And Bud says, "We're trying to make a product that makes somebody happy. If it doesn't make them happy, they are not buying it and you're out of business." Hattie says, "Clothes help to define us; they are an extension of our personality." And later, Hattie suggests, "They want us to stop thinking clothes and start thinking style. They want us to attend to aesthetics."

Topic for discussion: What is happiness? What does agelessness and aesthetics have to do with being happy?

Answer: "Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" have become more than symbolic words in our shrinking global village. Not everyone believes these words should be the cornerstones of a society. But, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and the other framers of the Constitution of the United States of America thought there was something profoundly right about the pursuit of happiness.

Yet "making someone happy," is hardly an "American" concept. It so much a part of the legacy of most cultures throughout history, it seems deeply embedded within our eidetic memories; it seems to be an essence of our very being, a primal thrust and energy that pulls us forward.

Though for Bud, it may be just a simple fact of life turned into a working business principle, Nicole and Hattie push it further. Nicole is attempting to create "ageless" designs. The inverse of our fear of death is our desire to be ageless. To be our very best self.

Being our best self, feeling and looking ageless, would make most of us happy. To the degree that Nicole can get inside "agelessness" is possibly the degree that her clothes make people happy.

Then Hattie responds to the energies of this company suggesting that they want us to attend to aesthetics. Aesthetics, our push to toward beauty, to come as close as possible to the edges of perfection, tends to make us feel happy, even exhilarated, inspired, joyful.

What sounds like a simple statement -- make people happy -- can be a orientation to work and life that makes for good business and creates enormous social capital.

Topic for discussion: In this section, Hattie says, "There are over 24 million small and privately-held companies and only about 7,000 publicly-traded (active) companies.” Surprise. The big guys are really the little guys. Do you know the stats about the impact of small businesses within our local, national and global economies?

Answer: No. You really can not know. Most stats are really best guesses. Small business operates just below the standard measuring indices. Even the government agencies that should know -- IRS, Bureau of Economic Analysis, Economics and Statistics Administration - Department of Commerce, and the Small Business Administration -- are making calculated guesses. But these figure that Hattie quotes are within 10% for the USA.

Every small business owner, whether a Mom-and-Pop shop or a fast-growing business, has a creative vision. The more entrepreneurial, the more that vision is turned into action. And it is these visions, both active and passive, that keep "the dream" alive. The dream, of course, is to make this world a better place. Small businesses are the keeper of each community's dreams and in this way Main Street is far more important than Wall Street.

Topic for Discussion: Why does selling happiness work?

Answer: It is what all of us will pay for.

What do you think? Can you sell happiness? Can you work toward product and process perfections that will in turn make your customers as happy to buy from you as are the Nicole Miller customers?