SpotLight with Rob, Deb & Spot...Well talk about NaNoWriMo week 9, National Adoption Month and National American Indian Heritage Awareness Month.

spotlight | deb welch | jules spot | life | books

Join Rob, Deb and Spot and guest Joanne Green for a discussion about special needs adoption and the Native American Hunkapi or Making of Relatives Ceremony. Joanne Green, founder of Wide Smiles, will share her story of how she came to found the non-profit organization. http://www.widesmiles.org

spotlight | debra shiveley welch | spotted eagle horse | adoption | Native American

We will interview David Lisi, Founder LifeandHomes.com about his business model, his plans for the future and for McKinney as well as recent breaking news about their sold franchise count and which other areas are opening and might open by Q1 2011. They are indeed growing and do in fact need employees! GR8 stuff!

McKinney Texas Business | Growing CNY Business | Growing Real Estate Franchise | Expanding Franchise Opportunities | Mortgage Lender Leads

So I made up a formula to try to see if we could use the Google algorithm to determine outcomes of elections based upon certain search phrases. Using the fact that more people use the search engines to do research I thought we could have some fun.

google algorithm | election results | election predictions | google election predicitons | google elections

Graham Sclater is the founder of Tabitha Music Limited. He has many books published and we discuss his books and his story. He lived in Germany for five years back in the sixties where he was a professional musician playing the Hammond organ. After returning to England he worked in London as a session musician playing with James Taylor, who had just signed to the Beatles’ Apple Records, as well as working with Elton John and many more. Graham played on dozens of records.

Graham Sclater | Tabitha Music Limited | music labels | author Graham Sclater | Elton John

Drew MacEwen, a former Navy “Nuke” is founder of his own financial firm, Falcon Financial Inc., based in Union Washington and also in downtown Seattle. Drew had a very strong business, sales and financial background in his family. He would research for his Dad and call him with research that his Dad would use as intelligence to trade stocks based upon Drew’s data. Drew is from the small town of Sheboygan Falls, Wisconsin, with a population of about 8,000. Drew, like many successful business founders, believes in carefully hand selecting his client base unlike others who take everybody who walks through the door. Drew’s philosophy is that many firms take everybody and car about nobody. In my decades of studying and researching business and entrepreneurs, I can tell you that this is one of the main reasons a business fails. Taking everybody who can write a check is a bad business strategy.

business success | spotlight on success | drew macewen | navy nukes | military tribute

The events of September 11th, 2001 led Laura to become an entrepreneur. She, and everybody she knew, was unemployed. She started out just helping friends brainstorm to gain employment. They would meet at a local Starbuck's in New York City and she inspired her friends, and later, friends of friends. They began meeting weekly and Laura was working for free for friends and friends of friends for the first year. She grew more confident and began charging $30 an hour. She continued to expand and now has a growing and thriving business. Laura Allen was the first hire for Cheetah Mail. She explains that she LOVED that company like it was her own. Laura later decided that her desire was to found her own company. She learned a lot from the founders of Cheetah Mail. Cheetah Mail sold in 2004 for a large sum of money to Experian. The company still exists today while many of their competitors closed.

email marketing | cheetah mail | laura allen | elevator pitch | franchise opportunities

Eric is the founder of Freedom Guide Dog and his is another business that has managed to survive and even thrive through the recession. The company trains dogs to assist blind and otherwise challenged people so they might live their lives with a much higher quality of life. These dogs are amazing and so is the company. http://www.FreedomGuideDogs.org

business | central new york | upstate new york | guide dogs | puppies

Kate is Founder and Principal of the Other Side Group. Her expertise is in marketing strategy, new media marketing, and brand management. She works with clients to develop solid marketing strategy plans, bridging traditional and new marketing concepts to enhance brand image and take marketing programs to the next level. During her tenure in Product Marketing at Bose Corporation, she was responsible for marketing of the Lifestyle product line, customer satisfaction analysis, and implementation and analysis of promotional efforts. Prior to attending graduate school, she held an associate position at Ignition Ventures, a small technology transfer firm in Cambridge MA, and was a senior analyst and part of the three person founding team of Priority 5 Group, a start-up focusing on Critical Infrastructure Preparedness training with large companies in the US and UK. Kate is Managing Director of the Boston Chapter of Girls in Tech, and the Director of Marketing Strategy & Outreach of DigiActive, an organization dedicated to helping grassroots activists around the world use digital tools to increase their impact, and is involved in projects with the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative (HHI) that seek to identify the effectiveness of digital citizen journalism in early warning mechanism for potential crises. She is on the Annual Fundraising Steering Committee for ATASK's Silk Road Gala.

entrepreneurs | business | marketing | social networking | social media