Just in case you missed it, we have moved this blog to our web site at GoldenCompass.com. There we’ll be growing and offering more Internet research tips, skills and strategies. And, we’ll be adding video training – and much more.

So, we’re not saying good-bye – we’re just saying -come with us to HiddenBusinessTreasures.com – or look for the blog at GoldenCompass.com/Blog.

Thanks, see you there!

Michael & Sheryl

Click here to see a short video about GetHuman.com but don’t forget to read the rest of the article!

How would you ever know to ask for GetHuman.com – an online phone timesaver that is not only free, but superbly effective?

I used GetHuman.com again just this past week. It made me wonder, “How did I ever live without these guys?”

Here’s what happened. I needed to call MetLife, the insurance company. However, their phone system seems designed to do just about everything – except let you talk to a real person. Does that sound familiar?

So, I remembered GetHuman.com, found MetLife’s listing and sure enough had a real person on the line in seconds.

How? This is not a pretty site. By that I mean GetHuman.com doesn’t have pictures and flying porpoises and pop-up ads. All it has, really, is a list of companies, their 1-800 numbers and the “cheats” that allow you to talk directly to a human being.

The cheats are pretty simple:

Press “2”
Say “agent” at each prompt, until offered a representative; say “yes”
Press 33; at prompt press 2; at prompt press 2.
Press “5” then press “3”

How the heck do they know about all these different combinations? In some cases employees inside the company have spilled the beans. In other cases, they’ve done years of scientific research (well, maybe just tons of phone calls to make sure their information is accurate, but you get the idea).

Seriously, though, I was pulling my hair out last week until I remembered Paul English’s pet project – the GetHuman database. He’s just as fed up with the state of customer service in the world as you are, but he’s done something about it.

Here’s what the GetHuman listing looked like for my insurance provider:

MetLife 1-800-560-5001 Press ####

Once I hit ####, I was quickly connected to a wonderfully helpful real person who resolved my problem quickly and efficiently. (I know, that sentence just doesn’t seem to ring true, but it really did happen!).

Recently a participant in one of our workshops who didn’t even own a computer benefitted from GetHuman. Believe it or not, her bank just happened to be listed on the PowerPoint slide we showed at the front of the room. She quickly jotted down the 1-800 number, along with accompanying phone “cheat” – and told us later she was able to resolve a duplicate account problem that had simmered for years.

And this morning we got an email from NSA speaker John Marx:

By the way, I think I told you that the day I received 2400 Spam emails I was having a hard time reaching anyone at Earthlink thru their website, live-chat, fraud department, etc.

I was getting increasingly agitated but remembered your suggestion about GetHuman.com from one of your workshops. Using it, I was able to get right to a real human at Earthlink, who solved my problem right away.

Seems impossible, but try it the next time you are stuck in phone hell. And thank you, Paul English, for this stunning volunteer created and volunteer run web resource. You’re one of the good guys.

Note: To learn more – click here to see our video about GetHuman.com.

That’s why I’ve been reading Dave Kurlan’s Baseline Selling: How to Become a Sales Superstar by Using What You Already Know about the Game of Baseball. He uses the metaphor of baseball to help minor leaguers like me move up to the major leagues of selling. Too often, when I step up to the sales plate I feel like a grade-schooler facing Roger Clemens.

I blame Arthur Miller. Yes, I have to blame someone for my hesitations and indecisions when it comes to selling. Miller’s classic, Death of a Salesman, captured a record six Tony Awards in 1949 is still going strong in productions around the world.

It’s hard to overestimate how much of our culture – literary and otherwise – works to convince us that being a “salesman” is a questionable pursuit, at best, and a sleazy one at worst. Many of us buy into this stereotypical portrait of the selling profession and it becomes the last thing on earth we’d want to become.

Problem is, unless we’re able to write the great American novel, hit a golf ball like Tiger Woods or act like Helen Mirren, we’re often likely to end up in sales. Whether we run our own business or work for a large corporation, our success often comes down to our ability to sell.

Sales expert Don Cooper teaches the art of selling and tells his entrepreneurial audiences, “You love what you do, right? Well, you better learn to love selling, because if you don’t love selling you’ll never get the chance to do what you love most.”

