Today we participated in the event "Enlightened Entrepreneurs," sponsored by the Community Foundation of Utah. The purpose was to give local nonprofit organizations a chance to network and learn from entrepreneurs. I hadn't thought of myself as much of an expert, but I believe I was able to help a few people today. (You can read the twitter feed here and the official news bulletin here.)
 
The advice I gave tended to fall into two categories: bookkeeping practices and social networking. Here's a summary.

We have a few announcements to make.
 
First, thank you to all who applied for the bookkeeping position. We enjoyed the interviews immensely, and look forward to next time.
 
Second, welcome to our new bookkeeper, Shantel! You can read about her on our About Page. She joined us a week ago, and so far her work has been excellent.
 
Third, our free Quickbooks setup/audit program has been a success so far. We didn't make any money (that wasn't our intent), but we formed some great new relationships, and I scored some really wonderful soap. 

Welcome job applicants! Thank you for visiting our website. Please look around and familiarize yourself with our company before you apply. We are looking for someone who fits "the box", meaning our company and its core values:

We really do believe in free resources (see our earlier post about this here), and we want to do everything we can to help small businesses succeed. Accordingly, we are offering free Quickbooks setup or a free review of your existing Quickbooks file.

You might already have an in-house bookkeeper, but doesn’t it complicate things when they have to go out of town or want to take some vacation and you fall behind? Or maybe you are usually fine doing all the accounting yourself, but wouldn’t it be nice to have a backup plan for when you are overwhelmed with work or have to deal with personal crises?

As of today, we have moved our office to a new location. I apologize if we have been a little less responsive the past few days; we didn't have real internet access until about an hour ago. The new neighborhood is nicer, more friendly, and better yet, it has a backyard.

You've probably noticed the website looks a bit different--we finally uploaded the full version on Monday. Please check back frequently as we add content, and feel free to send us requests or suggestions of what you'd like to see.

In addition, we have a new assistant on our team. Laura will introduce herself in the next week or so.

Backyard Bookkeeper is looking for an office assistant to do some basic clerical work and data entry, with the potential to grow into a full-blown bookkeeping job. We will train the right person.

We've noticed over the past year or so that multi-level marketing and direct sales companies have really taken off--probably because of the recession and the fact that people are looking for ways to earn extra income. If you are one of these, we wish you the best of luck in your new business! I'm not much of a sales(wo)man myself, and I admire those that are good at it.

One of the most wonderful things about the world we live in today is that knowledge is free. Anyone can go to the library and check out books on accounting, taxes, or Quickbooks. Anyone can go online and research a particular question or problem, and if the answer hasn't already been published somewhere, you can pose the question on a public forum and have it answered by experts within days or even hours. This is why no one at Backyard Bookkeeper will ever treat our knowledge as proprietary.