By now many of you have heard the term mompreneur which applies to the large number of entrepreneurial women who are working from home running successful businesses while raising their families. This combo of the entrepreneurial spirit combined with being a busy mom working from home has sprung the new term “mompreneur” into existence.

Lisa Druxman, Founder of Stroller Strides, is one such mompreneur and is our featured guest in this Episode of The Small Business Trends Radio. Lisa started her business out of her home and, at one time, had 8 employees coming in, each with their own keys and their children in tow – until she eventually franchised the business. Lisa shares her personal story of how she created her franchise and how to find a little bit of peace - in the wonderful chaos of a busy mompreneur.

Here’s a sampling of topics from the show:

• Make sure you — do something you love. Because on the days that are tough (and there will be days that are tough), loving what you do will pull you through them.

• Three tools for mompreneurs — that Lisa recommends are 1.) a blackberry; 2.) a web based business center service such as Earnware and 3.) hire a nanny/housekeeper. Because ladies, it doesn’t matter who makes the bed or does the dishes - this will make you a much happier mom and a better businesswoman.

• Franchise startup costs — can run anywhere from $60k to $200k. The cost depends on how many states your business is in and the attorney fees involved for filing accordingly.

• Franchising laws — are changing all the time so make sure that you retain an attorney that specializes in franchising. This was a mistake that cost Lisa dearly with The Federal Trade Commission and took some real hard work to rectify.

• The International Franchise Association (IFA) — can assist you in franchising your business. However, a thick skin is required for a business at this level and being a franchiser is no small task. It requires money and time - which may not be fitting for a mom whose main goal was to spend time with family. But it CAN be done and Lisa is fortunate enough to still be working from home.

Lisa’s story is inspiring and amazing, considering her young age, and she’s helping moms everywhere stay in shape through Stroller Strides, a specialty “mom” fitness program that incorporates your children - and their strollers - into a series of exercise routines. You can hear Lisa’s story and learn more about Stroller Strides by clicking the red and yellow player below and listening to her full interview.

Brought to you by our sponsors:

JumpUp.com and Infusionsoft.com

Listen Now:

 How A Mompreneur Created A Franchise From Home [29:42m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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Positioning yourself as the expert in your field can eliminate competition and reap endless rewards. But the task of actually becoming recognized as an expert can be somewhat daunting. Knowing what steps to take and where to focus your efforts doesn’t come easily.

Bob Sommers, host of The Recognized Expert Marketing Show, is our featured guest in this Episode of The Small Business Trends Radio. Before moving his family to Hawaii, Bob owned and operated the largest customer service training company in the country.

By positioning his company as the premier customer service training provider, he was able to generate more money in a day, than he earned in an entire year as a full time engineer.

Here’s a sampling of topics from the show:

• Do one thing only — and do it very well. Target your market down to a very small niche, become the expert at it and eliminate competition by doing so. It’s better to be a big fish in a small pond than it is to be a big fish in an endless ocean. For example, if your field is gardening, narrow it down and become the expert on azaleas.

• Take action steps — to position yourself as an expert by writing a book or creating an ebook; publishing useful articles online that contain tips and advice for readers; speaking publicly; making television and radio appearances and blogging. Writing a blog can increase your status as an expert in your field if you provide useful information, tips and actionable advice for readers. They will begin to view you as a “go to” source of information.

• If you are the expert — you will not have to say it because people will be saying it for you.

Bob has much more advice to offer from his personal experiences and explains why it is so important to choose a niche within your field to become seen as an expert. You can learn more by clicking the red and yellow player below and listening to Bob’s full interview.

Listen Now:

 How To Become A Recognized Expert [30:11m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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Intuition is a primal gut instinct, built in for survival. When your pet senses danger – it retreats and follows its gut instinct. Humans are the only living creatures that ignore those primal gut instincts. We are the only living creatures that sense danger - yet continue to move toward it.

Lynn Robinson, Author of “Trust Your Gut: How The Power of Intuition Can Grow Your Business” and Founder of LynnRobinson.com, is our featured guest in this Episode of The Small Business Trends Radio. Lynn teaches us how to recognize when intuition is attempting to communicate with us - and to learn to listen to it.