Yeah, well, easy for him to say. Learning to love selling is like learning to love organic chemistry or calculus. You try hard, but the words just don’t stick, your mind wanders and you just can’t retain the concepts.

And that’s why Dave Kurlan’s Baseline Selling is such a breath of fresh air. I can still recite Willie Mays’ batting averages and Sandy Koufax’s ERA’s, but for the life of me I can’t seem to remember what the heck to do when I put on my sales uniform.

Dave Kurlan is the founder of Objective Management Group Inc. and the CEO of David Kurlan & Associates Inc. He’s an expert on helping companies hire the right sales professionals, as well as assess and develop their current sales force.

But, more importantly, in this book, he’s the Miller Huggins, Tony LaRussa and Leo Durocher of selling. He will coach you through every step of the sales process with baseball analogies that work – and stick.

For instance, the psychology of selling and making sales cold calls is “Getting to First Base.” Dave describes 7 challenges that could be blocking your way to getting a hit in the world of selling. Pretty sure I face all seven!

In our selling career, Sheryl and I have been toiling away in the minors longer than most of Coach Kurlan’s other players. If you’ve got even a little bit of experience in selling, you’ll be off to second base, third base and even touching home plate very soon after picking up his book.

We can’t wait to get to up to the major leagues. That’s when we can get to the really good stuff in the book, like the “The Hidden Ball Trick,” the “Pick-off Attempt” and, who knows, I might even hit a “Grand Slam.”

Until then, we’re down here in Double AA ball. But, believe me, with the help of Dave Kurlan’s Baseline Selling, the PA announcer will soon be booming out:

“Batting third and playing shortstop, Sheryl Kay.
Batting fourth and playing left field, Michael Benidt.”

See you in the major leagues of selling soon.

There’s one thing you need to know, though. Jerry doesn’t teach web site optimization, email marketing or copywriting. He just does one heck of a job it.

And frankly, that’s the kind of expertise that impresses us the most. We’ll vote anytime for natural genius over self-proclaimed expertise.
We’ve seen this kind of genius from folks like Dan Sims (www.theagencyspeakers.com) and Shep Hyken (www.shephyken.com). Dan utilizes tons of the free and low-cost Internet business resources to make his business work, and Shep has figured out a way to make Google Adwords pay off for his speaking business (no mean feat). Neither of them holds workshops or hostage camps on those topics, but, boy, can you ever learn from them.

Dan runs a speaker’s bureau and we’ve written about his business in “Gunfight at the Speaker’s Bureau Corral.”

Shep’s an expert on customer service who wrote his own guest article for us called, “Adwords Has Been Very Good To Me”

Same with Jerry Rouleau. Jerry’s genius is fueled by a very straightforward commitment to his customers’ needs. From this focus he’s figured out a bunch of ways to “super-optimize” his web site.

Jerry’s expertise and market niche is the systems-built home industry. The systems-built home industry includes the sub-markets of log homes, modular homes, panelized homes, concrete homes, timber frame homes. We’ve already written about his web site inventiveness in “News Alerts Make YOU the Expert.”

In that article, we wrote about how he uses “News Alerts” not just to stay up-to-date in his industry, but also to serve his customer base. He adds the best news alerts for each of his sub-markets and then posts them on his web site. This site is called www.systembuiltnews.com, and boy is it worth taking a look at – no matter what your business.

He’s told us that the email announcing new alerts gets his highest “click-thru rate.” That means he’s providing something his customers really want.

And, that’s the thing about Jerry Rouleau. We talked to him recently about a cool new web service we thought might be a good addition to his web site. He thought about it for a minute and then said, “I can’ t see my customers really needing it.”

He’s almost completely customer driven – not web-optimized driven, Adword driven or affiliate market driven. He makes decisions about what he offers on his web site based on what his customers need. Now, there’s a concept!

