Revolutionary Muse  

Description: HILARY DECENT is a British-born free lance journalist who pursued her dream all the way across the pond. Her blog, “Living the American Dream” is written from the perspective of her newly found residency in Naperville, Illinois, and shares humorous observations of daily life in America. A frequent contributor to the Naperville Sun, Hilary’s adventures started with her and her husband’s trip around the world, and a determination not to let life pass them by. Tune in to hear delightful insights and ideas from Hilary.

We're interested in whether consumers and retailers see a shift in shopping attitudes that may affect the retail industry in the year ahead. Our guests are a retailer, an avid shopper, and an online shopper. Joining us tonight is Mary Beal, an administrator for a small local architect firm that conducts building plan examinations, reviews, and inspections for more than 22 local municipalities, and Mary is quite the avid shopper. Joel Berman is owner of a highly acclaimed Chicago architect firm, Joel Berman Architecture and Design specializing in helping small business startups get up and running quickly. Businesses like Chicago Bucktown’s Chocolate Grape, Urbanest, and The Runners Edge are just a few of the cool urban businesses on Joel’s client roster. Joel’s on the show tonight because he is an online shopper extraordinaire. And, representing the retailer’s perspective, we are honored to have the executive editor of HomeWorldBusiness Magazine, Bill McLoughlin. HomeWorldBusiness is the leading business-to-business publication for the housewares industry providing up-to-the-minute news analysis, in-depth trend reporting, full-color merchandising coverage, and exclusive industry statistics. Tune in to hear a lively conversation and intriguing predictions for spending behaviors in 2009.

In celebration of January as “Get Organized Month” or “GO Month”, we will be talking about making positive life changes. Just by making minimal changes, we can relieve a great deal of the anxiety. Joining us this week are a couple of very clever entrepreneurs. Amber Kostelny-Cussen is a certified professional organizer and the owner of AMBER'S ORGANIZING specializing in residential and small business organizing systems. With Amber will be Stacy Schuler-Wettstein owner of WITHIN YOUR REACH, a home organization company offering space design services and professional installation of organization solutions. Amber and Stacy will talk about why productivity and organization has evolved into a big business these days. And we may even get them to share a couple of their secrets to clearing the mental and physical clutter that tends to get in the way of achieving what we really want.