FreshBooks GETS Small Business

Recently I had the pleasure of meeting Mike McDermott, ceo of FreshBooks. UPDATE: Mike's last name is McDerment, not McDermott. Sorry Mike! FreshBooks is an online invoicing and time tracking service geared towards small business folks. I haven't had an opportunity to really dig into FB yet, so I won't be talking about the service, although I have heard and read good things about it. In fact Anita Campbell recently shared her thoughts on Freshbooks over at SmallBizTrends.com.

The reason I'm impressed with FreshBooks has a lot to do with Mike's views on small business and his approach to serving them. He seems to be very in tune with what his customers need, in terms of their overall business challenges. Small businesses are really trying to figure out how to leverage the web to build their brand and reach more people in a meaningful way. And what I like about FreshBooks is that they are interested in helping customers with these broader challenges, and not strictly about how to use their software. A case in point would be how they use their corporate blog to inform customers and prospects about other helpful websites and services, like the recently did with a post on CSSEdit. CSSEdit doesn't have anything really to do with the FreshBooks service, but it was something they thought would be good for their customers to know about. This is definitely fits the tag line for their blog:

"A blog about our thoughts on entrepreneurship, teamwork, our services, the web and anything we find interesting."

That's the kind of approach that makes me think FreshBooks really cares about small business. Now I've got to check out the service and get back with you on what I find.