Here’s a sampling of topics from the show:

• Logic and facts — are left brain qualities and intuition is a right brain quality. Your logic speaks in one voice and your intuition speaks in another - BOTH are giving you valuable information.

• Increase your intuition by — asking yourself an open ended question and then wait for information to arrive. Practice this by writing down your question on a piece of paper and placing it in your pocket. You will find that throughout your day, images may flood your mind, hunches may reveal themselves and flashes of insight will arrive. Remember, intuition contains a “fleeting” quality - do not dismiss fleeting thoughts.

• “Freeze framing” — is a valuable tool to increase intuition. When you are feeling overwhelmed or anxious and are unable to make a decision, shift your focus from your emotions and focus on your “heart” and your breathing. This will slow down your racing mind and assist your in filtering out the information you are to receive.

German-born American physicist, Albert Einstein, once said, “The only real valuable thing is intuition.” He believed in it - and he relied on it. As does entrepreneur and co-founder of Microsoft, Bill Gates, who was quoted as saying, “Often you have to rely on intuition.”

Intuition is a valuable tool that each of us carries. If you learn to listen to it and use it to your benefit, especially when it comes to important decisions, you can begin to become more confident in yourself, reduce self-doubt and become empowered by it.

Lynn offers additional techniques to increase your intuition and begin to tap into your “inner consultant” to make wise decisions. If you’d like to learn more about the power of intuition or learn techniques to increase it, you can do so by clicking the red and yellow player below and listening to Lynn’s full interview.

Listen Now:

 If Your Intuition Is Talking, Listen! [29:20m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Posted by Staci Wood | Comments (11) | Permalink

To date, we’ve had another great year here at Small Business Trends Radio, with new and knowledgeable experts every week. As a result, the site has accumulated a wealth of strategic business advice.

From time to time we like to list our most popular small business podcasts and now we would like to share them with you. So here are our top 5 most popular small business podcasts for the year to-date.

Congratulations to the small business experts listed below — they had the most requested audio podcasts for the months of January, February and March of 2008.

The Top 5 Popular Small Business Podcasts are:

How To Use Facebook To Market Your Business
Shama Hyder, Founder of After The Launch
Facebook has some benefits for small business owners that you need to know about and Shama shares them with you.

How to Start a Profitable, Long-Lived Business
Scott Shane of Case Western Reserve University
Choosing the right industry when starting a business is crucial because some have an 840 times greater chance of success.

Are You Making These 5 Local Marketing Mistakes?
Court Cunningham, CEO of Yodle, Inc.
Are your local online marketing efforts failing? You might be making these 5 common mistakes.

How to Buy A Business At A Bargain
John L. Herman Jr., Founder of Hermanisms.com
Herman is recognized as an expert in the sale of financially troubled companies and he’s sharing his insider tips.

How Men Can Achieve A Fulfilling Work Life Balance
Matthew Scott, Founder of The Life’s Work Group, Inc.
Matthew shares valuable insights into the questions that men can ask themselves to make a successful work/life transition.

What’s great about podcasts is that they can be listened to over and over again and downloaded for iPod listening at your convenience as well. They’ve got a long shelf life and we hope you enjoy listening to them - while learning a thing or two in the process.

Posted by Staci Wood | Comments (3) | Permalink

Many famous entrepreneurs and business leaders have failed before hitting it big. One example is Henry J. Heinz, who went bankrupt at the age of 31, but his company went on to become a household name and still is more than a century later. We remember successes — and forget failures. And in business, one of the biggest ways to fail is to ignore your customers and your markets.

Gary G. Schoeniger, Founder and CEO, The Entrepreneurial Learning Initiative, is our featured guest in this Episode of The Small Business Trends Radio. Gary talks about how NOT to fail – by listening closely to your customers.

Here’s a sampling of topics from the show:

• Find a problem or a need — that many people have (what the market is demanding), discover a solution for it and offer it to them.

• Listen to the market — and try to find evidence to poke holes in your idea and offer it to others to critique. This may go against the grain of rational thinking, however, you will find that the idea that makes it through unscathed - is the best choice for a marketable product or service. Criticism can assist you in making beneficial changes - and you will ultimately deliver exactly what the market demanded.

