SpotLight on Success

John DeDakis is an editor and writer on CNN’s “The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer.” John began his journalism career by getting tear gassed while covering an anti-Vietnam War riot for a campus radio station while still a student at UW-Madison in 1970. During his award-winning, 40-year career in journalism (21 years at CNN), John has been a White House Correspondent, interviewed such luminaries as Alfred Hitchcock, and taught journalism and writing at American University in Washington, D.C. and Regent University in Virginia. His mystery-suspense novel Fast Track (set in Wisconsin) is the first book in the Lark Chadwick series. A native of La Crosse, Wisconsin, John now lives in Washington, D.C. John and I discuss the process of writing a novel, getting published and self marketing your finished product. Like life, writing a novel has ups and downs, pros and cons, happy and sad moments. Also, much like life, you learn a lot about yourself, the people you write about and even the characters you make up in tour own head. Very much like life, it is not an easy undertaking, it is always evolving, or at least it should be, and you might not recognize the end product from the original plan.

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.

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.

Second round founder of Madison County Courier and Publisher for MP3 Publications. Mike uses New Millennium Marketing Tools to fuel the rapid growth of his business and six newspapers in Upstate New York. Mike is a dynamic and funny speaker and you can learn a lot from Mike. BREAKING NEWS! We are breaking the news that the Madison County Courier will be seen in a blockbuster movie which has signed actors Michael Douglas, Antonio Banderas, Ewen McGregor and Channing Tatum, to name a few. It is filming now and is being directed by Steven Soderbergh, who also directed “Erin Brockovich” and “Ocean’s Eleven. We will announce the name of the movie on the show.

Therese was recently included in the new Chicken Soup book, "Older & Wiser: Stories of Inspiration, Humor, and Wisdom about Life at a Certain Age" and we're talking about book networking and the Chicken Soup series.

Therese is an author, freelance journalist and professional speaker living in Fairhope, Alabama. From her site, "I specialize in amazing travel and history books about different locales and people. More importantly, I like to write to make a positive difference in our world.  For example, in writing the series of my Native American history books, I have learned to appreciate my rich heritage, have become a bit of a Native American history expert, and along the journey have found ways to help the First People of this land. If you are a reader wanting to learn more about the inspiration behind my books, about me personally, or about other books available for purchase, please see the Portfolio section."

Publishers, please browse my works to see what I’ve done, what I’m working on and some projects that are immediately available for sale. I look forward to hearing from all of you!

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

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.

Tonight we will discuss New Millennium Marketing which includes search engine optimization and marketing, pay per click, and building what I call an AlphaMatrix of external referring websites that you have partial or full control of. Also, we explain that without a strong keyphrase strategy, much like without a focused business strategy, you are likely to fail. Reach for the stars but keep your feet firmly attached to the ground. Better said, hope for the best keyphrase, but plan for the worst. You need them all. Some people don't even own their own name in Google, or simpler yet, aren't in Google Local Business directory. My new co-host Sal Valente will be joining us to discuss this topic.

SpotLight on Success. Andy has a great entrepreneurial story. He is almost a perfect case study in founding and growing a business. Andy grew up in an entrepreneurial home and explains how his many mentors helped be successful in business. Andy also tells us a pretty cool story about Steve Jobs.

Andy Kurtzig - CEO & Founder JustAnswer.com

John has one of the best entrepreneurial backgrounds I have ever seen. His family comes from Greece, he is 100% Greek, we'll explain the name thing later, started, grew and sold a restaurant at a significant profit, then got into real estate. He is ranked very high on a list of nationwide agents and his out-of-the box approach includes telling you NOT to sign him as your agent. John would rather see you go to another agent rather than take you as a customer on the wrong terms to avoid having to "Cross the street" when he sees you later. This dynamic entrepreneur has a very good shot at our yearly awards show in Q1, 2010.