On the Radio today, Lena West talks about how to be successful at social media in small business. Lena is an award winning social Media consultant, blogger, speaker, journalist and technologist. She is CEO and Chief Strategist at xyno Media Technology, a consulting firm that helps growing companies profit from the power of social media and the internet.

I usually go from being totally excited about using social media to being confused, dumb founded and totally disappointed. It can be a tedious process. Lena talks about:

1. How to ensure you have a focus and purpose for your social media efforts. You need to have a why!

2. How to mind the gold of social media. Be flexible with your results and what actions to take. Be a learner.

3. Getting people on your “social media bus”. How do you reach critical mass?

4. How to get results by staying focused on a small set of tactics.

5. How to find your company voice.

 Listen Now! Lena and I are also doing a webinar on Social Media December 9th. Look for details this week.

On my radio show today, Anita Campbell from Small Business Trends joined me. Her site is an online community touching over 250,000 small business owners each month.  It has been named to the Forbes Best of the Web (twice in 2005 and 2008), and receiving recognition from the Wall Street Journal and MSNBC television.

Listen to Anita and I talk about:

1. How the media talks you into failure.

2. The difference between an entrepreneur and a small business owner.

3. The impact of non-employer businesses have on our economy.

Anita talks about the three things that are making small business owners successful during any economy.

1. Keep a positive perspective.

2. Keep your numbers close.

3. Keep your cash closer.

Listen now!

 On my radio today, I talked with Cathy Siciliano, Senior Director of Marketing at Elance about how to hire contractors, freelancers and consultants during these times. This is an especially important skill for us to learn since in order to be successful for the next few years. We need to keep our fixed overhead low and that means to hire as few employees as possible. We need to find what I call “variable available resources” to get the work done and that means finding people on sites like Elance. Cathy talks about how to hire an army of people to help you since as she says, the work still needs to get done.

Listen as Cathy and I talk about:

1. How can we leverage contractors to help your small business survive and thrive in this uncertain economy?

2. What are the benefits of hiring an outside consultant? How can we hire an army of people to help us?

3. One problem I have always had either as a consultant or customer is project creep. How do you clearly define a project when working with an outside consultant?

Listen now!

 On the radio today, I was proud to have Gail Blanke, is a world-class motivator and is president and chief executive of Lifedesigns, a company whose vision is to empower men and women to live truly exceptional lives. She has been “The Motivator” columnist in Real Simple magazine, is a contributor to Body+Soul, a Martha Stewart publication and appears regularly on CBS 2  Sunday Morning. Gail has written three other books, including Between Trapezes and In My Wildest Dreams, a New York Times bestseller. I loved Gail’s last book and quoted it 5 times in Bounce!

This is a good time to face our fears. We actually have no choice if we want to move forward during these economic times. With record unemployment, and financial instability, more people than ever before will find themselves in transition. Most of us are afraid of the in-between times-those stretches between jobs, between a past that is stifling our dreams and a future that is unknown. We are so reluctant to face uncertainty that often we cling to a view of ourselves that we know can never allow us to move forward. But what if we could learn to embrace this uncertainty and propel ourselves forward with a sense of adventure, rather than fear?

Gail helps us to do just that. She shows us that the “in-between” can be the best of times. In her book, “between Trapezes”  she offers a practical and inspirational guide that will enable us to let go without our safety nets beneath, and fly through life’s transitions with the daring of the circus trapeze artist.

Gail talks about:

1. Don’t try to fit in. Be intensely who you are? What are you the best at. Find your personal brand.

2. Find your own personal theme song to give you courage.

3. How to be the great editor in your life.

4. Use passion to find different viewpoints of your business.

5. Find people you can trust in your life- the catchers!

Listen now!

 The best marketing in any economy is referrals. And what is the best way to get a referral is having people talk about you. How do you generate buzz? How do you generate people talking about your business?