• Be prepared for change — because it is essential to growth. Remaining curious, adventurous and welcoming change as a challenge ensures that you and your business remain “ahead of the curve.”

Gary, himself, is an example of success through meeting market demands. His first business was a gutter cleaning and painting business. An idea that sounds simple enough, however, by responding to basic market needs he eventually built the business into a multi-state, multimillion dollar construction management firm.

It is important to remember that people will always pay for a solution. Ignore your market, ignore the demand - and you’re sure to see failure.

If you’d like to learn more about Gary’s insights into the perils of ignoring market demands, you can do so by clicking the red and yellow player below and listening to his full interview.

Listen Now:

 The #1 Way to Fail in Business: Ignore Your Market [28:04m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Posted by Staci Wood | Comments (3) | Permalink

There are many new small businesses today. These are businesses with less than 10 employees and many are home-based businesses that are operating as “virtual offices.” At times, these businesses need staffing assistance but have no physical office space.

Our featured guest in this Episode of The Small Business Trends Radio is Gayle Buske, Founder and CEO of Team Double-Click Inc., a service offering professional virtual assistants for small and home-based businesses. Gayle explains how to set up - and staff - your virtual office.

Here’s a sampling of information from the show:

• A virtual assistant — works independently from a remote location and can help you by performing a number of different tasks required to run your small business. Having an assistant perform daily tasks that may have taken you up to 20 hours a week to perform will now allow you to spend those 20 hours focusing on clients, sales, coaching, speaking or traveling.

• The only tools you need — to receive assistance are email, instant messenger and a telephone. There are also many online sites and services available for additional communication or file sharing.

• Costs for a virtual assistant — may vary, but an average of $25 per hour can be expected and many will also work on a retainer fee or under contract.

Virtual assistants can help your business prosper by saving you time and allowing you to focus on growing your business rather than spending the bulk of it performing the mundane daily tasks required to run it. Many small or home based business owners are so busy running their businesses that the lack of time available to them to focus on growth actually inhibits it.

If you’d like to learn more about the benefits a virtual assistant may be able to bring to your business, you can do so by clicking the red and yellow player below and listening to Gayle’s full interview.

Listen Now:

 How To Set Up A Virtual Office - Assistants And All [27:42m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Posted by Staci Wood | Comments (4) | Permalink

If you’re a contractor or skilled tradesman, chances are that an employee, or yourself, has left a job site and left expensive tools behind. Or maybe you’ve left for the job site and have left behind tools needed that day.

Well, Ford Motor Company and DeWALT have some good news for you. They are bringing new meaning to the term “remote office” by recently announcing a set of high-tech features for 2009 Ford F series trucks and E series vans called Ford Work Solutions, including an onboard computer and tool tracking.

Our featured guest in this Episode of The Small Business Trends Radio is Bill Frykman, Product Manager at Ford Work Solutions and Chris Allen, Vice President of Security Products Group at DeWALT. And they are here to discuss the many features that they’ve developed to assist small business owners.

Topics include:

• Who can make use of this technology? — Skilled tradesman such as contractors, painters, landscapers, plumbers, lawn care providers and many more running similar small businesses.

• How does it work? — Safety first. For starters, once you hit the road moving, the in-dash computer functions are disabled so that drivers cannot be distracted while driving. In order to use the technology, the vehicle must be at a stand still. Features include hands free phone functionality, Internet access, GPS technology, remote fleet/vehicle monitoring and performance monitoring just to name a few.

• How do the tools work? — Track tools included in your truck hrough radio frequency identification (RFID) tags. You can buy any number of RFID tags you like. Place them on your tools, register them and then associate the necessary tools to your logged jobs. The system will scan the vehicle upon start up and let you know which ones are missing and which ones are present. These tags also have personal uses. Register and tag camping items, fishing items and the like!

Click the red and yellow player below to listen to the full interview.

Listen Now:

 Ford & Dewalt Contractor Control Centers: Smart Trucks [28:10m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Posted by Staci Wood | Comments (4) | Permalink