About

SmallBizDaily is the blogging site for GrowBiz Media and Rieva Lesonsky.

About GrowBiz Media and Rieva Lesonsky
Rieva Lesonsky is founder and president of GrowBiz Media, a content and consulting company specializing in small businesses and entrepreneurship. Rieva has been meeting with, consulting to and speaking to America’s SMBs for nearly 30 years. Prior to co-founding GrowBiz Media in 2008, she was SVP/Editorial Director of Entrepreneur Magazine.

Rieva’s energy and enthusiasm have helped inspire entrepreneurs nationwide. A nationally recognized speaker who regularly addresses audiences across the country, she has appeared on hundreds of radio shows and numerous local and national television programs, including CNN, Good Morning America, the Today Show, Fox Business News, The Martha Stewart show and Oprah and can regularly be seen on MSNBC’s Your Business. Rieva is also the author of several books about small business and entrepreneurship, including the bestseller Start Your Own Business.

In addition to blogging on SmallBizDaily, Rieva regularly blogs about small business for AllBusiness.com, AT&T, Microsoft, Small Business Trends, The Huffington Post and numerous business Web sites.

Many organizations have recognized Rieva’s tireless devotion to helping entrepreneurs. She served on the Small Business Administration’s National Advisory Council for six years, and was honored by the SBA as a Small Business Media Advocate and a Woman in Business Advocate. The Collegiate Entrepreneurs Organization honored her for helping drive “the entrepreneurial revolution in secondary education,” and the ASBDC awarded her a “Champion of Small Business” award. In 2003, Rieva was inducted into the Business Journalism Hall of Fame; in 2009 she was named to Folio Magazine’s 2009 “Folio: 40” list of publishing’s top innovators and influencers.

About SmallBizDaily
SmallBizDaily is powered by four people with a passion for entrepreneurship: Rieva Lesonsky, Maria Anton, Maria Valdez Haubrich and Karen Axelton. We met at Entrepreneur Magazine nearly 25 years ago, when Rieva hired the rest of us as editors. We’ve been a great team ever since, so when Rieva decided it was time for her to stop talking about entrepreneurship and start living it, she naturally turned to us to be her business partners.

At SmallBizDaily, we combine our decades of experience reading and writing about entrepreneurship with our new experience as startup entrepreneurs to share our unique take on the world of small business.

About Maria Anton
Maria Anton has been living and breathing franchising for nearly 25 years. She developed the AllBusiness.com AllStar Franchises ranking, and is the Franchise Editor for AllBusiness.com. Formerly Executive Editor at Entrepreneur Magazine, where she worked for 23 years, Maria oversaw the Franchise 500® ranking for Entrepreneur. She’s also the author of four books on franchising. In addition to franchising, Maria’s other passion is data–from small-business statistics to government reports and even Excel spreadsheets.

About Maria Valdez Haubrich
Maria Valdez Haubrich is former Executive Editor of Entrepreneur Magazine, where she worked for over 20 years. At Entrepreneur, Maria’s savvy marketing mind helped develop custom publications, online content and other editorial products for B-to-B marketers seeking to reach small-business owners. Along the way, she’s learned a lot about everything from printing, design and production to project management, tech troubleshooting and how to work a trade show booth.

About Karen Axelton
Karen Axelton is former Executive Editor of Entrepreneur Magazine and former Editor of Entrepreneur.com. Karen has been tracking small-business trends for more than 20 years. She loves finding out about innovative entrepreneurs, business ideas and marketing methods, as well as consumer and demographic trends. A former marketing copywriter, Karen once spent six months working at a big corporation, where she discovered that for many people, “Dilbert” isn’t a joke. The experience inspired her to support small businesses in any way possible.