Mary, glad to hear positive reviews from your small business saturday experience. I'm curious, did any other small business owners notice a bump in activity due to the event?

These are definitely a lot more fun to interact with, but the irony is that they can end in a lot more stress IF things don't go well, because they draw the least amount money. So it's one of those stress on the front end or back end things.

Nicole, I'm glad you asked. Here in Las Vegas things are really bad, but the small biz owners that we know say they are having modest gains, rather than declines like last year. Hopefully thing are headed in the right direction. They say we may be one of the last to recover. We have the NFR (Rodeo) this week. The news indicates that will bring 52 Million to our city. Much needed in December. If We hear anymore, we will update. Thanks, Mary

It's nice to hear people who made a successful change. I'm thinking of adding new ways on my business in 2011 as well.

Nice to hear that. For work, I'm in Los Angeles a lot while my husband is in New York. Before I came back, I did the majority of my shopping in Southern California. I figure that Southern California needed a bit of a more boost than Manhattan. Glad to see that it was not as slow as last year and the bargains were very good - especially from the smaller, boutique shops. Too bad, we don't recruit for retail, but always give without expectations of receiving ; ).