Small Business Success

Posted On: 2005-03-15
Length: 40:00

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Hi, and welcome to SMB Trendwire. The audio conversation for the small business marketplace. My name is Anita Campbell, your co-host for today's conversation, and again we're speaking to you from the Cleveland, Ohio area in the Midwest of the United States. And while it's still winter here, the days are getting much longer, and you can really feel that spring is coming.

I'm excited to introduce our guest today. His name is Ron Finklestein, the principal of a terrific small business called Your Business Coach. And you can learn more about his business at his website, yourbusinesscoach.net. That's y-o-u-r-b-u-s-i-n-e-s-s-c-o-a-c-h.net. All one, run together URL. So Ron is going to share with us today some background and information about a great little book he's come out with called, "Celebrate Success. 14 Ways to a Successful Company." And before I introduce Ron, I do want to say one thing about this book. The book is spawned out of a conference that Ron has spearheaded and organized every year. The conference is called The Celebrating Success Conference. And that conference is one that celebrates the success of small businesses. And I've been very fortunate to be on the board, one of the founding members working with Ron as our fearless leader on that conference, and really glad to see the book come out of that conference. So with that, welcome Ron.

Thank you Anita, it's good to be here. It's good to talk to you again, too. We haven't talked in a while.

Yes, that's great. I'm glad to be doing it under these circumstances, too, because I think you've got a great message here, and I'm very excited to get at it. So let me stop talking. I'm going to turn the microphone over to Steve Rucinski, my co-host. Steve why don't you take over and get us started.

Thanks' Anita. Hi Ron.

Hey, good morning Steve.

Why don't we just get started off, and give us some background as to how you, through the journey and how you arrived at publishing this Celebrate Success book.

Well, that's a good question, Steve. It's been a long and painful journey for me, and I don't mean painful from a business perspective, but I just mean from a growth perspective. Anita mentioned a conference. Back in September of 2001 I was a principal consultant in a rather large consulting company and lost my job as a result of industry pressures. The year 2000 coming and passing without any major difficulties, and as a result there was a major business downturn. I spent a significant amount of time trying to find a job. Spent a lot of money with consulting agencies, and I wanted to stay in northeast Ohio, but there just weren't any jobs here. And it, so it was a rather frustrating experience for me because at the time I didn't see myself as a small...