That’s why he created BuilderRadio.com, which is a series of interviews with “Experts on the Issues.” Yes, he interviews experts from the systems-built home industry – but he also interviews experts who will be of interest to his customer base. On a recent “Experts on the Issues” CD he interviewed the grand chef at a hotel where he was speaking. Why? Because the customer service throughout the entire hotel was so astonishing, he just wanted his customers to know how they did it. Yes, his customers are in business – and, yes, they have to provide customer service.

But, hold on to your IPod’s, folks. He’s just about to launch a “mega-audio” program. I like how he described his new program to us: “It’s 37-plus hours of audio with 65-plus speakers on 80-plus topics.” No big deal.

We call his new program “Builder Graduate School,” but in fact, it’s a combination of his various audio programs, such as “Experts on the Issues,” “Selling New Homes University,” “Lessons from the Pros” and more.

These are interviews, training sessions and special programs that he’s already recorded over the past year. What he’s done for his customers now is to put them all together in one package. And that package is an IPod Nano. That’s right, all 37 hours comes fully loaded and ready to be listened to on a spanking new Nano. Tell me this guy isn’t smart.

Customer focus is what is making this guy’s web presence successful. Here’s one last, quick example. Jerry knows the power of email marketing and he personally is sold on Constant Contact for that job. Even though he demonstrates the power of Constant Contact to his business audiences he doesn’t take referral fees for them.

“My expertise is in my own builder niche, not email marketing. I think my customers will benefit from the information about Constant Contact, but I don’t think I should make extra money from mentioning them. It just wouldn’t feel right.”

No matter what business you are in, if you want to know more about “optimizing” your web site, pay attention to what Jerry Rouleau is doing. He does it by optimizing what he provides his customers.

The main page of Jerry’s web site asks, “Looking for someone who Knows Your Business?” Jerry knows his – and if you follow his example, you’ll know yours too.

Note: Sheryl and I do not take referral fees from any of the sites or services mentioned in our articles or workshops. We are one of the experts interviewed on Jerry’s audio series, “Experts on the Issues.”

Carole Copeland Thomas is an empowerment and leadership expert who interviews top business and motivational experts on her weekly radio show and next Friday she will spend an hour talking about Google with us.

Click Here to download the handout for the show.

The show simulcasts from 11 am to 12 noon (Eastern Daylight Time) on Fridays, Saturday at 1 p.m. and on Sundays at 11 am at www.moneymattersradio.net. So, if you have a computer, you can hear the show anywhere.

In Boston, this show will air live on FRIDAY June 22, 2007 (11-12 noon) AND Saturday June 23, 2007 (1 pm -2 pm). It is also re-broadcast on Sunday at 11 am.

If You Miss all of the above you can listen ANYTIME and ANYWHERE on http://web.mac.com/tellcarole/iWeb/Site/Welcome.html. Click on PODCAST at the homepage. Our interview will be posted there within one week of the broadcast.

Hope you’ll listen in!

News Alerts are easy to create if your topic is straightforward. For instance, if your customer is “Ball Aerospace” or your industry is “lumber products” all you have to do is to remember to put quotation marks around your terms and you are pretty much home free. (For an introduction to News Alerts, read “News Alerts Make YOU the Expert” )

But what if you need a news alert for a topic that doesn’t fit into an easily captured phrase? For instance, what if you’d like to keep up-to-date on the general issues surrounding “influence” and “persuasion?” Whether it’s in politics, business or All-Star balloting, the science of influence and the process of persuasion is increasingly leaving its imprint on our daily lives.

The problem is that you can’t simply do a news alert for either of those words or your inbox will be flooded. Testing them in the Google News search box we get:

Influence – 74,041 results
Persuasion – 1,650 results

Since Google searches the last 30 days of news in thousands of newspapers across the world, that would mean that your news alerts would capture close to 2,500 alerts per day for “influence” and 55 per day for “persuasion.” No one has the time for that much information.

The solution would seem to be to do an alert for both words – limiting your results to articles where both words are mentioned. A search for both terms returned 159 results in our test, which means you could expect an average of 5 alerts per day, perhaps a manageable number.

The problem is that even though you’ve reduced your results, you haven’t reduced the irrelevant ones. For instance: You could get this alert for “Real Estate Sales Tumble in June:”

Home buyers are of the persuasion to wait out the latest economic slowdown in Quebec. More people are just giving up, and the influence of those decisions could be catastrophic for the building industry.

