We help authors produce and distribute their titles as audiobooks and ebooks.
Why should I release my book in a Digital Format?

Right now, the market for downloadable media is growing exponentially.Offering your title in audio-book or e-book exposes you to a whole new customer base and creates opportunities for additional sales.
What’s unique about producing an audiobook with Authors Digital?

Where do I start?

Contact me at david@authorsdigital.com or 505.610.0249 and I’ll walk you through the process, production and distribution options available.

NEWARK, NJ—-James A. Kocsi, New Jersey district director of the U.S. Small Business Administration commends Bruce Freeman, also known as The Small Business Professor, upon the publication of his 250th newspaper column, representing five years of journalistic service to the small business community.

David Nielsen, assistant managing editor of Scripps Howard News Service joins the SBA in congratulating Freeman on his column’s longevity. “Scripps Howard is proud to provide a forum for a successful professional like Bruce Freeman. As a college professor, public relations executive, published author and radio commentator, Bruce gives our readers the practical perspective that small business owners appreciate.” Ask the Small Business Professor is distributed to more than 300 newspapers throughout the United States who subscribe to the Scripps Howard News Service.

Noting Freeman’s commitment to small business, Kocsi said, “In today’s economy, dedicated professionals like Bruce are playing an important role in helping small business owners navigate today’s business landscape. The Small Business Professor’s case studies and radio spots provide a host of inspirational stories for entrepreneurs interested in starting or expanding a small business. The more recent version of his column “Ask the Small Business Professor” focuses on expert answers to questions that many small business owners face every day.”

“Ask the Small Business Professor” covers topics that bring awareness and expert information in a concise manner,” says Julia Frankel, Director of Right Direction Educational Resource Services. Ari Rabban, CEO of Phone.com concurs. “Bruce Freeman understands the problems that small business owners face and provides concrete answers to their questions.”

In addition to his Scripps Howard “Small Business Professor” column, for which he won the SBA Journalist of the year (NJ) in 2006, Freeman is a successful entrepreneur, president of ProLine Communications, a public relations company headquartered in Livingston, NJ. Freeman co-authored Birthing the Elephant (Ten Speed Press, a division of Random House 2008) a start-up guide for women entrepreneurs. He demonstrates his commitment to young people by serving as an adjunct professor of entrepreneurship at both Seton Hall and Kean Universities. Freeman is also a frequent commentator for the Smallbiz America Radio Network.

Now, more than ever, you need more high quality prospects in your pipeline.

That’s why I wanted to let you know about the Sales Stimulus Package . – a virtual sales training event created specifically to help you with the challenges of selling in a down economy.

The goal? To stimulate your sales. To give you a massive dose of fresh, highly effective strategies you can use today & tomorrow to find more prospects and close more business.

Sales expert Jill Konrath, author of Selling to Big Companies, has gathered 13 of North America’s savviest sales gurus together to share their highest impact ideas & strategies.

These pros were selected because their expertise is exactly what’s needed to build your pipeline and maintain momentum in today’s economy. Each one contributes a critical piece of the “success formula.”

Take a look at all the speakers’ bios here.

—————————————————
WHAT’S IN IT FOR YOU
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The Sales Stimulus Package is an intensive two-week program that requires just one hour a day. It’s designed to immerse you in new approaches, concepts & skills. That’s the best way to have an immediate affect on your sales results.

During these information-rich sessions which start on May 4th, you’ll discover:

Plus, you’ll also get a chance to ask live questions and get answers from the speakers. Each one-hour session has 10+ minutes set aside for Q&A.

The Sales Stimulus Package let’s you learn when it’s convenient without having to spend tons of money and time traveling to a major conference.

Go here to see all 12 sessions.

Each session is recorded – so if you have a conflict, it’s not a big deal. Plus, you can listen to the experts over and over again, for the rest of the year – ensuring that you’re constantly at the top of your game.

This Sales Stimulus Package is your chance to learn from the best. Make sure to check out all the details & sign up right away. It will not be repeated.

Here’s to your success!

David Wolf
Smallbiz America Network

P.S. You can get 40% off if you act now. There are 12 information-rich sessions on how to get more prospects and more sales in tough times. Be sure to check them out .

