Smallbiz Brain with David Wolf

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.

Our guest on this addition a 15-year veteran radio host and entrepreneur. He started his first business at age 21, which he built and sold a few years later. Kent Covington has been providing radio and marketing consulting services to various organizations ever since. He currently serves as President of Embark Business Advancement, a company that provides guidance and marketing services to small and midsize businesses.

Jon Wuebben is a copywriter, speaker and online marketing leader. He is the President and CEO of Telegent Media, LLC, Encore Publishing and Custom Copywriting, one of the fastest growing online content providers in the industry, having written copy for the Fortune 100, small startups and hundreds of mid-sized organizations. Top companies call upon him for online marketing consultation. Jon has an MBA in International Marketing from Thunderbird, The American Graduate School of International Management and a BS in Management from California State University, Chico. He is the author of Content Rich: Writing Your Way to Wealth on the Web and speaks at business conferences and association meetings around the country.

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.

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.

Our guest on this segment is the founder and President of eBoot Camp, Inc., an education company that provides people with the knowledge and skills to effectively market their business on the Web.

John McIntire is the Founder and CEO of PixelFish, a technology-driven provider of award-winning video advertising solutions for small and medium-sized businesses and their partners. John has more than 16 years of management experience in the Internet and telecommunications industry. Prior to PixelFish, John was Co-Founder and CEO of Affinity Internet, which is now half of the largest web hosting company in the U.S. He grew the business from start-up to more than $35M in three years, attracting $60M in investments. Previously, John led marketing and product development for Interliant, Inc., an online applications hosting provider, which he helped grow from start-up to IPO in 12 months. He also worked as a management consultant for the firm PRTM focusing on designing and implementing product development processes in the telecommunications industry. John holds an MBA from Harvard University and a BS in Industrial Engineering from Kansas State University. He has been a featured speaker at Internet and entrepreneurship conferences and trade shows.

Our guest on this segment of the Smallbiz Brain is no stranger to advertising for small business. Jeff Dostal is the President of Marketing Firepower, a company that helps small business owners better understand how to use advertising effectively—-this is an area that clearly remains challenging for small and micro enterprises.

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.

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.

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.

KC Blake is the Director of Business Development at the Entertainment Technology Center at the University of Southern California (USC). This was founded with the help of George Lucas in 1993, and brings together the top entertainment, technology and consumer electronic companies to evaluate what consumers really want, which is then translated to the companies that make technology products.

Current companies participating include: Disney, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Twentieth Century Fox, Viacom/Paramount, Warner Bros., along with Alcatel-Lucent, LG Electronics, Inc., Cisco, Deluxe Entertainment Services Group, Inc., Lucasfilm Ltd, Sharp, TATA Consultancy Services, Thomson and Volkswagen of America.

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,

Our guest on this edition of The Smallbiz Brain learned everything he knows about people, service and sales on the restaurant floor. If you’re in sales—Stefan Lubinski is your new best friend. After more than a decade in service industries—-he understands the challenging nuances of the sales process in a way that is uniquely his own.

Returning to the Smallbiz Brain is Bill Kasko—-he’s President and CEO of Dallas-based Frontline Source Group, and provides both temporary and direct placements for technical services, IT, accounting/finance, HR, legal, admin/clerical positions. In this segment we discussed the current jon markets, trends he’s seeing on the street, and a new project called jobertalk.com.