This is not, of course, what you had in mind. It happens because Google and other search engines are not very smart – they just look to see if your words appear ANYWHERE on the page.

In order to avoid this, we could pair them by doing an alert for “influence and persuasion,” (the quotation marks are necessary) but that would give us only articles that have that exact phrase: “influence and persuasion.” We’d see only 2 or 3 news alerts cross our desk each month. Thankfully, they’d usually be relevant, but we’d miss a lot of other good stuff.

If you want to make your search for current news about these two topics hit more pay dirt, you’ll have to use what are called “Google Wildcards” (we’ll use Google because the statistics show that over 60% of you are using Google, more than twice as many as are using their distant search competitor, Yahoo).

A “wildcard” holds the place of a word and substitutes for any word. It’s very much like a blank square in Scrabble, only it substitutes for a whole word. The symbol you need to use for a wildcard is the asterisk symbol (*), which sits proudly above the number “8″ on your keyboard.

Quotation marks are again necessary when using wildcards – like this:

“influence * persuasion”

Such a news search or news alert will retrieve for you articles that include phrases like:

“influence and persuasion”
“influence without persuasion”
“influence through persuasion”
“influence, power, persuasion”

You get the idea. In fact, the week we did our example news searches “influence and persuasion” did return two results – and both were good results. However, it missed one that “influence * persuasion” added. This article was from the Vancouver Sun about a Canadian political issue that included the phrase, “influence through persuasion.” The whole sentence was:

Their game was “soft power,” influence through persuasion, peacekeeping and diplomacy.

Think about it. If influence and persuasion is your topic – then this reference to “soft power” might well be vitally important to you.

When we further searched “soft power” in Google the first result was a Wikipedia entry on the topic:”

Soft power is a term used in international relations theory to describe the ability of a political body, such as a state, to indirectly influence the behavior or interests of other political bodies through cultural or ideological means.

As an expert in influence and persuasion, you might well already know about “Soft Power,” but you might not. More importantly, those reading your blog or newsletter may need a little brushing up on it! And, the term itself could be creatively borrowed to describe a topic in your own materials about influence and persuasion, even if those materials are not politically oriented.

No matter what your topic or interest, try using wildcards on your next search or news alert. You’ll get fewer results, which will save you time. You’ll also get more targeted and more powerful results, which will make you look like a genius.

In the rush of things, too often we make important buying decisions without researching them. Instead, we hire the web site designer a friend told us about, or go with the email marketing program we’ve heard of, or buy the postage system that Office Depot just happens to have in stock.

There is a better way to comparison shop – and, of course, you’ll find it on the Internet. BuyerZone.com has matched a few buyers and sellers over the past few years – $5 billion worth of transactions, to be exact.

Here’s how they do it. Let’s say you’d like to start sending out a regular email newsletter to your customer base. You’ve heard of Constant Contact, and you have a friend who uses it. However, you’ve seen other names on the newsletters that cross your inbox and you wonder what company has the best service at the best price that will best fit your business.

Simply go to BuyerZone.com and take a look at the hundreds of business products and services listed – everything from 401K retirement plans to office trailers to VoIP phone services to credit card terminals.

“Email marketing services” happens to be listed under the category of “Marketing,” along with things like “Web Site Design,” “CD & DVD Replication” and “Graphic Design: Logo & Identity.” If you don’t see the product or service you are trying to find, simply use the search box, instead.

When you click on “Email Marketing Services,” you’ll see a list of “Featured” companies,” like Admail.net, Lyris and Constant Contact, near the top of the page. These are the kinds of companies that you will be choosing from.

And here’s how simple it is. All you need to do is fill out the form – and then the vendors who match your criterion will email or call you! No research, no hitting the pavement, and most importantly, no decisions made without information. You’ll be able to compare each company’s offer, ask as many questions as you like and pick the service or product that matches your needs and your pocketbook.

You can also “look before you leap” by clicking on the categories in a box called “Buyer’s Guide” (over on the right side of the page). This section includes handy articles like “Email marketing services introduction,” “Pros & cons of an email campaigns,” “Choosing an email advertising vendor” and more.

