The Z Gallerie Stefan desk.

Years ago when working naked was something you kept private, there weren’t many home office desks available. The only options were cheap, badly designed computer workstations and desks that fell apart after one or two moves. Now that working naked is more celebrated than shunned, furniture manufacturers—even from the commercial side—have created functional, stylish and even affordable home office furniture.

Some of my favorite places to shop for reasonably-priced home office furniture are Crate & Barrel, Pottery Barn, West Elm, Z Gallerie and commercial furniture dealers—they sell to individuals too. Sometimes you can find home office furniture by well known and respected manufacturers at Costco and Sam’s Club.

Before you buy anything, check for quality. You may think you’re getting a bargain but don’t be surprised if you have to replace that same item after a few months. I’m still surprised when I walk into an office supply superstore and see a chipped or dented desk. If it doesn’t hold up in a store, is it really going to last in my home office?

With more decent furniture choices out there, your home office doesn’t have to reflect the corporate office you just left (or feared being trapped inside for at least eight hours a day). Instead, your home office can and should be a reflection of your interests, taste and design sense.

• Make a trade. Swap goods and services on Barterquest.com, a site that brings together similarly thrifty people with different haves and wants.

• Test products. Get kickbacks for your feedback by enrolling as a product tester on sites like Product-Testing.com and Vindale.com. Complete an online survey on new items—electronics, baking sheets, toiletries—and you often get to keep what you try. Some companies sign up testers on their own sites, letting you score an HP printer, Microsoft videogames or a case of Utz potato chips.

• Lose the price tag. Get free stuff at Shop4Freebies.com, which lists Web sites offering giveaways and samples of everything from cereal to body wash. Sign up for the newsletter to be sure you get in on the next free sandwich at Arby’s.

There's "what not to wear." This is "how not to file."

Forgetting where you’ve filed something. Give your files names that you’ll remember by using word association. Whatever word will help you find a piece of paper when you need it is what you should name a file.

Using manila (interior) folders without hanging folders. Label hanging folders with a general category and use interior folders inside as subcategories. When you have four or more interior folders within a hanging folder, create another main category.

Creating too many categories for papers. The hanging/interior file system will work if you create specific files instead of too many general categories. The more specific you are when you name your files, the better.

Filing papers between hanging folders. When you’re in a hurry and you want to clear your desk or at least reduce the stacks of paper on your desk, it’s easy to misfile something. Hanging folders are invaluable to a good filing system but if you’re not paying attention, you can accidentally file papers between two hanging folders. I’ve done that and it’s incredibly frustrating!

Shuffling through interior folders to find recent papers. When you file a piece of paper, put it in the front of the interior folder instead of dropping it randomly into the file. You’ll save time flipping through older papers that you probably don’t need anymore.

Planning ahead can save time and money.

• Start by measuring your home office space (including alcoves, windows, doorways and closets).

• Do a rough sketch of your home office and plug in all the measurements. Your sketch doesn’t have to be pretty, just accurate.

• Using graph paper, redraw your sketch to scale (one square equals one foot). Or transfer your sketch to a computer-aided design program (CAD). I use CAD instead of drawing plans by hand because it’s easy to create several layouts for my clients. But unless you’ll be creating plans often, don’t invest in a CAD program. It can be expensive.

• Measure your existing furniture and either make templates that you can move around on the paper or draw the furniture directly on the paper. Before you draw any furniture, make a few copies of your drawing so you don’t have to erase as often.

• Take your drawing with you when you go furniture shopping so you’ll know whether a certain desk, credenza, armoire or other piece of furniture will fit inside your office. You’ll also be able to tell quickly how large an area rug can be.

Measure twice. Buy once. Enjoy your office daily.

When I told a client that my twitter following was growing, she admitted that she had no idea what I was talking about. I explained that Twitter is a microblog that allows you to update friends and clients in 140 characters or less. That made it clear, right? Not so much. When I saw the confused look on her face, I realized I needed to find a better explanation.

If you don’t have a clear understanding of twitter or just want to watch another YouTube video, gather around, grab some popcorn and check out “Twitter in Plain English.”

When you’ve learned how to tweet and why, you may be inspired to sign up (it’s free). Then after you’ve joined the Twitter community, you’ll discover ways to spread your business message, be able to keep your clients and friends in the loop and maybe even improve your status with your kids (although mine still think I’m too uncool to tweet). I’ll take two out of three anytime.

SCORE offers advice to entrepreneurs and small business owners.

My sweet, adorable, perfect niece—I’m not at all biased—is at the “I do it myself” stage. She doesn’t want her parents to help her do anything. My niece has the same characteristic of most entrepreneurs who think they can do everything themselves (myself included) and do it better.The truth is there’s no way we entrepreneurs can know everything and do everything well. The good news is that there are experts out there who’ve graduated from the school of hard knocks and have made every business mistake possible. Best of all, they’re available from one source: SCORE.

“Counselors to America’s Small Business,” SCORE is a nonprofit association—it’s been around since 1964—that provides information and support to entrepreneurs and small businesses around the country. They have 370 chapters throughout the United States and 11,200 volunteers nationwide.

They’ve helped 8.4 Million Small Businesses including Vermont Teddy Bear, Vera Bradley Designs, Jelly Belly Candy (I think my family accounts for most of their sales!) and more. SCORE offers advice from starting, managing and growing a business, to financing and technology. They also publish articles from successful business professionals.

