Gary Hirshberg is the Chairman, President, and CE-Yo of Stonyfield Farm, the world’s leading organic yogurt producer and the author of Stirring It Up: How to Make Money and Save the World (Hyperion Books, 2008). Gary is a frequent speaker on topics including sustainability, climate change, the profitability of green and socially responsible business, organic agriculture, and sustainable economic development. He’s won numerous awards for corporate and environmental leadership…

Michael Shuman is Director of Research and Public Policy for the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies. (BALLE) has more than 70 member communities in North America. Another 50 or so communities are affiliated with the American Independent Business Alliance. Internationally, more than a thousand communities are beginning to undertake similar work through organizations like Transition Towns and Post-Carbon Futures.

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.

A leading sales strategist … a thought leader in B2B sales … author of a bestselling book … an in-demand sales speaker who provides much needed wake-up calls to sales organizations … and a passionate spokesperson for turning the sales force into a competitive advantage. Jill Konrath joins us in this segment to discuss how to sell to big companies.

In this segment, we’re joined by Charles Duhigg, reporter for the New York Times, and the author of the “Golden Opportunities“series, which began in December 2006 and for which he received numerous awards including the George Polk Award, the Sidney Hillman Award, the Scripps Howard National Journalism Award, the Society of American Business Editors and Writers and several others.

New York Times best seller and international best selling author, Jeffrey J. Fox, is releasing his tenth book, Rain: What A Paperboy Learned About Business. Rain is destined to be a business book classic. And Rain, a thirteen-year old paperboy, the book’s central character, is destined to become business fiction’s first positive hero. Rain,a business fable, is Fox’s first foray into fiction. The story is a series of challenges and adventures that Rain solves in surprising and clever ways. Rain deals with mean dogs, bullies, customers that won’t pay, and growing his business and his paper route. Rain’s challenges are metaphors for the problems facing business managers everywhere.

Sramana Mitra has worked in technology, and she’s worked in consumer fashion. She’s founded 3 companies in her life, and has served many others as a Strategic Consultant.
She’s a contributor to The Wall Street Journal, writes a weekly column for Forbes, and strategy blog is syndicated by Seeking Alpha, Yahoo! Finance, ReadWriteWeb, Cadwire, Emergic, GigaOm, TheStreet.com and many others.
Today—Sramana is on a mission to encourage entrepreneurship at all levels. She says that we need to create jobs, jobs are created by entrepreneurs, and on a global scale, we need to really move the needle on entrepreneurship.

As part of her effort to foster entrepreneurship, Sramana has recently written a book entitled, Entrepreneur Journeys.

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 this segment, my guest is Bruce Howard, author of Charting the Course. We discuss his new book and the relationship between human values and what makes markets. A fascinating conversation.