Sheryl and I actually are looking for the right email marketing service for our business. When we filled out the online BuyerZone form a couple of days ago, we were almost immediately contacted by companies like Delivra (the first), GoldLasso, Admail.net and Constant Contact.

Stay tuned and we’ll report back to you on how our search for the right service goes, but already we have much more knowledge of the industry and a much better understanding of the kinds of service that will work for us (not to mention which ones we can afford!).

Clearly, you’ll save time and energy by using BuyerZone.com. The alternative is to wing it – or to spend hours clicking through various Internet sites that offer the products or services you need.

And now, pardon me, but I think I need a forklift – so I’m off to BuyerZone.com for more information.

Everyone knows that “Entrepreneurial Piece of Advice #1” is to start with “Networking.” So, I gave my questioner “Piece of Advice #1,” but I adjusted it slightly because of a tiny change that has happened to us in the last 15 years. It’s called “the Internet.”

Yes, the Internet itself is the world largest networking event. It’s held every day, every hour of every day, and it’s attended by the best, the brightest, the informed, the wealthy and the connected. There is no other way to say it. As the world’s largest networking event, the Internet puts local networking events to shame.

This best attended and glitziest networking event can put you in touch with people who can help you grow your business today. These are people you simply could not meet in any other way. And, these are often the people who will help you more than the folks you’ll meet over the coffee and stale donuts at your local business mixers.

But, here’s a secret. Networking experts don’t teach this approach. And, even those who sing the praises of the Internet’s networking sites, like LinkedIn.com and Ryze.com, don’t understand how to use the Internet’s most powerful networking strategies.

Which is where Clayton Shold comes in. Clayton is using the networking power of the Internet to jump-start his business. He’s not just relying on the “secret formulas” of web optimization, click-thru advertising and Internet marketing. He also builds his business the old-fashioned way – by developing relationships. The only difference is that he is starting these relationships on the Internet.

We’ve written about how to do this kind of networking, which we call “Nuclear Networking,” in “Network the Internet – Part 4″ and “Network the Internet – Part 4½” (don’t ask).

But, this is an article about Clayton and Salesopedia. Salesopedia.com is Clayton Shold’s brainchild. He says his mission is to “help sales people become more successful,” which seems modest enough. He bills Salesopedia.com as the “World of Sales from A to Z,” and he’s well on his way to that fulfilling that claim.

Psst. Here’s a little secret, though. Clayton only started his business late last year. That’s right. Salesopedia has been in business less than a year and it’s growing like gangbusters.

How is he doing it? Well, we’ll give you a hint. It has to do with the way he uses the Internet to network. The truth is, we think Clayton may well be the best and most natural “Nuclear Networker” we’ve ever met.

Here’s one way he does it. Whenever he reads an article or newsletter or ezine that he likes, he doesn’t stop there. He takes one additional step. He contacts that person, and lets them know he appreciated their article.

Simple? Yes. People love to be complimented. Everyone likes to hear that they write well. Manipulative? No. Clayton doesn’t contact the folks who write crummy articles.

Here’s what he told us about a few of the folks he’s run into while networking on the Internet:

“I stumbled upon Lori Richardson’s blog from a link on someone else’s blogroll. I liked a post she had written and gave her a call. Turns out she was just leaving for Las Vegas to watch her son’s hockey game. He is a professional hockey player for a team in Texas and Las Vegas was the closest his games took him to Seattle. My two boys were avid hockey players so we already had something in common. We connected the following week, — next thing you know we had a podcast interview lined up.”

“I found Jill Konrath through a Google search, something like “Sales Articles” when I was looking for sales authors to feature on Salesopedia. I simply tracked down her contact information, sent her a note explaining what I was trying to achieve. She immediately liked the concept and offered to send me some of her articles.”

“Jonathan Farrington is British, but lives just outside Paris, France. I had read one of his articles on an ezine somewhere and had made a note to contact him. I liked his writing style and….”

And so the story goes.