At the core of all of Dent’s research, analysis and projection models is demography. That is, that demographics drive economic cycles more than any other factor. People, he says, have predictable life-cycles, behaviors and stages that correlate with spending, the primary driver of economic cycles throughout history.

Dent has a dedicated team that digs deep into analyzing many complex economic cycles, records the history and patterns they create, then back-tests the projections they make, continually revising those projection as the dynamics change.

The podcast will be posted here on SBTV.com soon. In it, you’ll here me ask him how he suggests small business people manage these times of transition. He says it is NOT a time to grow your business, but rather a time to “hunker-down”, trim unnecessary business units, products, assets in order to weather the storm. That storm, says Dent, will last until roughly 2014, after which many opportunities for investment will be available to those with cash.

These interviews will be edited and posted on SBTV.com and here on http://www.smallbizamerica.com within the next week or so. What a passionate group of new media pros!

This area is developing so quickly. Some of the companies literally launched at the event itself!!! There are so many ways to tap into the business of blogging and podcasting. There are many themes: the convergence of content and search. The ability to news feeds into your site or blog. The ability to tweak content in real time to optimize search.

There are new tolls for webinars, conferencing, recording. Experts to help you design and publish your own podcasts. For monitoring and analyzing traffic and audience. Simple approaches to monetizing your site with videos. Online QVC- like sales tools with video. The variety and innovation was endless and very exciting.

Look for our Blog World Expo Podcast Series as I post them here and on http://www.SBTV.com.

Using social networks to build brand is now at the forefront of brand and business building.

Coming soon, we’ll be adding a whole bunch of new features to Smallbiz Central over at www.SBTV.com. Along them, a media uploader and dynamic Profile Page, so you can “broadcast yourself” and your business. Moving forward, as the co-architect of Smallbiz Central, I’m thinking a whole lot about how to help small business people using social media. There are so many social networks our there that the challenge is provoking alot of reflection and strategic probing. 

In Groundswell,  the book by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff, “broadcasting” is likened to “shouting”. This  of course refers to the traditional, old school advertising method: “telling the customer what to think about you and your brand”. The new school is one of engagement and participation, and above all…authentically solving your customers needs.

So, to really get started and into this social technology thing for your business, you’ll need to know define and/or redefine your business objectives. Of, course—you should do this habitually anyway! Then, you’ll need to determine how you want to set up your social media platform to achieve your objectives. Selecting blogs, discussions and even creating podcasts or video clips are a few of the mediums available. But, remember…you need to determine what combination of approaches, and tech—strategies will engage your customers. And aligned wth the technique you choose, you must decide how you will interact as well. What will be your voice? And how are your designing and “framing” the game.

Groundswell (a fascinating read) really takes this thought process apart so one can apply the ideas. With social media, you can decide how your game will be played. Will you be using a blog ad discussion to LISTEN to your market, to TALK TO your market, or to help them solve their problem? Three basic examples of how you might choose to frame your own game. 

One powerful feature that I plan for future releases will be the ability to start your own group on Smallbiz Central. This will enable you…the small business owner to full embrace and maximize the potential of our SBTV social network. It will put you at the center of a conversation you can design and frame to meet your objectives. It will allow you to plan and impliment your own web-tech strategy to build your customer relationships in a way that matches your brand persona, and meets your stated objectives. 

First, we can fall in love too easily. Often, that first great idea that resonates takes over in our minds, and we can’t let go. We’re in love. But, there are other fish in the sea. The other tendency is that we can generate so many ideas that we become completely overwhelmed, dredging through a puddle of possibilities with no answer in sight.

I recently interviewed author Michael J. Gelb, who is an expert on the great inventor of our time, Thomas Alva Edison, and the co-author of the book, Innovate Like Edison. During he and co-author, Sarah Miller Caldicott’s study of Edison’s methods of innovation, they discovered his ability to employ“kaleidoscopic thinking”. I call it the K-Factor. Edison believed that if you need to come up with one great idea, then you should come up with many great ideas. Edison did exactly that. He referred to his own mind as a Kaleidoscope. We can do this too.

Harness our natural entrepreneurial tendency to generate endless great ideas, and, by peering at them as if they were in a kaleidoscope, with critical thinking, we can then isolate and select and one great idea that is the perfect fit. Then mold it carefully for the particular challenge at hand. Keep all those other great ideas alive in your K-file for future consideration, you’ll want to refer back to them from time to time, to peer back into your process.

