And, if we know that we are taking on such large questions, it just might accelerate the adoption curve for new technologies, deepen our understanding of its potential, and make the world a better place.

We can not leave the foundations of our understanding of life to the academics. Like everything else we do, we must have courage and take a risk to ask new questions. If it comes from the heart, there is no "stupid" question, and it is OK if at times we appear somewhat "pedestrian."

Of course, many of our thought leaders remain in the academic community. But, many leave. And, many start businesses. Technology today has taken us all out to the edges of knowledge; and more often than not, the most creative, innovative, and, yes, foundational thinking is coming out of our business community.

So, let us not be afraid to openly ask each other about "big" questions about meaning and value of life. We can share our insights and explanations.

What do you think? One of the big questions about life is, "What is time?" Others: "Who is my neighbor?" And the classic questions from Philosophy 101 class: "Who am I? Where did I come from? Where am I going? And, what is the meaning and value of life?" Today's technology has impacted our answers to each of these questions.

Answer: Today, because of technology, we can easily say, "Everybody is my neighbor." Though many of us do not know the person living next door, with today's technology it is relatively easy to find out quite a bit about them. So, the basic question is, "Who do I want to know as a neighbor, a customer, or a supplier, and why?" And perhaps the answer to that question requires that we spend time with those other four questions.

Atttributed to Immanuel Kant, these are questions that are addressed throughout a lifetime.

Key idea #2. Invest in your hometown's downtown. Rosemary and Nigel bought a building just a block off the main street of their small town then won an award for their renovation efforts.

Owning your own building is a great way to build personal wealth and to build a solid business. And, when you buy a symbolic building and make it a showcase for the town, that's even better. The image of the company is polished by every positive visible action you take as a business owners. Employees want to work in a place they love to be in and that they can brag about. Brock House is delightful. It is warm and homey and perhaps not as functional as a new building designed for a high tech company but it has a great personality. The facade stands proudly on a busy corner and going out the front door takes you to shops and eateries in the town center. Going out the back door takes you to the parking lot and just a few steps beyond the property itself it the Godalming train station. Perfect.

Learn more from other owners who own their own buildings: Tejas Office, Gadabout Salon and Spas, and NoUVIR.

Key idea #3. Sparks fly from conflicting ideas. When you disagree with a person about the future of the company, there may be an idea for a new business.

What do you think?Why would an employer not want to act on the good ideas of employees?

Answer: If the company is making money doing one thing, changing or even becoming distracted by a new idea can be risky. Also, the employee may not be able to articulate their concept or the employee may not respected by the employer. Nigel was respected but his former employer just didn't believe that time management required tools for collaboration. The concept was on the bleeding edge and the employer was too far behind the adoption curve.

Learn more from other owners who succeeded at growing a business after being ignored by a former employer: Auntie Anne's Pretzels, VCW, and Nicole Miller.

Key idea #4 Simple beginnings build strong foundations. The dot bomb period proved to us all that too much money at the start-up provides a false sense of security.

What do you think... Why do so many companies start in the founder's garage or extra bedroom.

Answer: Because cash is king. Money spent on office expenses can be used in the beginning for product development and marketing. Rosemary tell us about their radio ads with a telephone number that rang under the bed in an extra room!

Frankly, the thought is funny. Think about it. You're listening to the radio and hear an ad about a product that will help you get more done in less time. You jot the number down and when you have a chance, you dial it. The phone rings and Rosemary runs from the kitchen where she is fixing dinner to the bedroom and answers the phone saying, "Time Technology." It's funny and many people would never want to get themselves into that type of work situation. On the other hand, Rosemary and Nigel had a vision and knew they would not be running Time Technology on a shoestring forever.

Their wisdom bore fruit because even when they only had one customer, they were able to make a good living running their own business. Today they own their office building, they own a beautiful home eleven minutes from the office; and with these new collaboration technologies, Rosemary has time to be an executive in her company as well as a Mom.

Key idea #5: Being first may be your unique selling proposition. Building on the Lotus platform for collaboration, Time Technology, wins customers with frontline positioning. The front of the curve is an exciting place to be but it is not for everyone. In fact, I am convinced that today people do not want the newest thing -- they want the thing that works.

