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.

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.

Our guest on this segment is an expert Business Analyst and Consultant Author, Speaker, Radio Talk Show Host, Columnist, and Radical Sales and Marketing Professional. Tom Marquardt, The Profit Repairman helps small businesses start up, grow up, turnaround, survive and succeed. His new book is entitled, MY LITTLE BLACK BOOK TO SUCCESS.

Katie K. Snapp comes from a corporate business environment and technical production, where the daily grind was less than inspiring, until she found the hidden secrets in transforming work into creative prospecting. After leaving the engineering world 21 years ago, she became a Leadership Performance Coach and a nationwide speaker. She thrives in interacting with groups and training teams to be more productive while having fun.

Our guest on this edition loves to turn small businesses into big business. Clate Mask is the CEO of Infusionsoft—- the “Inc 500 company” is a leader in marketing automation software for small businesses and is now revolutionizing the way small businesses grow. Clate is a pure entrepreneur through and through…

Jerry Straks says that most businesses are over-managed and under-led. He’s a speaker, author, certified professional coach and leadership consultant.

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.

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.

On this segment we’re joined by Carol Chapman and we’ll be talking about an approach to brand development that is often not considered. Carol is a principle at The Brand Ascension Group—-her company works with businesses to discover their one true brand from the inside out. They call it brand DNA. She’s been in the field for more than 30 years, is a speaker on numerous topics from driving culture change, building the brand from the Inside Out, and author of Getting Your Employees on The Brand Wagon e-book and co-author of an upcoming business novel, to be released later this year,