As an entrepreneur, you should celebrate your ability to create a multitude of great ideas. It’s your gift. But…don’t fall in love too soon. And always remember the K-Factor.

David Wolf is the manager of Radio, Podcasting and Social Media at SBTV.com—-The Small Business Television Network. http://www.sbtv.com. Email him at dwolf@sbtv.com.

In a particular small business endeavor in my past, I can look back and sat that’s true. However, in this case, my unconditional optimism was actually blinding me to make a better a decision as to whether we should keep the business open at all.

As it turned out, I probably should have stopped raising money to keep the lights on, and simply turned them off.

In short, keep your entrepreneurial optimism in check with realism, and it will serve you well.

Pssst…Hey, small business owner. Have you ever thought about the cost of a customer walking out your door with a frown instead of a smile? It’s not a pretty number. This is a great working example of launching your own inexpensive negative marketing campaign… big time. And have you thought about what you might have spent to change that frown into a smile before he made it to the exit door of your shop? Relative to the cost of the frown, to your business, it would have cost you nothin’. Peanuts. Bubkiz. Nadda.

Consider for a moment that this frowning, unhappy former-customer who just left your shop is a marketer too. An expert. Your customer. He’s a word of mouth marketer. And he’s really motivated cause he’s pissed. He’s a megaphone. He’s not happy with whatever did or didn’t happen today with your service, product or attitude. He’ll tell 10 people, each of who will tell 10 more..you get the idea. It’s a viral spiral and you’re no longer in control (as if you ever were!) And one other question for you: How much do you spend on say, yellow pages marketing each year? Just curious. I’ll bet it’s a whole lot more than what it would have cost you to “make” that unhappy, frowning customer smile on the way out of your shop.

Tom Feltenstien worked with McDonald’s for years. Now he writes books about smallbiz marketing. He developed something called “Four Walls Marketing” and wrote a book around that principle. Among other things, he says EVERYTHING is marketing and and marketing starts within the four walls of your shop. Every detail, every employee behavior, the colors of your walls, the lighting, the signage, the vibe… everything. Forget about billboards, radio, TV or the yellow pages. If you don’t have your marketing together within the four walls of your business, (he’s says)…then you’ve got no business spending money or energy on marketing outside the four walls! I love this. Meanwhile, back to our customer who’s frowning and dissatisfied with whatever.

Let’s say you own a bagel shop (I know absolutely nothing about the bagel business) and you’re out of…salt bagels. Salt bagel lovers are extremely persnickety about their salt bagels. Now, this is a tough situation. You have to make this fussy salt bagel lover customer smile… and transform him into a more than satisfied customer before he heads for the door. Now, if you even dare to think about NOT doing something over the top for this guy because you think it will cost you more than it’s worth, you’re fired. (Sorry) But here’s where the rubber meets the road with your “Four Walls” marketing initiative. I’d consider asking this guy what you can do for him to make him happy, then triple the value of his response. He says, “what else do you have today?” and you say x, y or z. He’s thinkin’ a single bagel substitute is all he can get and he’s really bummed. He wanted his salt bagel and you’re out of ‘em. But, instead, you surprise him and you buy him a bakers dozen and a coffee…on the house! Think about this: That bakers’ dozen and 12 ounce joe cost you nada and you just launched a new word of mouth marketing campaign. This guy will leave your business looking for the first person to share his extraordinary bagel victory at your place of business. He’ll be smiling all the way to the toaster. And you’ve just created a spontaneous word of mouth marketing campaign for the price of a bakers’ dozen. Now, that cost a whole lot less than a quarter page in the Sunday display ads, eh? Might as well throw in an 8 oz cream cheese too!

The first interview question I asked the business guru Michael Gerber some time ago on my old, weekend local radio show was…“what lead the the development of the E-Myth”?

To my surprise, he said, “it was a completely unpredictable series of accidents”. What? The guru of small business that built one of the most successful franchises for the education of entrepreneurs didn’t start with a business plan? Hmmm.

