The Earlier Years.

While working as a public relations specialist for the University of North Texas, Hattie decided she should either sell something or own something.

The year was 1977, and Hattie was 27 years old.

With two years of research, Hattie incorporated a business, Leadership Development Corporation, and while developing her own materials, she worked through a leading franchisor of business education materials. In that group she was among their top ten performers out of hundreds.

For the next fifteen years you would find Hattie teaching management, sales and customer service in the classrooms of hundreds of small businesses and from the convention platform. She presented seminars in 47 states and produced teaching materials for customers like ABC and Frito-Lay.

She met many highly-successful small business owners who were also outstanding members of their communities.

The Television Years.

In May of 1993 Hattie began working with Bruce Camber to bring the "best practices" of small business owners to public television. There was nothing on television to teach people how to start, run and grow a business; and there was very little information about the many millions of people who had successfully done it. At that time, there was no major corporation with a well-defined small business strategy.

Today there are over 200 half-hours episodes of Small business School. Shot entirely on location, from Tampa to Seattle and from San Diego to Boston, small business owners tell how they do what they do. The national sponsors of this television series include Microsoft, the US Postal Service, Thomson Learning, and Verizon. Over the years other national sponsors included AT&T, business Week, Dun & Bradstreet, Forbes, IBM, Mass Mutual, MCI and Travelers.

Local sponsors have included banks, utility companies and the business press. The series can be seen in nearly 90 million US households via 200+ public television stations and it reaches the world via the US government's Worldnet Global Satellite. The show even has fans in Mauritius and Mongolia.

The legacy site for SmallbusinessSchool went up on the web in 1995. In 1999, after looking at 15,000 sites, the University of Southern California, Marshall School of business said it was, "... the definitive site for small business owners."

What evolved is an even more robust site, Target="_self">http://SmallbusinessSchool.org, a 4th media experience bringing to the desktop online learning with streaming video and interactive study guides.

SmallbusinessSchool, Inc. is owned by Hattie and Bruce. They live and work in San Diego.

Hattie's book, Beating the Odds, has been in bookstores everywhere. For their work in bringing their small business teleivison show to the world, Hattie received the Award of Excellence from the White House Office of Small business Advocacy for their success in bringing the story of small business owners to television.

In January 2001, SMALL business 2000 was complete and SmallbusinessSchool began airing on PBS-member stations.