Our guest on this segment spent more than 30 years as a top executive and business owner in the newspaper industry, ultimately starting his own company that published weekly newspapers in suburban Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Today, Tom Krekel runs the New Mexico franchise for Renaissance Executive Forums-an international company dedicated to helping top executives accelerate positive change in their businesses and in their lives.
This unique system revolves around a “peer advisory board process” and leverages the collective experience of and expertise of the Forum members to the benefit of a particular individual.

Our guest on this segment says the vast majority of business owners don’t really understand their financial information—and what their financial statements are capable of telling them.

Steve Wilkinghoff is a Chartered Accountant who has worked with hundreds of businesses over the last 15 years. The vast majority of his career has been spent helping small business owners understand and improve their business, and in the process improve their lives. He’s the author of Found Money—Simple Strategies for Uncovering the
Hidden Profit and Cash Flow in Your Business…

Ruth Hedges is a founder-partner of Unismart Capital Software Inc .and creator of the Funding Roadmap Electronic Business Plan and Due Diligence Reporting System.

Nationally known as The Small Business Professor, Bruce Freeman is a syndicated small business columnist for Scripps Howard News Service. His column, Ask the Small Business Professor, is distributed to 400 newspapers in the US and Canada and read by more than 20 million people. In 2006, Bruce received the journalist of the year award (NJ) from the US Small Business Administration. He’s the co-author of Birthing the Elephant, and has received awards for teaching excellence at the Stillman School of Business, Seton Hall University.

JD Heiden makes his living pinching pennies, and the economic downturn has business booming at his four-year-old Miami-based company, a franchise of the global Expense Reduction Analysts. (ERA) The firm specializes in cutting expenses for corporations in non-core areas, such as telecommunications, office supplies, merchant credit card fees, freight and package shipping, equipment leasing, uniforms and utilities.

Our guest on this segment is an expert presenter, writer, consultant and speaker on the topic of franchising. Joel Libava is the “Franchise Expert In Residence” and columnist for the award winning Small Business Trends website, and over at the OPEN FORUM by American Express blog, joining other small business experts like Guy Kawasaki, John Battelle, and Anita Campbell.Joel is also the franchise-expert source for The Wall Street Journal, Entrepreneur Magazine, MSNBC.com, Bottom Line Personal and Crain’s.

Our guest on this segment of the Smallbiz Brain says that if your business needs financing, don’t be afraid of credit cards. Darrell Hornabacher is a co-founder of Midas Financial. The company has successfully secured funding for clients in excess of $250mm since 2005. They’re experts in all types of capitall infusion for business.

Harry S. Dent says that the stimulus plan is doomed to fail and that by early to mid 2010 we will enter a deeper downturn or “great depression“almost regardless of what the government tries to do.

I interviewed Harry S Dent just yesterday on The Smallbiz Brain. Dent insists that there is absolutely nothing the US government can do to stimulate our economy out of the current downturn. He says it is occurring naturally and is the result of a unique and dramatic convergence of cycles that can be traced back 40-80 and 500 years back into economic history.

In my interview with Larry Ahrens, we discussed the plight that many business owners face when unable to keep their account receivables current. Larry describes how his company, Transworld, helps business owners solve the issue in an affordable way that preserves the customer relationship.