I’m sure he eventually wrote one, but he did not start there. Then I thought about my own experience and realized that we are NOT in control of the entrepreneurial universe to the extent we’d like to believe. Sorry, all you control freaks, but I now believe this is more often the trueth then not.

Take the founder of BNI International, Dr. Ivan Misner. When I asked him the same question, he replied, “Well, I’d like to be able to tell you I had some master plan to build out a multi-million dollar international networking company, but the reality is that I needed some referrals for my consulting business.

Two prime examples. Are entreprenerial adventures and the businesses endeavors that follow—-unplanned accidents? How about you? Tell me your story right nere on the blog….I look forward to yours…

What happens when someone Googles your name? Do you pop right up in the number one position, or are you 47 pages deep into the search results?

I just discovered a way that you can make your name…that is YOU… pop to the top every time. To start, please “Google Me” right now. Go ahead, Google the name, “David Wolf”. Then, click on the spinning globe at the top center of my page and you get set up on QAlias yourself.

I think this is a very intuitive and amazing marketing tool that leverages search and “The Brand Called You”.

Please let me know what you think.

On December 27 the Small Business Administration (SBA) released a proposed new rule. The rule makes a lame attempt to implement a law (PL 106-554) passed by Congress in 2000. The law was created to level the playing field for women-owned businesses competing for federal contracts by awarding 5% of federal contracting dollars to them. Congress tasked the SBA with implementing the law.

The SBA hemmed and hawed and dragged their feet and finally, seven years later, they released a proposed rule in a feeble attempt to comply with the 2000 law. The SBA concluded in the rule that WOB’s only experience discrimination in 4 out of 2300 categories.

Wow, that sounds great doesn’t it? Too bad it’s not true. Women own 48% of all businesses in the United States. They are equal or majority owners of 10.6 million firms in the United States, employing more than 19.1 million people and generating $2.5 trillion in sales annually. However, women account for only 3.4% of all federal contracts. Now, I’m not a mathematician but that doesn’t look like equal representation to me.

The women-owned business community is up in arms about this issue. The topic has been covered in the Washington Post, New York Times, countless local papers and a Congressional Hearing was recently held to discuss implementation or lack of implementation of the 2000 Congressional mandate (PL 106-554).

We will be featuring Women Impacting Public Policy (WIPP) President Barbara Kasoff on our 1/21 Smallbiz Brain Podcast release to discuss this important issue on The Smallbiz Brain Podcast.

Sponsored by The Entrepreneur Source

You’ll Learn:

• What is a podcast?
• How does podcasting work?
• Why would a business owner want to do a podcast?
• How to create a show that works for you.
• How to create compelling content?
• Where do you start?
  
  Reservations:
  david@smallbizamerica.com
  to get a call-in number and access code.

Seating is limited.


About Our Sponsor

Michael Loewenthal is a small business consultant and the owner of The Entrepreneur Source in New Mexico. Michael specializes in working
with individuals who are interested in career transformations—moving into the area of “self employment”.

Michael provides specialized coaching services to help entrepreneurs guide their decision making process and manage risk as they navigate the waters of change.

As a small business owner, I’ve had my own adventures and misadventures doing business with big companies over the years. I am a partner in a commercial bagel bakery business in New Mexico region. Like all small businesses, this retail-wholesale bakery model has it’s own distinct mix of risks. Recently, I encountered a proverbial dance floor full of big box land mines. More on this later.

I’ll admit, I love the bragging rights when doing business with big box names. In our business, when you can tell somebody that you do business with say, Costco, Whole Foods, or Raley’s Foods, Albertson’s, well, it seems to give your little mom-and-pop operation credibility. But, this credibility comes with a price.

Any business has a risk profile, a matrix of items to manage to stay healthy and sustainable. Competition, quality, supply chain controls, customer behaviors, cost of goods pricing are just a few points on the matrix. But when small businesses choose to do business with big box companies, one must use extra care. Dancing with a big box can hurt if they step on your toes.

We’d been a local supplier to a group of Raley’s stores for a few years. And we had been a supplier to Whole Foods Markets. Both nice, big accounts for a small bakery such as ours. They were good business for us in terms of efficiencies. It was good business to talk about to others. Nice on the resume. A boost for top line revenues. Profitable. Most big customers do offer those things..Yup…nice big accounts can be good for business.

