in life? To me the question and the answer cannot be segmented between business and other parts of our life. The question is simple. Why do I get up in the morning and do what I do?

I have known the answer for some time, and though it has created clarity for me and driven my daily decisions. I have often failed to communicate my purpose clearly enough to enable those around me to take this vision to the next level. So what is my Why? Simply stated it is “To create platforms that help stars to shine.” In every aspect of my life, every moment, every segment, I focus on creating platforms and environments that enable stars to shine. The more stars that begin to shine, we all benefit from the incredible energy, wisdom, and love that these stars bring to the universe.

But what are stars? We are all stars, yet very few of us are willing to shine. I mean really shine. My definition of shining is living authentically as the greatest version of ourselves at every moment of every day. To me, in what I am focusing my energy on today, I have created a platform, an environment that allows and supports at the highest level, the incredible people “stars” who dedicate themselves to growing as people and professionals every day, to truly shine. In turn that collective energy comes together to create a platform that allows other groups of stars to shine.

At PaySimple, we focus all of our collective energy upon the small businesses of America. As those small business “stars” shine, our collective hopes, collective dreams, and collective energy of our universe evolves and grows. We create platforms that Simplify and Empower the lives of small business owners. Why? The impact these stars have on all of our lives is much greater than most of us realize. Over 50% of all private sector jobs are employed by small businesses. Over 70% of all net new jobs over the past decade were created by small businesses. Small businesses help people live the lives they aspire to. That is powerful.

Why do small businesses do what they do? More than a third of small businesses don’t make it 2 years, more than half don’t survive 4 years. In spite of overwhelming odds of long term success, these stars continue to shine and follow their passions, their dreams, their visions to create something better for themselves, their families and their communities. They are the creative force of America and the world.

If I can help to create platforms to enable these stars to shine, the answer to my Why is as simple as the question.

Popularity: 14% [?]