Clayton told us, “When I’ve networked in the past I’ve done it with a handshake, or a business card at an event. Now I do it with an email or a phone call – and the event is anyone I’ve run into on the Web!”

It’s worth your time to visit Salesopedia, but it would also be worth your time to write or call Clayton – yes, and start a relationship. These kinds of relationships are the new selling power of the Internet. Clayton understands this.

However, Clayton is unusual. Not many people know about the power of the world’s largest networking event. That, of course, is a huge opportunity for Clayton – and for you and your business, no matter what business you are in.

Clayton says it this way, “The web has become my new play ground. I’m meeting fascinating sales experts with the click of a mouse and a cheap internet phone connection. For me the web has become a smaller place once you know where to go to connect. That is why I put a link to Hidden Business Treasures on my blog, the tips you provide are excellent to help focus and shorten searches to get to who or what you need.”

We don’t print Clayton’s compliment about us to pat ourselves on the back. There are hundreds of ways to find appropriate Internet entry points for a connection with someone who will help you get your business started (or jump-started) in 90 days. There are hundreds of skills and strategies you can learn to find the phone numbers and email addresses of the folks you’d like to meet. And, there are hundreds of ways to appropriately say “hello” and begin the relationship. That’s our business.

So, start a relationship with us to learn more about how to do this kind of Nuclear Networking. Or, start one with Clayton – he’s a nice guy, and he’ll talk to you. Or, better yet, start lots of them with the best and the brightest in your industry. The power is so explosive you’ll wonder why no one ever told you about Nuclear Networking before.

“I’m just transforming to electronic networking and saving on gas and lunches!” Yes, Clayton Shold knows. That’s one surefire way he’s growing his business at warp speed. Now you know it too.

For years I’ve been fortunate enough to meet annually with an international think tank of executive coaches at the Executive Coaching Summit and back in 2003 we had a realization during one of these sessions that we were just a bunch of executive coaches sitting around talking about how to improve global business leadership and yet we might as well have been sitting around contemplating our navels because we were missing key stakeholders in that conversation.

So here’s what we did about it. We dreamed up an organization that would bring together the multiple stakeholders who had an interest in the success of coaching solutions in organizations…not just executive coaches with a passion for the advancement and stewardship of our profession, but also coaching directors of organizations and organizational leaders who utilize coaching services, those who train coaches, and those who are leading the charge to research the impact of coaching and the ROI (return on investment) to organizations who deploy coaches.

Voila! We hit upon a real market need. It took us awhile to organize, incorporate and set up our first board, but now we’re moving forward like gangbusters on our mission to create opportunities for dialogue — a place to have the conversations that aren’t happening anywhere else.

To that end, we’ve created free teleforums that happen every 6-8 weeks on various topics relevant to organizations. Our goal is to focus from an organization-centric perspective, not a coach-centric world view. The main activity of ICCO is to hold multiple symposia. These are two- to three-day dialogues limited to a maximum of 40 attendees per event to ensure optimal conversation. As it says on the ICCO site: For each event, capacity is limited to 10 coaches, 10 organizational representatives, and 10 participants who are coaching researchers, educators, trainers, or associations. Participants are accepted on a first-come, first-served basis. Once each stakeholder sector is filled, we will refer you to the symposia being planned in other locations.

Now, if you’re doing the math, you’ll see that the above breakdown only accounts for 30 people. The other ten are comprised of design team members, board members and the Dean and administrator who support the event. The symposia follow a template format that includes cases presented by organizational leaders and then breakout sessions where participants take on the roles of either coach or consultant to address that organization’s challenge.

So, back to DC. We had several leaders of government agencies (of course…we’re in DC) as well as corporations such as Booz Allen Hamilton, PriceWaterhouseCoopers, a few associations represented (ASTD), and even a dairy company from Norway in attendance. We had representatives from universities both local and international, as well as coach training organizations, researchers, boutique coaching organizations and individual practitioners in the room. The diverse perspectives were united around the exploration of meaty questions about global challenges like sustainability of the planet, leadership in a global economy, politician as coach, and coaches as leaders.

