Fran is going to be a guest on The Fred Thompson Radio Show, a national talk radio program, today at 1:45 PM ET.  The show will be guest-hosted by Dom Giordano, a Philadelphia media personality, and they will be discussing current events as they pertain to small business.

Click on the link below to see the Station Finder:

site

An interview of Guy Kawasaki, a co-founder of Alltop, a news aggregation site, and managing director of Garage Technology Ventures.

Q. At what point in your career did you first become somebody’s boss?

A. I was probably 28 or 29 years old and in the jewelry business. I started my career counting diamonds and schlepping gold jewelry around the world. The jewelry business is a very, very tough business — tougher than the computer business. You truly have to understand how to take care of your customers.

View Full Story

The thing I love most about America is that there’s always somebody who doesn’t get the word — somebody who doesn’t understand that in a Great Recession you’re supposed to hunker down, downsize and just hold on for dear life. I have a couple of friends who fit that bill, who think a recession is a dandy time to try to discover better and cheaper ways to do things. They both happen to be Indian-Americans — one a son of the Himalayas, who came to America on a scholarship and went to work for NASA to try to find a way to Mars; the other a son of New Delhi, who came here and found the Sun, Sun Microsystems. Both are serial innovators. Both are now shepherding clean-tech start-ups that have the potential to be disruptive game changers. They don’t know from hunkering down. They just didn’t get the word.   View Full Story

February 12, 2010

Dear No. 10:

Your touching communiqué to your friends and teammates is heartwarming.  I like it that sentimentality has smitten you as you turn 70.  You have a lot of close friends who care about you because you care about them.  Gratefully, I feel that I am in that group.

None of us is without flaws or shortcomings, failures or setbacks, but each of us should have some redeeming feature in our lives.  With you, it is your consummate underscoring of an upbeat tempo.  Nobody I know has ever accentuated the positive more than you.  You have been on “uppers” all your life.  What a joy to see that in a friend and know it is natural.  That is why I am always trying to find my way to Atlanta to see you.  You’re busy, but you always make time for your friends.  For that, I am truly grateful.

You are a gifted conversationalist.  I’ve known nobody with a greater gift of conversation than you – unless it is Lee Trevino.  Whenever I get to see him when I am in Dallas, I come away with the greatest feelings.  Like you, when he talks – about anything – he has something to say.  With a lot of people, conversation is meaningless.  No substance.  Like that good looking girl Jerry Burns talked about.

Another very important asset in your life is your loyalty to your friends.  You also inspire loyalty from your friends which is why I drove my Volkswagen, in 1965, to Baltimore (to see Raymond Berry and then took the train to NY to the World’s Fair); then reclaimed the VW and drove across to Chicago and up to Bemidji to see you at the Viking training camp.  You got me a room in the dorm at the college, you arranged for me to eat at the training table, and if we went out, you got the check.  I wasn’t freeloading, but if you hadn’t done that, the trip would have had to have been aborted.  (If the state trooper in Indiana had given me a ticket for speeding instead of a warning, that would have also cause me to abort.)  While I was moving around the country, Myrna was studying at Northwestern for a few weeks.  Leaving Minnesota, I picked her up in Evanston.  We drove to St. Louis to see Charley Trippi who was coaching with the Cardinals at that time.  Other than gas, and you know how many miles you can travel with a full tank in a VW, I bet we didn’t spend $250.  We were rich from the experience, however.

When we got home, we were so grateful for our summer sojourn, all inspired by loyalty to a friend.  This is why I have always had the greatest appreciation for our friendship.

You’re the greatest!

Sincerely,
Loran Smith
(University of Georgia)