Here’s the catch. When you’re dancing with big players, the bandleader can yell, “snowball” at any moment, and at the least desirable time in terms of your business needs. In June, we got word that the Raley’s Food Stores (who we had serviced diligently for years), had suddenly been acquired by Albertson’s. And, suddenly, without warning, the dance was over. Then, about a month and a half later, I got a call from the folks at Whole Foods Markets announcing that November 17th would be our last day, and that they had decided to go with a “private label” bagel manufacturer.

In a flash, in a moment, we lost 25%+ of our wholesale revenue base. Our people got laid off. Our people lost hours of work. Wait a minute. Didn’t we service these clients wonderfully, unconditionally, 7 days a week? Isn’t our product a wonderful product that your customer love and buy every day? The answers are yes and yes. And yes to many other questions you might have about our commitment to doing the “right thing”. The dance with the big boxes can end at any time, for any reason. It isn’t enough to “do the right thing”. Frankly, it means nothing when it comes to managing THIS flavor of risk. The big box can throw the switch, yell “snowball” at any time, and end the dance.

And when that satisfying dance with the big box is over, you’d better be ready to collapse your resources and overhead, or could find your businesses’ survival on the line. I am not here to make the big box companies wrong. They decide what they decide for their own good reasons, just like us little guys. I’m just saying, make sure you know the dance can end when they decide, not you.

The word podcast comes form combining the word “I-Pod” with the word, “webcast”. The “i-pod” is the Apple product-a portable media device that plays audio or video. The word, webcast is a transmutation of “broadcasting” for the internet, and takes on a similar meaning as would be the case when discussing radio or tv broadcasting in the traditional sense.

The mere fact that audio and video content can now be created by individuals and distributed via the internet has created a whole new world of possibilities for many more people than was the case when radio reached critical mass in the 1920’s, and television in 1950’s. Historically, creating and broadcasting audio or video content was extremely capital-intensive, and reserved only for large companies such as NBC, CBS or ABC. Accordingly, only large companies could participate in producing or sponsoring such activities, therefore creating a corporate-centric media environment. The corporation the producer, the individual the consumer.

At the time radio and then television were deployed, they were truly amazing innovations. For the first time, sports, music, news, entertainment of all kinds and world events could be shared by millions in realtime, right in their own homes. This was an extraordinary development, and provided a mode of connectivity never before experienced on the planet!

Fast forward to the present. The technology of the internet and the evolution and resulting miniaturization of audio and video recording equipment has made media creation possible for many many more people than ever before. Enter, the individual as producer. Additionally, the segmentation of the media and its audiences has made the targeting of and distribution to very specific populations possible. Now we can match content to its audience more precisely and much more efficient than ever before. Enter, the individual as pro-consumer. The individual is now both the producer and consumer of media, creating an environment of democratized media.

So why would a business person want to podcast?

For the entrepreneur and small business person, the convergence of all of these developments has unpacked an extraordinary opportunity. It is now possible to webcast or podcast your message to your target audience just as CBS, NBC and ABC all did during the golden era of broadcasting, and continue to do in the current age. This means any small business person can now create content, build a brand, connect with a marketplace, disseminate information, create programming and then distributed it to a targeted list of individuals to generate interest, relationships and ultimately sales. Its affordable, and accessible in a way like never before.

With audio podcasting comes a level of intimacy like that achieved in radio broadcasting. Essentially a one on one “relationship” is created between podcaster and the individual listener. This is one of the powers of podcasting. Another power is the realism. Its your voice, being you. If you choose an interview format, say with a client or customer, that person tells a story, the experience of working with you. This is “truthful” PR, not “paid for” advertising, and therefore, a highly credible path to brand and relationship building.

To create a podcast series takes some time, energy and thought. In creating the Smallbiz America PodSuite, I set out to take the technical and production piece out of the equation so you, the producer, can focus on your content and your audience. In the end, you must consistently deliver value to your audience, or your podcast will become meaningless.

Once the podcast is created, how do listeners find it?

This is a question we hear alot and for good reason. Without a viable distribution model, the content will not be heard by anyone. The answer is, well, several-fold. With the PodSuite model, we participate in the distribution in a few ways.

