Several episodes focused on people who were at the end of their business cycle. They were compelling. Planning the last chapter is as important as planning the first chapter. So we are working with the stations, our national sponsors, and our many other business partners to develop a succession plan whereby the show not only lives on, but grows substantially beyond the two people who started it.

Our population. There are 25 million businesses in the USA (IRS, SBA and US Census data).

There are as many as 40M people involved with a small business startups where that income is reported as personal.

The American Dream is every person's dream of starting, running and growing a business. Our working premise has been that 2% (or 500,000) of all small businesses would be worth our time to study. The founders apply best practices every day; they are givers and not takers; they are role models for good citzenship.

Our potential viewers. We also believe that 10% of all business owners would be interested in watching these stories if they knew when and where to watch the show. That would be 2.5M people. We also believe 10% of all people who work in small businesses would want to watch such a show if they knew when it was broadcast. With over 50% of the 138M workforce within small business, there could be an additional 6M viewers of the show. Of the unemployed and underemployed, potential investors within small business, and general population interested in their local small business, we believe there are another 6M viewers. All these numbers taken together would place this show among the most-watched television in America.

Results. Everybody believes that people pay to be on this show. Nobody has. You have to be selected and that selection process is the beginning of a fundamental change in television -- rewarding the good and ignoring the bad. There have been few television shows that encourage good citzenship. Most do not last long. But this show is about the American Dream. The subject is us. The supply is endless. The interest is abiding.

1. We encourage people to be their best and show models of people being very good. Not only are these people being good citizens, they are making money and sharing it with the world. They are creating a legacy. They are answering some of the most basic questions about life and its meaning.

2. The people who are profiled get even better. Once an episode airs, it sets a benchmark of expectations. They see themselves in a new way and even demand more of themselves. The community sees inside these people and affirms their goodness. Positive reinforcement helps every one to stay on the straight and narrow.

Selection process. If every area of the country with a population of 100,000 businesses were to have a working list of 1000 business to be profiled, many businesses will attempt to get on that list. The list becomes an excellent reference of good businesses. If no one organization is responsible for the generation of that list, but has some influence on its unfoldment, no one organization can get into trouble with its membership regarding favoritism. We believe there are 400 such areas that can be mapped within the USA and a list of 400,000 businesses becomes the working list from which businesses are selected by one of the producing groups for PBS, PEG, and even VOA broadcasts. Our open letters discuss this filtering process. To narrow our selection process to find the most inspirational stories in the world, even in uncommon and relatively unknown places. We are also introducing several new episodes based on the working title, "$0 to $1 Billion in less than a lifetime."

Another major focus of our episodes will be the importance of the ethical and moral character of the people (and nations). We have done an entire episode that focuses on it.

Here are just a few of the cities where our next episode of the show will air. Although we release a new episode every week, each station chooses which episode to air. There are often more than 40 different episodes airing in a given week! With ten years of weekly television behind us there are stories from virtually every industry type and from every business size. We even did one business that was a multi-billion business still being run by its founder as a family business.

We are emerging with a database of the finest, strongest 400,000 small businesses in the USA and we are encouraging every one to work more closely with their CPA, essentially saying, "Ask them to teach you how to read your financials and to track your key critical ratios." One of our episodes focused on succession planning. Most small business owners do not do it. Too many of us liquidate when we should be getting liquid. We should get on an inexpensive audit path so that we can more readily leverage the equity within our business through an ESOP, DPO, or M&A.

We are always open to your ideas and suggestions.

Warmest regards,

Bruce Camber and Hattie Bryant