Below is an edited transcript of my conversation with Drury during Xerocon. He shared with me why cloud-based accounting provides a great platform for AI, why he wants to help turn account advisors into growth consultants for small businesses, and why it’s important for small businesses to become global exporters in order to grow.

Linda Lee, Strategic Partnerships for Facebook Messenger, shared with me insights from the study, some examples of how small businesses are incorporating Messenger chat into their interactions with customers, and how marketers are engaging prospects in Messenger to acquire customers.

Small Business Trends Ramon Ray chats with the founder of Funky Fresh Spring Rolls TrueMan McGee.

Ramon Ray of Small Business Trends sits down with Brian Scudamore, the founder of 1-800-GOT-JUNK.

This edition of Smart Hustle Report is talking family business. So we went to an expert on the topic, Mitzi Perdue. Ramon Ray and Mitzi Perdue discuss passing a family business along to the next generation.

Ramon Ray with Small Business Trends speaks with Anne Marie Faiola on her career transformation and more.

Nicole Sult, Director of Customer Service for growth award winner Lippert Components, shared with me the role CRM, in particular Salesforce, played in the explosive growth the company has enjoyed over the past two years. Below is an edited transcript of our conversation. To hear the full interview see the video and the embedded SoundCloud player below.

Last week at Dreamforce I had the great pleasure of receiving a guided tour of the Small Business Lodge by Eric Bensley, Senior Product Director of Marketing for Salesforce, and Rekha Srivatsan, Senior Product Marketing Manager for Salesforce. There were several hundreds of people sitting in on sessions, doing one-on-one sessions with Salesforce engineers, and watching demos of different Salesforce applications.

To get even more of a flavor for what small business attendees were interested in learning about, I sat down with Eric Bensley right in the middle of all the activity in the lodge for a few minutes to find out.

As part of the Dreamforce event, Salesforce announced Salesforce Essentials, a new entry level platform for small businesses new to CRM, as well as a new partnership with Google, which sees two companies integrating their platforms for sharing important information to provide a fuller look at customer interactions taking place across their offerings.

Marie shared with me some details about the announcements, how Trailhead, Salesforce’s learning system, is integrated into Salesforce Essentials, will help small business customers get up to speed quick with using CRM, and some of the key takeaways from the SMB keynote which features stories from SMBs – including Stella & Dot, Kabbage, and Code.org.

Anand Thaker of IntelliPhi: MarTech Landscape Driven by AI, ABM, CX and CDP by Brent Leary and Small Business Trends