First, we post all podcasts on our website and inside the host “microsite” area. This helps leverage our general traffic and search engine traffic into listeners. They will live in these places for as long as we exist. And within these places, your podcasts are search able by author, subject, categories and other attributes.

Secondly, we submit our host podcasts to the i-tunes store, along with an RSS feed. RSS [really simple syndication] is a distribution platform that enables listeners to subscribe to your entire series of shows, rather than grab them one by one. More on this in a later blog post. The point is that it is a “push” distribution mechanism that is created so your audience automatically receives the latest episodes from your podcast series.

Next, you can directly link your visitors to your podcast feed or episode from your website or email newsletter with a graphic that we provide to you.

Finally, we promote our podcast hosts shows on our 24/7 Smallbiz America Online Radio Channel, now heard in more than 80 countries and across the USA.

How can a podcast generate revenue?

While some podcasters charge for downloads, the most successful way to generate income directly from a podcast is by offering sponsorships to them.For such sponsorship agreements, a commercial message can be easily inserted as a “pre-roll” [before the content] or a “post-roll” [after the content]. It should be noted that commericals inserted like this effectively travel with the episodes they are in, creating a very long tail effect. In other words, they will “live” in perpetuity with the podcast itself, download after download. And, as is the case with much online media, the messages are very well targeted. For these reasons, sponsoring a podcast can be quite effective and should command a fee accordingly. Smallbiz America offers production and insertion services for commericals to be inserted into its hosts podcasts on a revenue-share basis. for further details, please contact me at david@smallbizamerica.com.

Please check out our website podcasts from our show hosts to discover how they are building their businesses with this exciting new podcast medium. Also, visit sites [podcast directories] such as http://www.podcast.net/ to search for more examples from other sources to get a feel for this podcast universe and to formulate some ideas about how you might create your own show.

In David’s blog entry, Google, Cellphones and our Wireless Future we get a glimpse into how we will transparently connect to socialize, businessize and communicate. Google is now very much in the mix in this new wireless landscape, as they are in the online landscape. They actually might well lead the mix.

Enjoy Houle’s Evolution Shift Blog…

The whole model is decidedly not about me. It’s just being dreamed up by me, informed by how I’m wired, what I know, what I don’t know, and some experience. My idea was that SBA could serve the visitor, the listener, the podcaster, the subscriber, the entrepreneur and the budding smallbizzer. Storytelling, good interviews and a voice for a niche community that’s not heard from often enough.

The seed for Smallbiz America was the creation of our story telling series [now in AM terrestrial radio syndication] called, “Smallbiz Profiles”. The notion was that if I have survived this incredibly challenging bagel bakery turnaround project, then imagine how many stories like mine are out there, under the radar, and then imagine capturing these experiences and sharing them with smallbiz people everywhere. Stories can be very instructive on many levels.

I created “Smallbiz Profiles” by recording some basic interviews with a cross section of typical smallbiz people. I worked on the “what questions do I ask them” part of this, and finally landed on these key areas: why do this? what was the plan ? what were the challenges? what successes do you still celebrate? what advice might do you offer to other smallbizzers. Once I had done several interviews, I was faced with editing this raw audio into a format that could be placed in broadcast. Funny, at the time I was really interested in terrestrial radio, even though I was aware of streaming audio via broadband and its advances.

I worked with a syndication rep to develop this interview format into a vignette series that could be broadcast. We eventually arrived at 60 seconds of content. The spot insert allocation would be 30 seconds for the moment. As I started to edit, I discovered that not only did the questions fit into the time frame, but that they weren’t needed at all. I found that I could arrange the snippets of their answers into stories of a kind. The questions became an “off-camera” seed.

Once we had completed several demo episodes of Smallbiz Profiles, it was time to start shopping for radio station affiliates.

More to Come.

John’s book per the Starbucks experience is:
Tribal Knowledge: Business Wisdom Brewed from the Grounds of Starbucks Corporate Culture

To learn how you can reach your customers, clients, markets and networks with the power of podcasting, select JOIN US on our homepage and click on HOST YOUR OWN RADIO SHOW PODCAST.

So, you might ask, how did I get from music composer to bagel mogul to media guy? A good question. There’s actual a linear thing happening here, allow me to explain…

I spent the better part of my 20’s and 30’s composing music for advertising, radio, TV, film, children’s programming and the like. It was great fun and the business did well. I worked on major campaigns such as Southwest Airlines, Exxon, Texaco, Frito Lay, Pepsi, Chuck E Cheese, Six Flags and hundreds more!