My guest on the radio today was Eric Alper will tell us how to do this. A recent McGill University graduate, Eric Alper is originally from Texas, calls Montreal home today. As a Lead Strategist for the marketing agency , Sid Lee, Eric counts among his clients the MGM Grand, Cirque du Soleil, Red Bull and Adidas Originals.

Eric is co author of a great new book called Conversational Capital: How to Create Stuff People Love to Talk About. It  is an instructional and holistic look at how to generate positive word-of-mouth around your product or brand.

Give a listen!

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 On my Business Insanity show this morning, I talked to Tracy Thirion, the CEO of Bamboo Worldwide about how we can still be big and bold in a time of recession. She is one of the brightest and innovative people I have ever met. For the past 15 years she has worked worldwide with big companies and entrepreneurs (her passion) in the areas of product innovation, business strategy, branding and execution. I talked with Tracy about use of The Red Sharpie and :

1. Why innovation is critical (and necessary) during bad economic times.

2. How we all can be innovative and make Big Ideas Live! (That means you!)

3. How cultures are changing inside of corporate America with a triple bottom line (profit, people and planet)

4. The brands known as Obama and McCain.

Give a listen!

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I interviewed Melissa Galt on my radio show today. She talks about growing and enjoying the whole of our lives. This is becoming increasingly important in these difficult economic times. I met Melissa a few years back at a National Speakers Association workshop in Florida. Melissa talks about what it is like to come from pretty famous stock of family members like Anne Baxter, Frank Lloyd Wright and Edith Head.

Melissa talks about how in order to improve our life we need to Dream Again- Don’t color in the lines. This was beat out of us at an early age. Get rid of the toxic people (if banks can get rid of their toxic assets, so can we….do you think the government will buy them?) She talks about trading a self-limiting “default” existence and an accidental career for an exuberant life and satisfying livelihood crafted “by design”. Melissa also talks about forgetting high tech. What we need now during these times are high touch!

Give a listen! You need a good pick me up!

Listen Now!

This was the perfect week to interview on Buiness Insanity Radio, Paul Carroll, co-author of the book, “Billion-Dollar Lessons: What You Can Learn from the Most Inexcusable Business Failures of the Last 25 Years”  Paul spent 17 years at the Wall Street Journal, where he was nominated twice for Pulitzer Prizes. He founded Context magazine, which was the first of the “new economy” magazines. He previously wrote “Big Blues: The Unmaking of IBM,” which came out in 1993. He has appeared on The Today Show, the History Channel, NPR, among many other things. He says he lectures and consults on how companies can avoid winding up in his sequel!

We talked this week about:

1. How it took 258 public US Companies 25 years to write off $380B . This gives us a good perspective on the recent crisis with $700B write offs last week.

2. Paul agrees with George Santayana when he said- “Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” The subprime mortgage lenders made the same mistakes others have made in the past. He gives great examples of years ago, lenders giving money for 30 years to mobile home owners where the useful life of the home was 10 years.

3. How staying the course is not always the best thing to do. Strategy sometimes sets things in motion that cannot be stopped.

4. How important debate is inside of companies.

Give a listen!

Listen Now!

One of the big decisions we make in all our businesses is infrastructure- what software do we use to run our businesses. Those of us who have been their know the implications of choosing the right solutions or the difficulties of having to migrate from the wrong solutions. My next guest today on Business Insanity Radio is an expert at this. Jonathan Sapir is the founder and CEO of Silvertree Systems- a Chicago Based IT firm. He started his career with IBM, then built his own companies over the last 25 years. Jon talks about dumping all that software on your desk and handling it all using cloud computing- applications that exist only on the internet! Give a listen.

Listen Now!

On this weeks Radio Show, Business Insanity, I talked with Yvonne Brown of JAD Communications. We talked alot about bullies. We all know bullies from growing up (either being one or being pushed around by one). But bullies still abound in adult life in our companies. Yvonne talks about how to deal with bullies and what proactive steps we can take to shut them down.

As Yvonne says, pause and Listen here!