We laughed, we cried, it was better than Cats! We explored ideas as “out there” as creating a set of governing laws for a global society that could be co-created in an open source online format where every global citizen can contribute to the content. We explored practical, grounded ideas around books to read and resources to share. And everything in-between, including the role of the coach and whether or not we should question the values of a client organization and what impact that might have on global sustainability. Participants reported that they were engaged, inspired, challenged, and that they valued being able to be in this caliber of dialogue utilizing both their heads and their hearts, which was out of the norm for their typical business environments.

While the number of participants at each symposia is limited by design, the number of symposia that can be held in the world is unlimited. We held the pilot in June 2006 in Sacramento, and it was so well received that we had the second one in NYC in October 2006. We had to turn people away from that one, which was the catalyst for volunteers to initiate multiple upcoming events. Watch the ICCO website for specific details, but in the plans are one in Mexico (May 2007), one in Seattle (June 2007), Toronto in October 2007 and one in Boston also in October 2007 and four more on deck thus far for 2008. These all have different topics, one is on Neurosciences, one is on Research, one is on International Coaching, one is on Cross-Cultural Coaching, etc.

So, if you hunger for meaningful professional dialogue with a stewardship component, this is the community for you to play in. This is the dialogue you’ve been looking for. Find an upcoming symposium that works for you or organize one yourself (we’ve got a template, a Dean, and an administrator to help you…you just need a date, a location and a design team) and you, too, can contribute to the dialogue that is making business and the world a better place.

There ought to be a cautionary label posted on every entrepreneurial speech, workshop and class: “Warning: the advice you are about to hear skips the most important part. Good luck.”

But, at the annual AIIP Convention (Association of Independent Information Professionals) in Minneapolis this past weekend, Sam Richter didn’t skip the most important part.

He was talking to an audience of information professionals. Believe me, these folks earn that title because they can find anything for anyone – online or off.

Even so, “information professionals” can be just as challenged when it comes to operating a small business as the next person. We understand — we face those same challenges.

So what did Sam include in his speech that everyone else seems to ignore? Let’s take a look at three key words– and then connect the dots.

The first word is “differentiation.” It may sound cliché, but this is THE watchword for any small business (or medium or large one, for that matter) Whether it’s a 30-minute stand-up routine, a 3-hour workshop or a weeks-long series of classes on entrepreneurship, it doesn’t matter. Everyone will tell you that you’d better differentiate yourself. Successful business owners understand what an essential element “differentiation” has become.

Sam then added the concept that in order to have “differentiation,” you have to have “creativity.” Creativity is right behind “differentiation” as the BIG concept in business these days – everyone wants it and many claim it, but the truth is very few have figured out how to get it.

Differentiate. Be creative. So far, so good. Everyone seems to agree on these concepts. But here’s the important part. Creativity needs a partner – and that partner is the third key word – “information.”

It comes down to this: you can’t have “differentiation” without “creativity” – and you can’t have “creativity” without a healthy dose of “information.” And that’s the missing link. In this day and age, it’s that last piece – “information” – that’s essential for success. And the vast majority of today’s entrepreneurial experts are not connecting the dots. They may understand how important the first two concepts are, but it’s that essential third piece that is missing.

Today, information is your business no matter what business you’re in. That shift has happened at lightning speed in just the past few years, and few business classes and workshops have kept up with the implications for entrepreneurs.

But, in his speech, Sam Richter put it all together. You see, Sam happens to be the President of the James J. Hill Business Research Library in St. Paul, Minnesota. Information is his business – big time. The James J. Hill Library and its online service at jjhill.org offer small businesses the equivalent information support of a huge corporate library. Just like the big guys, a small business can get sales lead databases, benchmarking resources, business intelligence, industry profiles, expanded news services and even personal (and I do mean personal) research support.

It’s the mission of the James J. Hill Library “to provide access to and assistance in finding the practical business information our clients need to succeed.” They package it all into your own low-cost, easy-to-use research department. We don’t want to sound like an advertisement, but a James J. Hill membership is still very much a hidden treasure – which makes it a huge opportunity for you. Sam calls it, “Business. Smarter.”

The next time you attend a class, read an article or hear a speech about small business success, ask yourself if they understand the power of information. Sam Richter does.