As the fragmentation of the advertising world came about, I was turning 40, burning out on the whole thing and began searching for a “small business” experience.

Then one day I got a call from my brother who had worked for a cousin in a bagel business called Wolfes Bagels, located in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

After growing to 3.1 million in revenues, the whole business collapsed in an ugly bankruptcy. My brother explained that the cousin was gone, the business and brand was still viable in the region, but we would need to rebuild it.

And so we did. Since then, the brother has moved on, the business is relatively stable, but what an education this was! Commercial bakeries, as I learned, are very complex endeavors and rather complicated on many levels. Retail, wholes, commodities, employees, financing, operations…yikes! And let’s not forget the “family business” factor on top of the business itself!!!

So, as the business began to stabilize, in my own true entrepreneurial form, I began to search for another way to spend energy. I realized that if I had THIS kind of adventure in small business, imagine all of the other incredible stories out there that could be shared. Aha! Smallbiz America was born.

First came the short format AM Talk Radio syndication thanks to a friend and associates, Keith Rupnik from http://www.radio-linx.com/. We’re now heard on more than 80 affiliate stations coast to coast thanks to our friends at http://www.businesstalkradio.net/. Then we released our Interview archives, “The Smallbiz Brain” on the Smallbiz America Online Channel (see our home page link or look for us on i-tunes) which grew an audience of international listeners in more than 75 countries. That was a real mind blower!

Now, with the release of this site, we are creating a vision for the integration of traditional radio, new media, marketing, podcasting and connectivity for small business people across the planet.

And there it was…my new career and purpose was coming into focus. This one that weaves together music, production, new media, journalism, my passion for entrepreneurs and business. Onward!

As entrepreneurs, it’s only natural that we think of “expansion” as a good idea when it comes to growing a business. But when it comes to building a brand, such is not the case says Ries. In fact, it appears that “brand expansion” is a mistake both big and small businesses make everywhere!

The other big idea that Laura present also ran counter to entreprenuers—particularly those that are technicians. Brands are not born by doing “better work.” In order to build a real brand, you must stand for SOMETHING. In order to stand for SOMETHING, you cannot possibly stand for EVERYTHING. You don’t want everyone as your customer. You have to choose. You have to select your customers. You have to contract and focus. Aha! you say?

All of this of course applies to every business and every brand. In fact, it’s a universal truth that works everytime.

Ries also talks about where the brand “lives.” We think we control our own brand. Well, yes, but no. The brand lives in the customers perception of your company, therefore it is really not controlled by the business owner or management..at least directly.

Author Jeffrey J. Fox says that a mistake many business owners make is that they promote themselves from the point of view of themselves….instead of the customer! They get caught up in the daily matters and tactical work they do, often times forgetting where the image of their company really “lives.”

Brands live in the psyche of the customers. Period. Stand for something. Really stand for something.

The interviews with Laura Ries and Jeffrey J Fox can be found by searching Podcasts here on http://www.smallbizamerica.com. Great listening.

Great brand reading:

The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding

The Fall of Advertising and the Rise of PR

The 11 Immutable Laws of Internet Branding

How to Become a Great Boss: The Rules for Getting and Keeping the Best Employees

The Dollarization Discipline: How Smart Companies Create Customer Value…and Profit from It

It’s easy for many entrepreneurs to take a project to a certain level and then run out of steam, run out of gas. Reality is that we tend to tire of projects easily, then look for the next big idea to pursue, the next corner to turn, the next road to take.

Staying on one road does not come easily to us.

So, on this project, rather than changing roads or turning, I allowed myself to pull off to the shoulder to rest here and there, to breath, regroup and restart. Just when I thought I’d reached the end of the road. And this happened for me several times during the arch of the development of Smallbiz America. I learned that sometimes doing nothing is what is needed, at least for a moment in the arch.

Now we’re looking at the re-launch of the project…Smallbiz America 2.0, with a new look, a new perspective, new venues and a new view of how we serve our partners, customers and associates with real value.

I look forward to the next chapter as we build our small business networks together!