This column is all about creating and honoring “the big enough company”, that is – one that is grown purposefully and in accordance with particular goals, rather than one that pursues growth for growth’s sake.

In our super-sized culture we’re programmed to look at status symbols, accumulation, and consumption as markers of success. But the truth is that success is not about size, it’s about satisfaction. Instead of automatically continuing to grow, entrepreneurs today are getting wiser about identifying their unique goals and needs and then build a business that’s big enough to support them.

Exploring the rewards of entrepreneurship

Defining your business purpose

Crafting a role that reflects you

-Adelaide

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Sometimes our commitment to the ways things are overshadows good decision making. Maybe it’s the whole ‘devil you know is better than the devil you don’t’ kind of thinking. Or maybe it’s that even good change can be annoying and distracting. In any case, this tendency can be particularly dangerous for those of us who work for ourselves. We don’t have bosses or organizations to pressure us into changing our outdated or nonsensical ways. We are in charge – for better and for worse.

In order to challenge myself and keep my own bad habits in line, I came up with this list of tough questions:

1: If you could wave a magic wand to instantly fix three things in your business, what would they be?
(be honest, don’t just say “get more clients”…what do you KNOW is broken)
* What prevents you from fixing these things on your own?

2: What three things would you stop doing for the business if you didn’t have to?
* Why don’t you? What would make doing them better?

3: What are you doing only because you feel like you “should”?
* What would happen if you didn’t?

4: What important thing do you never seem to have “time for”?
* Why? What makes it hard to prioritize?

5: What have you given up for your business or to be an entrepreneur?
* Are you OK with that sacrifice?

Surprisingly as painful as it can be to sit with these questions (and their answers) this exercise has led to some really wonderful changes and improvements that have brought me great satisfaction. I’m planning to revisit them a few times a year.

-Adelaide

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Bookkeeping is a task that is hated, or at least avoided, by most entrepreneurs. Many experts say this aversion comes from a lack of basic understanding and comfort with the principles and value. I thought it’d be helpful to start this tax year with the right attitude. So we are scaling it way back and starting at the very beginning with these helpful resources.

1. Bookkeeping 101 via You Tube – You can’t beat the simplicity of this 10 minute video
2. Bookkeeping 101 – terrific overview via Design Sponge Biz Ladies
3. Small Business Bookkeeping: Getting Started – the first in a treasure trove of resources by Dawn Fotopulos
4. Bookkeeping 101 – the basics explain through an old school pen and paper approach from Firefalls Publishing
5. 5 Bookkeeping Tips for Entrepreneurs – Entrepreneur Magazine wants to make sure you do these things right!

For those not yet set up on a bookkeeping system, here’s a list of recommended software programs by PC Magazine.

-Adelaide

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***Since we are always on the lookout for advice & tips to make managing our social media presence easier, we found a fantastic guide for building your  WordPress website by Cody McBurnett, founder, Loki Loki Marketing by Design. We hope you find her advice as helpful as we did!***

My clients want a website that looks beautiful, engages their audience, and highlights their product/service… But they also want one that they can manage on their own without having to learn a whole new skill set or pay someone each and every time they need to post to their blog or update their hours. This is why I work with WordPress: it’s completely customizable and user-friendly. However, it’s always necessary to provide some guidance, hence this, the second installment in a series of “Your WordPress Website” articles designed to help you better manage your Loki Loki-made WordPress website.

Maintaining your WordPress website by keeping it up-to-date is vital to keeping if functioning properly and keeping it secure from hackers. Because some updates can cause hiccoughs with your site, always make sure you have a current back-up and a bit of extra time in case you need to do some reformatting after an update.

Let’s get started: Log in to the back-end of your site (http://YourURL.com/wp-admin) with your WordPress username and password.

Now: Update your plugins.
On-Going: Update them regularly throughout the year

WordPress makes it easy to update your plugins automatically—Bluehost.com has easy-to-follow instructions. After you’ve updated, check your site to make sure everything’s looking okay and functioning properly.

Now: Do a full back-up of your website and then upgrade to the most current version of Wordpres.
On-Going: Make sure your site is scheduled for regular, automated back-ups throughout the year and regularly update your version of WordPress as upgrades are offered.

