Esther: Welcome back to The BusinessMakers Overtime Show, heard here and online at thebusinessmakers.com. I am Esther Steinfeld –

Katie: And I'm Katie Laird.

Esther: And we are back bringing you the funky small businesses that are making waves in today's economy.

Katie: We love the funky. We do.

Esther: We do. There's some great businesses out there. We really wanna call attention to these small businesses because they're solving problems. They've found a problem or they found a need. They figured there was nothing like it out there and there really wasn't. These companies are unbelievable. And I'd never even heard of any of them. Katie actually brought them to my attention and they're really just so cool. Cute, little companies.

Katie: I am the Queen of Weird, Esther. (Laughter)

Esther: I know. Oh I know.

Katie: And I say that lovingly. You guys aren't really that weird. (Laughter)

Esther: Oh, I know. We love you. It's endearing.

Katie: So here's a company that solved a problem that I certainly didn't know existed.

Esther: Exactly.

Katie: It's a company called Shidonni, and that's shidonni.com and all they do is make plush toys out of your kids drawings.

Esther: Wow.

Katie: Now, if you can think about your favorite three- to five-year-old and the things that they put on paper. I mean some of it's downright demonic. I don't even know where they get these things. I blame TV.

Esther: Yeah.

Katie: And some of it's like, "Yay, fluffy elephants with pink hearts and skittles on their face." You know? And whatever it is, this company will take your drawing, or your kiddo's drawing and turn it into this 3-D, plush masterpiece. they're awesome. (Laughter)

Esther: That is so cool. I mean what a great gift.

Katie: Exactly.

Esther: What an original gift to give somebody.

Katie: Seriously. And so I mean what if you had a really crazy artist in your office or, you know, that you do business with an illustrator or something. What a phenomenal thing to put in their hands. You know, some sort of like physical rendering of their meeting line drawing or whatever it is that they did –

Esther: I know.

Katie: - while you were talking to them. (Laughter)

Esther: It's so cool. Another company that you brought to my attention is called Personera. You know Personera actually allows you to print your Facebook calendar, you know get all those notifications, the birthdays, the emails, the events – this allows you to print all of those out into an actual, physical calendar, to keep track of all of it.

Katie: So Personera's really cool to me because it takes what a lotta people are feeling really comfortable with. So, you know, for instance, a lot of people are very active on Facebook. They have photos, they have all their friends, you know all their communications. So it takes this little realm, where you already have content. You already totally love and feel, you know, amazing in, and it lets you pull your content from Facebook into printed materials.

Esther: Woo.

Katie: And now, what Personera specializes in is actually creating these calendars. I mean just like you're gonna buy at the bookstore, but it lets you very, very seamlessly, pull in, you know, photos and different pieces of content that you have on Facebook but in a fun little, giftable, you know, neat thing to put on your wall.

Esther: Cool.

Katie: So I mean if you think of what to get for your college student who's just absolutely insane about Facebook, what a cool thing would this be to give 'em, you know, a $30.00 gift certificate –

Esther: And it's the start of a new year. Why not have a great calendar on your wall?

Katie: Perfect.

Esther: It's the perfect time for it.

Katie: Exactly. So I really dig some of these companies like Personera that aren't just leaving well enough alone. All of us geeks and all of us, you know, social media enthusiasts out on social networks, but now they're letting us take it back offline, which is just so weird that we would come all the way around to this place.

Esther: I know. It's full circle.

Katie: It's like, you know I love the internet but I really want something on my wall. Like –

(Laughter)

Katie: Now another couple of companies that do the exact same thing are actually focused more on blogs. So of course, you know, you look at blogging and it's like this digital, you know, print to press for you, you know, WordPress is one of the biggest blogging softwares out there, of course, in reference to the old letter press printing machines. But companies like Blurb – and it's blurb.com – and also blog2print.com.

Esther: Huh.

Katie: They'll actually let you publish, you know, in a hard copy, your blog posts. Your, you know, your photo content –

Esther: Neat.

Katie: - you know your photo content, your illustrations, in a really, really easy fashion.

Esther: That's cool.

Katie: So using a site like Blurb, you actually download a free bit of software and it lets you custom-design, with all of these amazing templates, exactly how you want your book to look. You know –

Esther: Cool!

Katie: - you know, it's from, you know, dust cover to, you know, table of contents, to credits in the back and it's just a really unique way to document your online experience and even cooler, using a site like Blurb, it doesn't just let you put this book together and then send you copies that you buy, but you can actually set up free shops so you don't have to have a hundred copies of your blog book sitting in your living room. People can order them through Blurb. You get to say how much they pay.

Esther: Awesome.

Katie: You know, to see how much you make. They'll print it –

Esther: It's like a little small business.

Katie: - and deliver it for you. It's amazing and if you go on blurb.com, you will see a lot of bloggers that are really makin' some dough –

Esther: Cool.

Katie: - selling their digital stories in hard copy.

Esther: That is awesome.

Katie: Which is – who knew that there would be a market for that?

Esther: That is –

Katie: It's fascinating.

Esther: God, there's a market for everything.

