Great Lessons for Small to Mid-Sized Business Owners

Source: WikipediaAmerican Express has begun advertising a new website they call “Open Forum - Networking, Ideas and Expertise for Business Owners.” Before I visited the site I thought it would be cheesy - I was wrong. They recently shot a bunch of videos at the recent Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas with leading business thinkers and practitioners. Here is a list of who was interviewed:

Seth Godin is the author of 9 books that have been bestsellers around the world and have been translated into more than 20 languages. Permission Marketing was a New York Times bestseller, Unleashing the Ideavirus is the most popular ebook ever published, and Purple Cow is the bestselling marketing book of the decade.

Sean Parker is the co-founder and Chairman of “Project Agape,” a new network that aims to enable large-scale political and social activism on the Internet. Sean is also a Managing Partner at The Founders Fund, an early stage venture capital firm based in San Francisco. Previously, Sean was the co-founder of the category defining Web ventures Napster, Plaxo, and Facebook.

Jimmy Wales is the Internet entrepreneur best known for founding Wikipedia.org, as well as other wiki-related organizations, including the charitable organization Wikimedia Foundation, and the for-profit company Wikia, Inc., which operates Wikia.com.

Susan Sobbott is President & General Manager of OPEN from American Express, the division dedicated exclusively to the success of small business owners and their companies. OPEN is the fastest-growing proprietary business unit within American Express, and the nation’s largest credit and charge card issuer for small business. Daughter of the owner of a small trucking business, Susan returned to her small business roots when she joined the OPEN team in 2003 and was named its President in 2004.

The topics they cover include Web 2.0, radical transparency, blogging, viral marketing, building a community out of your clients, social networking and a bunch more. Here is a sample video:

Click here to checkout the site.

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