To do a full back-up of your website, log in via FTP and copy all of your website’s files to your computer.
Next, to ensure your site is regularly backed-up, choose a backup plugin, install, and configure for automatic updates.

Now: Update your copyright dates in the footer of your website
On-Going: Create lots of new content in 2012!

If you have a Loki Loki-made website, chances are your copyright info is either in the footer hook or a footer widget.

To update copyright info in the footer hook:
From your WP dashboard, go to: Appearance > Thesis Openhook
Scroll down to the bottom and find the ‘Footer’ Openhook.
Update your copyright to include 2012, i.e.: © (that’s computer speak for ‘©’) 2008-2012.

To update copyright info in a footer widget:
From your WP dashboard, go to: Appearance > Widgets
Look for the widget with your copyright info in it (i.e. ‘Footer 4′).
Update your copyright to include 2012, i.e.: © (that’s computer speak for ‘©’) 2008-2012.

-Cody McBurnett
Loki Loki Marketing by Design
@lokitimestwo

Reposted with permission from Cody McBurnett.

The beauty of entrepreneurship is having the freedom to create meaningful and satisfying work on your terms. The allure of this alone drives millions of people to abandon their corporate gigs each year to pursue something that is “theirs.” But the truth is that it’s astonishingly easy to create a business that is unsatisfying. Despite clear goals and the best of intentions lots of entrepreneurs make big compromises in order to do what they think it best for the business. They end up feeling overworked, underpaid, and exhausted. Not exactly the beacon of fulfillment they were hoping for.

One way that entrepreneurs become unhappy is by pursuing growth for growth’s sake. You can hardly blame them. Our culture glorifies size and fixates on numbers, even in the small business world. Entrepreneurs tout their top-line revenue, the number of employees, and market share all as supposed markers of success. They often pursue these metrics at the expense of their own satisfaction.

Why bigger isn’t always better at Microsoft Office 365…

-Adelaide

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As a new entrepreneur, I remember believing that it was my job to know everything, especially when it came to my business. While I was always grateful for the good ideas that others gave me, I would also think self-consciously, “I should have come up with that.” I thought (foolishly), that it was important to have clear, decisive answers and to never say “I don’t know.”

Boy, was I wrong. As I soon learned, entrepreneurship is all about being a work in progress. And the more you embrace that, the more you stand to gain. Here’s a short list of benefits I’ve experienced by being comfortable with admitting—and embracing—what I don’t know.

Ideas, confidence, direction and more at The Daily Muse!

-Adelaide

Here are 5 helpful productivity posts that highlight what you really need to know about staying productive without getting caught in the weeds.

These principles are important to keep in mind when designing a system that works for you!

1. 10 Laws of Productivity from 99%
2. Top 5 Productivity Tips Most People Know But Do Not Do from Life Optimizer
3. Making Getting Things Done Simpler to Adopt from Getting Things Done
4. 7 Productivity Tips for People that Hate GTD from Zen Habits
5. Solo Entrepreneur Tips from Life Organizers

Read ‘em and weep, folks! Just kidding…read ‘em and get yourself in gear!

-Adelaide

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***Since we are always on the lookout for advice & tips to make managing our social media presence easier, we found a fantastic guide for building your  WordPress website by Cody McBurnett, founder, Loki Loki Marketing by Design. We hope you find her advice as helpful as we did!***

My clients want a website that looks beautiful, engages their audience, and highlights their product/service… But they also want one that they can manage on their own without having to learn a whole new skill set or pay someone each and every time they need to post to their blog or update their hours. This is why I work with WordPress: it’s completely customizable and user-friendly.

Each time I hand over the virtual reins of a website to a client at launch, I give them the following basics to get started. Taking a cue from support like this, that I provide over and over again, I am making this the first in a series of “Your WordPress Website” articles to help you better manage your WordPress website.

Get started: Log in to the back-end of your site (http://YourURL.com/wp-admin) with your WordPress username and password.

