Barry Moltz has founded and run small businesses with a great deal of success and failure for more than 15 years.

After successfully selling his last operating business, Barry has branched out into a number of entrepreneurship-related activities. He founded an angel investor group, an angel fund, and is a former advisory member of the board of the Angel Capital Education Foundation.

    His first book, You Need to Be A Little Crazy: The Truth about Starting and Growing Your Business describes the ups and downs and emotional trials of running a business. It is in its fourth reprint and has been translated into Chinese, Russian, Korean and Thai. His second book, Bounce! Failure, Resiliency and the Confidence to Achieve Your Next Great Success, is published by Wiley.

Barry is a nationally recognized expert on entrepreneurship who has given over 100 speeches to audiences ranging from 20 to 20,000. He was appointed by the Illinois Governor in 2005 to serve on the board of the Institute for Entrepreneurship Education (IIEE). He has taught entrepreneurship as an adjunct professor at IIT( Illinois Institute of Technology). He was elected to the Entrepreneurship Hall of Fame in 2004.

Moltz has written articles for many national publications. Moltz also wrote a chapter in the book, State of the Art: American Angel Investing, (The Darden School, The Batten Institute). Moltz wrote the foreword for Penguin Books’ new The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Business Plans.

Topic:

1) How to Bounce! This Recession

Based on my two books, "You Need to A Little Crazy: The Truth About Starting and Growing Your Business" and now, "Bounce! Failure, Resiliency and the Confidence for Your Next Great Success"

Economic cycles come and go. You have been here before and survived. Cheer the good times with parties, awards and trophies. Mourn the bad times but then let go. Bounce! Value action so you have more chances at success.

The actionable issues I focus on:

1. Matching revenue with expenses. Focus on profitability not growth. Cost cutting using "the cringe factor". Focus on cash flow not sales, including managing lines of credit. We will examine what those financial statements mean and how you use them to guide the business.
 
2. Challenging all your business assumptions. Focus on execution, not just new ideas. Find out how to update your business plan for yourself, the bank or investors.
 
3. Marketing, sales and substitutions: How to develop a sales and marketing plan for your business and how to be there when customers are ready to buy. Using customer management systems that fit your business.
 
4. Finding the people you need: building the team you want. Fire the people you don't need and that hold your business back.

5. Build customer service as your sustainable competitive advantage. With everything in the world moving toward commodity status, how do you differentiate yourself from your competitors?