Katie: Seriously. So from, from kids' drawings and you know, to your Facebook content on the calendar. Like hey. (Laughter)

Esther: Yeah. That is so cool. Well thank you for bringing those to our attention. Those are just unbelievable.

Katie: Hey, it's funky. I'm into it. (Laughter)

Esther: Awesome. So I think let's move on to our New Years' resolutions because I personally hate New Years' resolutions.

Katie: I do.

Esther: Personal ones. I don't make New Years' resolutions. I just think they're, you know, an exercise in futility. They're useless.

Katie: Yes. Yes.

Esther: But for business, why not?

Katie: Exac- why the heck not? (Laughter)

Esther: Why not? So here are just a couple of things that you can do to kinda get your business started off on the right foot this year. The first one I think is really a great one if you can do it. It's hard – I mean these things take a lotta practice and a lotta time – is learn to delegate.

Katie: Ah!

Esther: Let this be the year that you learn to delegate. That you allow the people that are working with you and for you to take on some of that responsibility and own whatever their working on because once you kinda set it free and let your people show you what they can do, you'll be amazed –

Katie: Absolutely.

Esther: - at what they can really pull off.

Katie: I like that. Hand over the reins.

Esther: Yeah.

Katie: And on a similar line, you don't really wanna be handing over the reins to someone that's completely unprepared. So what I like to take a look, from a business perspective, for a new year is to really get personal and business development plans in place.

Esther: Huh.

Katie: So I like to actually plan out quarter by quarter by quarter for my employees when we're gonna be meeting on their personal development. We always all start off with an updated personal mission and vision statement so we really know where we're headed and then from there, we'll just make this big roadmap for all of the upcoming year with kind of little milestone checkpoints to go through what were the goals for a particular quarter – and even things like what are the books that we're gonna read. What are the skill sets that we're gonna be working on. So for instance, I mean they don't even have to be uber business-y, you know, one thing that my team's working on for 2010 is we're all doing these reading dynamic courses. So we want to read faster. We want to retain more information, because we're so into books and into learning, that by building on a core little training point like that is only gonna make us stronger in every aspect of our business.

Esther: Very cool. That's a great thing to do.

Katie: So you don't – yeah, you don't wanna be givin' big projects to people that aren't, you know, focusing on themselves and growing themselves. So kick it off right.

Esther: Yeah.

Katie: And get it in place.

Esther: Awesome. Another one I think you can do easily is join a new networking group. Or join a business group.

Katie: Oh, yeah.

Esther: You know if you're not really out there and you're thinkin', "Man, you know it looks like everyone else is kinda out there and meeting people, doing things," look around. Check the Internet. You know, see what kinds of organizations are in your community to join. If you're in marketing, join AMA, the American Marketing Association chapter that's local or you know, Advertising Federation, or in Houston we have the Houston Interactive Marketing Association. Things like that that are applicable to your business that aren't even expensive to join and you'll really get a lot out of it just by the relationships that you build.

Katie: So another tip for starting this new year out right – and I'm sure that you already, as a business owner and wanna-be entrepreneur, you're already thinking about this but just remember cash is king. Cash is king. Cash is king. You know a lotta people are still, surprisingly, relying on their lines of credit –

Esther: Huh.

Katie: - and we're hearing a lot of horror stories about businesses with immaculate credit who, even though they have this great credit history, credit rating, they're getting their lines of credit pulled by bankers that they've had fabulous relationships with for years.

Esther: There just isn't credit.

Katie: There is not. Banks are very, very wary, even of their solid long-term customers. They're, you know, kinda – kinda makin' it tricky.

Esther: Exactly.

Katie: So make sure that you know you're keepin' your eye on cash. You know, whether that means tightening up your invoice procedure. Whether it means, you know, pumpin' up your accounting team to really get things movin' or just making those much-dreaded, you know, cost cutbacks. You know, maybe you don't have flavored creamer or you know, I don't know. (Laughter) But keep an eye on those dollars in the bank.

Esther: And I guess with that, we will leave you on those inspirational notes. We hope you've had an awesome time. Hope 2010's been good to you so far.

Katie: So here's to wonderful new beginnings and a wonderful new year and we can't wait to see you for the rest of the 12 months that we're gonna be hangin' out talkin' business with you. (Laughter)

Esther: That's right, so make sure you visit us at thebusinessmakers.com/overtime or visit us on Twitter at twitter.com/overtimeshow or, of course, on Facebook at facebook.com/theusinessmakers. So any of those places you can contact us. Any of those places you can leave your feedback, your comments, your love, your love letters.

Katie: That's right.

Esther: This is the year that you tell us that you love us.

Katie: Yes and we'll –

Esther: You confess!

Katie: - we'll probably tell you that we love you back. (Laughter)

Esther: We will. Even if we don't know you. (Laughter) We love you anyway. And with that, we bid you farewell.

Katie: Farewell.

Esther: You've been listening to The BusinessMakers Overtime Show, heard here and online at thebusinessmakers.com. I'm Esther Steinfeld –

Katie: And I'm Katie Laird.

Esther: - and we'll see you next week.