What do you think... Why are so many small business owners at the front of the curve?

Answer: Because we are the inventors and innovators. While it took the big team at Lotus to invent the platform used by Time Technology, it takes small feisty teams to customize and create for end users the innovative tools we saw Rosemary and Nigel demonstrate. The reason Time Technology succeeds is it has history in the time management business, its partner is a big brand and its customer service is superior. They may lead in their marketing efforts with their frontline position but they have a strong foundation supporting them. Any smart programmer can invent up a new tool and make it work but very few of those tools end up generating profits for anyone.

Learn more from other owners who are on the front edge: Knowledge Management, NoUVIR, and St. Claire Organic Sweets.

Key idea #6. One customer is all you need to get started . The power of an historical relationship was demonstrated when Nigel landed the first deal.

What do you think? Many big companies vied for the work Nigel won to launch Time Technology. Why did the customer choose Nigel?

Answer: Trust. The two had worked together in the past. By choosing Nigel, Chris was making the safest decision even though Nigel really didn't even have a business when Chris hired him. You've read this here before: people do business with people. Lucky for Nigel that Chris was not razzle-dazzled by people from the big brands who pitched him. He was able to see to the core and knew that Nigel had as much know-how as the others, plus Nigel was a proven entity.

What do you think? Many big companies vied for the work that Nigel won to get Time Technology to the next level. Why did the customer choose Nigel?

Learn more from other owners who launched a business with help from their past: Altoon + Porter, Ziba Design, and Renegade Animation and Cross Timbers Oil.

Key idea #7. Expose yourself to the thinking of others.Rosemary enrolled in a business management course and learned that she and Nigel could not grow the business alone.

What do you think? Why did Rosemary take a class in the first place?

Answer: She was frustrated. Nigel was officially the head of the company but he traveled a great deal to work with far-flung customers. This left Rosemary to run the day-to-day operations. There were on-going problems because many of the 15 employees did not respect Rosemary as the final word.

You think back... What were some of the lessons learned from the management course?

Answer: The course gave her confidence in what she already knew: the company needed a new person at the top of the organization. She also learned that many business owners are like she and Nigel which made her feel better. The graduates of the course still gather on a monthly basis to exchange ideas so the benefits of the experience continue.

Learn about other small business owners who are involved in on-going education. Cowgirl Enterprises, FastSigns, and Texas Nameplate.

Key idea #8.Just entering a contest makes you a winner. Filling in the form to apply for an award forces you to look at yourself on paper in black and white.

What do you think? How is filling out a form for a contest different from preparing your financials?

Answer: Financials give us the numbers only. Writing about your business, your accomplishments and your goals for the future help either by keeping you on course or by getting you to try some new strategies. We are all caught up in the day-to-day operations of our companies and we seldom stop to think anew about what we are doing and why we are doing it.

What do you think? If it is such a good thing to do why don't more us of enter contests?

Answer: We think we don't have time and we don't think our business deserves recognition. Most of us know we work hard and we deliver for our customers but we don't think we are doing things in a way that anyone would want to hear about or recognize us for. Most award winners I have spent time with are surprised that they won because they feel their story is ordinary. If you are creating good work for employees and if you have plenty of happy customers, you are doing lots of things right.

Learn from other award winning business owners: Oregon Log Home, Boston Duck Tours, and Texas Nameplate

Key idea #9: Fire yourself. The reason most of us don't fire ourselves is because we refuse to hire our replacement.

You saw Rosemary and Nigel talk about their struggle. It is painful to listen to them because you know they tried many things that did not work.

What do you think? Will Peter survive and will the company grow under his leadership?

Possible answers: My guess is yes. They did everything right in the process to hire Peter. They recognized the need, they wrote a job description, they hired a psychologist to test him and she said Peter is the right person and Nigel has physically moved into the sales office.

Peter's leadership will get easier rather than harder as he is in charge of hiring now. He will hire people who have never reported to either Nigel or Rosemary. Also, he owns stock in the company. This means when employees are dealing with him he has more clout than just a "hired gun." The family part is powerful but without the scientific approach to Peter's selection, I would be skeptical about the future.