To edit an existing page:

• From the dashboard, go to the pages tab, then click on the title of the page you want to edit.
• Make the required changes, then hit the update button on the right.

To add a new page:

• From the dashboard, go to the pages tab, then click on add new.
• Write the page title and body, insert your images, and choose your page parent (if necessary).
• Once your page is finished, under the publish menu, click on the save draft option to save the draft to edit later or publish to publish the page immediately.
• In order to have the new page show up in your navigation, you might have to contact your webmaster… Until I add a post on how to do it yourself!

To edit an existing blog post:

• From the dashboard, go to the posts tab, then click on edit.
• Open the post you want to edit, make the required changes, then hit the update post button on the right.

To add a new blog post:

• From the dashboard, go to the posts tab, then click on add new.
• Write the post title and body, insert your images, and choose your category.
• Once your post is finished, under the publish menu, click on the save draft option to save the draft to edit later or publish to publish the post immediately.

To add an image to your post/page:

• You can follow the instructions below and insert a gallery or you have the option to add image individually.
• Once you’re in the post or page where the image is going to go, click on the add an image icon next to the words “upload/insert.”
• Select all of the files you want to include in the post and upload them.
• Edit the individual image names to reflect the image or the gallery (visitors to the site will see the photo title).

To edit an existing photo gallery:

• Go to edit the post or page where the gallery lives.
• Once the post is open, you’ll see a yellow box where the gallery lives within the post.
• Click on it and then click the edit gallery icon that pops up.
• To remove a picture, find it in the list, click on the show link, then click on delete.
• To add a picture, click on the from computer tab, upload the image.
• When you go back to the gallery tab, you’ll see the image there. Open it and make sure the title corresponds with the other image names in the set (if it doesn’t, change the title).
• Set the gallery settings to the number of columns you’d like.
• Click save all changes, then update gallery settings, close the image window, then update post/page.

To add a new photo gallery:

• Once you’re in the post or page where the gallery is going to go, click on the add an image icon next to the words “upload/insert.”
• Select all of the files you want to include in the gallery and upload them.
• Once the upload is complete, you will see a new gallery tab in the photo upload window.
• Edit the individual image names to reflect the image or the gallery (visitors to the site will see the photo title).
• You can change the order of the images by dragging them or numbering them in the order you would like them to appear.
• Once you have made any changes to the images, including their order, save all changes, then insert gallery.

-Cody McBurnett
Loki Loki Marketing by Design
@lokitimestwo

A recent New York Times article entitled The Rise of the New Group Think by Susan Cain gave me – an uber extrovert – trepidation. Cain is the author of newly published Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking. The gist of the article is about how important solitude is for innovation and how introverts may have an advantage in creative thinking. The current trend in work, education and religious institutions is to congregate in big groups. Think brainstorming sessions. And it’s this lack of alone time that causes people to “create fake meetings in order to avoid a real one.” Although I personally thrive with a high volume of interaction with people (as an extrovert it is how I am wired to I give and get energy), I also find that I am most creative when I am alone. I have had some of my best ideas and moments of clarity during a solitary jog. For me, the key is often to have the right balance of time to think alone (less time as a percent of the total) and time around other people (more time). When I have too much alone time, I am actually less productive and certainly less creative. But what I realized through reading the article is that that is the trick for everyone – it is just that for many people the need is to have more time alone to be creative and productive but that the current trend is for that time to become harder and harder to find.

-Amy

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Who doesn’t love a fresh start? For many entrepreneurs the New Year ushers in renewed enthusiasm and determination to get organized and do things “right.” With visions of perfectly organized documents and plans, we set up new protocols for every aspect of our business, sign up for new courses and initiatives and, after much scrutiny, purchase a new calendar, which we hope will make us all the more productive.

Predictably, we overindulge, biting off more than we can chew. More often than not, the complicated routines and infrastructure that we’ve created causes us to abandon our efforts and within weeks we revert to our old, messy, disorganized, ad hoc ways. So much for that clean slate!

Business planning advice on Marketing, Technology, Search Engine Optimization, and Bookkeeping!

Business planning advice on Sales, Social Media, Website Maintenance and more!

-Adelaide

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