Recession busters

So Michel Hogan and I got invited together to a lunch. As part of our back chatter (using the free Skype Instant Messenger), I pointed out that if I tried really hard, I could probably eat for free during the week – in fact you could elevate it to an art form.

So having been through a couple before, I thought I would put together some recession busting tips.

Dining – Go to as many free functions with food as you can, the more you say yes to the more you get invited to as you are on the mailing list . Learn to value finger food as dinner (it’s like going to yum cha).

Office – Home office. Do I have to say more?

Meeting places – Really, who needs to have a meeting room when there are so many cafes around. Put the effort into finding interesting places with carpets that aren’t cramped (better acoustics). Learn to pace yourself on those lattes. Jelly can also be useful of you want to get some free buzz.

Bags – Get yourself a really nice selection of promotional bags. Some are really easy to “alter” if you don’t want to walk around advertising the “CPA Congress”.

Transport – Get to know your bicycle or free city promotional transport.

Office supplies – Who needs to buy stationary today? You’re being green right? But if you need to have business cards, you can get free-ish from vendors such as Vistaprint ($o but plus freight). If you need pens, pick up some from your local doctor as they’re given thousands by the drug companies. Go to a couple of free seminars and you’re sure to get yourself a nice collection of free pads.

Clothing – You’re in the 21st century, and the creative/dynamic person about town has the confidence not to be locked in with corporate prison uniform (or pay the dry cleaning bills).

Your IT infrastructure – Use Google for email, calendar, contacts, tasks and documents. It’s all free and the processing grunt isn’t required locally. This means you can use a crappy old laptop that others would throw out. If you really need to, you can grab some free open source software to do things locally (eg Freemind).

Internet access – By the way, get to know your local free wireless hotspots to get your free internet access.

Telephony – Since Skype calls don’t yet work on my iPhone on Australian networks (they would rather I made a more expensive GSM; that’s of course if you’re out of the office and can’t use Skype or another free VoIP service network call) it’s best to get yourself a good phone plan, then master SMS messaging.

Marketing – Use Blogger and LinkedIn as your free web pages. Use social media for marketing. Twitter like mad and ask and answer questions in Linkedin.

Administration – And finally, use Saasu for your accounting needs; it’s free for 10 transactions a month.

Oh; and in my experience Government funded functions normally have the widest and most interesting selection of canape. Enjoy!