The site itself is packed with information but their help goes beyond the online community. The SCORE mentoring program matches entrepreneurs with both working and retired executives, as well as business professionals.

It’s easy to get lost in the business world, especially when you’re out there on your own. Doesn’t it make more sense to follow a straight path to success in business than to hit more roadblocks than you can handle? SCORE is worth checking out, and best of all it’s free.

When do you tell a client they're fired?

The economy has changed the way most of us work. Several of my clients have started working with smaller clients instead of counting on larger corporations to keep them busy. Jobs they wouldn’t have considered doing have become their bread and butter but at what emotional and stress-inducing cost?

At what point do you finally tell a client, “You’re fired!” which allows you to focus on the clients who appreciate what you can do for them? In case you’re wavering about firing a client or looking for a sign that the relationship needs to end, consider a few clues.

• Your client calls you at least five times a day, sometimes with the same question. You’re their supplier, subcontractor or consultant, not their babysitter.

• Your client continually asks you to lower your fees or threatens to fire your company if you don’t. Intimidation shouldn’t be part of a working relationship (or any relationship for that matter).

• You have a signed contract, your company performs the work and then your client asks to renegotiate the contract at a lower price. Don’t undervalue your services or product. A contract is a contract and if you delivered what you promised, there’s no need to negotiate.

• Your client continually changes his or her mind which causes you to backtrack and rework projects. You can bill for that time but is the frustration worth it?

Firing a client will affect your bottom line but your sanity is priceless.

SEO is about increasing traffic to your site, but figuring out how to use SEO effectively can be confusing and costly. “50 SEO Secrets for Mom Entrepreneurs” by Holly Klaassen, offers practical, quick, and effective tips for all entrepreneurs. She breaks down the mystery of SEO into 50 easy-to-use tips.  A few of them stood out.

• Get traffic from Yahoo. Go to Yahoo Answers and run a search for topics related to your business or niche. Provide helpful and well thought out answers to questions and include a link back to helpful information or articles on your site.

• Keep urls short. While your urls should be descriptive, they should also be fairly short. The shorter they are, the easier it is for people to remember them, cut and paste them into their blog or an email, or write on a business card.

• Go after “long tail” keywords. Rather than trying to be found with popular (and competitive) phrases such as “chocolates” (23,600,000 results in Google), try longer, more descriptive phrases such as “milk chocolate truffles” (510,000 results).

• Get traffic from Ezine articles. Try using Ezine articles for difficult keywords. Write an article using your keywords, and submit it for publication. Even if you can’t rank for your keyword on your own site, including a link back to your site at the bottom of your article will send referral traffic to your site.

The bottom line about Holly’s book? Her tips work.

“My virtual assistant handles all my website design and maintenance. I’ve gone from four published books to eight. She has also saved my neck during a couple of major e-mail crises, performed troubleshooting of all sorts of stuff, and researched the best option for me on various technologies and platforms. She lives about 5000 miles away from me in Alaska and we’ve never met.

—Shel Horowitz, ethical marketing expert

”My virtual assistant has always been based in Copenhagen. I have used my virtual personal assistant for over a year and find that it is the only way to maintain efficiency and excellent service levels than any other method. She schedules all of my global meetings, does all of our invoicing and travel arrangements- getting me to and from clients in the US to Europe.

—Jennifer Hicks, founder of ink Communications and co-founder of bGrand

My virtual assistant does many of the things I am not qualified to do: She created a web site for me and maintains it by adding new materials, links, resources etc. She does this also for an existing site I have. My virtual assistant pushes me and encourages me. We’re a team that just happens to sit in two different states.

—Jane Cranston, ExecutiveCoachNY

Over the years, my virtual assistant has done a variety of tasks for me including formatting/updating documents, creation of Powerpoint presentations, flyer development, database management, email marketing, and website design/update. Over the years she has also helped me to automate as much as possible so I’ve actually used her less as time has gone on.

—Jackie Nagel, President of Synnovatia

Yes is easier to say than no.

How many times have you said yes when you meant no? Face it, there are only so many hours in a day and if at some point you don’t say no, you’ll never get ahead (or get any sleep!).

When my sons were younger, I was at the top of the volunteer list (translation: sucker). Whenever someone called me to help with an event, class project or anything else to do with school, I said yes. I did the same thing with two professional associations I was in.

One day I had a revelation. I was spending more time volunteering my time than growing my business. I’m all for helping others but eventually you have to say no. Before you say yes, consider a few things I finally learned:

• Be selfish with your time. When you say yes to one thing, often you’ll have to say no to something more enjoyable. Look at your schedule and determine if you really have time to tackle one more project. If not, be honest, be direct and say no. Something I’ve finally started telling people is that I could say yes and do the job halfway or say no and let someone do it right. That always works.

• When there’s no more room left on your plate, let the person know that you’re too busy to meet his or her request, then recommend someone else for the task. But keep in mind that whomever you recommend is a reflection on you. Don’t suggest someone unless you have first-hand knowledge of his or her capabilities.

• If you know you won’t be able to meet your client’s deadline, discuss a more realistic date. If you can’t compromise, be diplomatic and turn down the project. Some clients will gladly wait for you to begin working on their project.