Zane Safrit  

Andy Brudtkuhl, created a powerfully useful social media site that tracked the Iowa Floods. The site url is www.iowaflood.com. In that one social media site, Andy gathered resources to track the progress, results, devastation, help, resources, warnings, community impacts, for seemingly the entire country to use as they needed. And he was able to build this site in a few days. And we’ll hear from him again, about how he did it, what impact it had then and how the tools he used have changed over the past year. Andy Brudtkuhly is Chief Web Guru at 48Web - a small web startup in Des Moines, IA. They specialize in web strategy, development, and consulting. He also writes a couple of blogs as well and co-hosts a podcast. One is a technology blog called Get A New Browser where he discusses the business and technology behind the web. The other is Web Strategy Workshop where I write about web strategies and internet marketing techniques for small businesses and agencies. I co-host a podcast with Doug Mitchell called Managing The Edge - helping businesses become more findable and engaging online.

Jackie Huba, Co-Founder of The SWOM, The Society for Word-of-Mouth (Theswom.ning.com) and co-author of Creating Customer Evangelists: How loyal customers become a volunteer sales force joins us to talk about the most powerful form of marketing: word-of-mouth from customer evangelists.

Zachary Mannheimer, founder and director of Des Moines Social Club, www.desmoinessocialclub.org, shares his story as a startup, community organizer, leader, collaborator and the power of community resources to make your city livable.

What are three things our listeners can do, right now, today, to build better business value for their personal or corporate brand?

3-Cubed – 3 things to do everyday for operational efficiencies and future direction of your company. These will give you the opportunity to increase market value.

1. Think of the 3 top companies in your marketplace –

Who are they?

• What are the 3 reasons they are at the top?

2. What are the 3 primary value drivers in your market?

• What drives enterprise value?
• What are the 3 actions you are taking every day to effect change?

3. What are the 3 areas of vulnerability or inflection points?

• What 3 initiatives do you have in place that will mitigate that risk?

You can read the full highlights of my conversation with Marty O'Neill.

Martin O’Neill has written the first guide for business leaders to build greater value in their companies. CEO’s of midsized companies will use Building Business Value as a hands-on guide for systematically building the value they always dreamed of. Building Business Value will help leaders understand just exactly what drives value in their company and most importantly, how to go about building a consensus on the steps to take to make their vision a reality. We'll talk about how his book helps business leaders build value for their enterprise, mistakes to avoid, trends in our economy for small business, the role of failure in the success of an enterprise and ways listeners can immediately begin to build value for their personal or corporate brands.

Restaurants consistently face the most daunting competition. And this economy only adds to the challenges. Jeffrey Summers of Restaurant Coaching Solutions (www.restaurantcoachingsolutions.com) has brought success to restaurants for 27 years. They apply to all businesses, startups or global brands, who recognize that serving customers is the key to their success.