Learn more from other owners who fired themselves. Cybex, Jackalope, and Opici Wine Group.

Key idea #10. Lightbulb: Relations are the primary real. Time and space become the derivative, not the primary, definition within the activity called, collaboration. A new time is created, and a new space is created within this collaborative moment.

The thing that becomes primary is the relation that everybody shares within that moment.

With a rather simple-but-new technology that attenuates the thoughts of people on the same problem, the same concept, no matter where they are, opens us to wrestle with the wisdom of the ages in new ways. At the core of a sale, at the core of a good business, at the heart of a good marriage, yes even a good government are healthy relations and at the heart of good relations are many agreements.

At one time we were often separated by space and time. No longer true. At one time it was location, location, location; today it is "relations, relations, relations." Living is not about a space and a particular time. It is about the quality of relations.

To launch the business, Nigel landed a huge customer and that sale was based upon an old and nurtured relationship. Mutual respect. A series of agreements.

To grow the business, Nigel and Rosemary needed a CEO. They had been burned over and over again recruiting and investing in sales people and were apprehensive to commit to the big bucks that would be demanded by a skilled top gun. I'm not suggesting that the only person you can hire is a relative. I am suggesting that the only thing that does matter is your ability to have and to build relationships. Money, time, space, everything is a derivative of relationships.

What do you think? ... if relations are the primary real, why don't we live our lives that way?

Answer: It is hard. The easy thing is to get caught up in time and space and goals and achievement. The hard thing is to build the right relationships that will bring joy and satisfaction. Nigel's "first customer" story is such a perfect example of relationship power. If you treat every person right and deliver on every promise, you can build a business and a life.

Key idea #11. What your customers think is all that matters. Peter is teaching everyone at Time Technology about the power of measurement and that the only meaningful measures are those done by customers.

You think back... The Six Sigma philosophy of running a business boils down to measurement with the goal to perfect processes. Why the emphasis on customer measurement?

Answer: This set of best practices was formulated by the leadership at GE. As is the case with most big companies, it is hard for them to stay close to the customer. To a small business owner this idea seems so obvious that we wouldn't bother to set a goal to stay close to the customers. But, think again. Do you really know what customers think? If you did, you would probably be doing some things.

Learn more from another business owners who has specific ways to measure customer satisfaction.

For further study, read a little about Texas Jet.

Key idea #12. Your single supplier should be your best friend. For years Nigel saw Lotus as a competitor. Peter is teaching the organization the power of partnerships when going after new markets.

While Nigel is the scrappy, hard-driving sales person who has extraordinary confidence in his sales ability, Peter understands that winning new customers is very difficult and Time Technology needs all the help it can get. Nigel saw himself as "up against" Lotus while Peter sees the growth coming from joining forces. Peter is right. How silly for any of us to be so hard-headed that we don't think we can benefit from strong supplier relationships.

What do you think? Can you form stronger relationships with any of your suppliers? If so, how would that help you?

Answer: Our exclusive delivery partners are the PBS-member stations. I get frustrated because I believe small business is the most important topic when it comes to the vitality of our economy. The PBS folks see us as a small part of what they do and in reality they are right. I am more like Nigel than Peter and I need to be more like Peter!

Learn more from another business owners who believes in the single supplier strategy. Visit with Graber Products.

Key idea #13. Mail-Call-Mail-Call. Rosemary says touch the customer in multiple ways.

You think back... Does Rosemary do the marketing herself?

Answer: Rosemary is in charge of the marketing effort but she out sources the writing and design of print pieces and the telemarketing. She writes the telemarketing scripts and in our transcript provided here, you can read her advice.

I don't even think you can stay the same without marketing and you certainly can't grow. This business started with one relationship and Rosemary is filling the pipeline with potential new ones. Rosemary's efforts turn every call the sales people make into a "warm" call rather than a "cold" call.

Learn more from business owners who market consistently and get results plus read advice from our marketing expert: Orange Tree Imports, Fluker Farms, and John Wargo.

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COMMENTS OR QUESTIONS. We invite your comments and questions. Was the show inspirational and/or educational? We hope this show is both!