Jonathan Fields, author of Career Renegade, drew out the best of me for his podcast with me that he posted yesterday. He has a real knack for getting into the bigger issues, like both sides of entrepreneurship, and how important the rest of your life is, as compared to your business.

Yes, we do talk about business planning and classics of entrepreneurship in this interview, but he also got me talking about how much of my career hinged on mistakes, luck, and my wife saying things like how we’d take the risk together.

My advice: if you get a chance to do a podcast with Jonathan, say yes.

A bit early on my coast, but I’ll be joining Jim Blasingame tomorrow morning at 8:30 Eastern, on his daily talk radio show. I hope you join us. We’ll be talking about business planning.

I hope it doesn’t seem like total self promotion — I’ve tried to avoid that as much as possible on this blog — but hey, tomorrow Palo Alto Software is going to give away thousands of copies of Business Plan Pro (and not a light version, the upscale, premier version) for free to Oregonians who want it. I would like to think that’s newsworthy, even if it’s my company.

The video here is my talking for slightly less than three minutes, my summary of what happens tomorrow. And if you can’t see it for any reason, then please click here to go to the Youtube source.

And for more information, here’s the link to the page at Palo Alto Software that explains what we’re doing, and provides a map of the 85 locations (mostly town halls and chambers of commerce, no commercial locations (it really is a free giveaway)) where people can go tomorrow to get the software.

It’s just for the one day, tomorrow, July 1. For any Oregonian 18 years or older who goes to one of those locations to collect a download card.

How does business planning change in this new world of instant media, short attention spans, and rapid change? Is it different these days? Can we plan at all? And secondly, from the point of view of the angel investor, what does an investor look at in a business plan.

I had a very friendly, fun, and I hope useful, radio session with Barbara Weltman earlier this week. We talked about how business planning is changing in the very fast-changing, short-attention-span world we live in.

Barbara has posted the interview online so you can access it now. The first part is a general review of business planning in times of change, can we plan, how do we plan, and how different is it in this brave new world:

And in the second part, Barbara asked me about my recent experience as a member of an angel investor group, reviewing plans and eventually choosing one for investment with my own money (as part of a larger group).

Each of these parts takes about 12 minutes.

I like the title: "Just Start," as in start your business, shades of the now famous Nike "Just do it" campaign. Just start.

I’m pleased to be speaking along with John Jantsch of Duct Tape Marketing, Ken Yancey, CEO of SCORE, and Rich Sloan of StartupNation for this free webinar next wednesday. 

It’s a free webinar, but capacity is limited, so if you’re interested, please click here to register right now.

Blogs are supposed to be personal, right? So allow me to personalize. Let’s consider the plight of one Megan Berry, 22 years old today, graduating from Stanford in two months with close to straight As.

Megan wants a job. More specifically, she wants a job related to social media and Internet marketing in the Silicon Valley.

In any normal year, this would have been no problem. Google would have snapped her up. Yahoo would have. So would a couple of dozen other companies. She’s an opportunity. A “fuzzy” political science major who won Web awards for programming Cold Fusion databases before she reached puberty, and did serious Web programming work for darfurgenocide.org while still in high school; she’s kind of a bridge, a writer and marketing type who understands the depths of programming. She has her own blog, and blogs at Brazen Careerist and Huffington Post. She’s been on Facebook for four years. She’s on Twitter. She’s on LinkedIn.

But then came the downturn. And the worst year for graduating seniors since sometime in the 1930s. And Megan’s got some possibilities, some things might still work out — one of which came directly from Twitter, by the way — but we’re passing mid April now, and she’s still available.

Think of this strategically. She’s as young as most college graduates, but in her chosen world of social media and Internet marketing, that whole world started about the same time she got into it. So maybe she has something special in the strengths and weaknesses category, something that might help even in this toughest of all years to get a job.

All her information, links to her various blog posts, and all the rest are (right where they should be for a young social media marketing person) at meganberry.com.

I'm sorry for the late notice, but, if you're in or near Eugene, Oregon tomorrow Jan. 22, Sabrina Parsons and I are doing a planning workshop for smartups.org. Live and in person. That's 5 to 7 pm at the Vistas Conference Room atop the Eugene Hilton. Click here for more info.

My friend and colleague John Jantsch, author of Duct Tape Marketing, sent me this overnight. I had the pleasure of participating in one of his workshops last month in Chicago, and I highly recommend it.

If you're anywhere near Northern California, or going to be on Nov. 13th and 14th, Jantsch will be doing a two-day marketing plan event in person. The workshop includes our new software, Marketing Plan Pro powered by Duct Tape Marketing–the special version Jantsch developed in partnership with Palo Alto Software–and the goal is for you to have your marketing plan done right then and there, and with his help.

In his e-mail, Jantsch said the organizers are offering a 25 percent discount to my readers today through Monday, Oct 27th. So if you're interested, sign up now.

For that discount, use special purchase code EBMK1108 by midnight Monday, October 27. That's $1,121.25 per person ($1,495 regular price).

Click here
http://www.e-myth.com/seminars/ducttapemarketing/

I just got an email from Roger Parker, who will be be interviewing me Today live on the Guerrilla Marketing Association website, from 7 to 9 PM EDT, meaning 4 to 5 PM for us West Coasters. He seems to have an interesting special focus, the business of books, writing books, and marketing books, all related to companies and entrepreneurship and building businesses.

It should be fun. I hope you join us.

I hope you’ll forgive me this post, but it took a long time writing, absorbed most of my Spring, and involved a lot of work by other people with editing, design, and so so forth.

These things go up and down, but I’m proud to share that — at least as I write this — The Plan-As-You-Go Business Plan is the number one ranking for business plan books at Amazon.com.