As co-founder of Family Business Strategies, a consortium of professionals serving family businesses, their coaches and advisors, I have spent my entire career researching family-owned businesses, helping them develop their company's future.

Accidentally I hit upon a process that I've used for over a dozen years that has resulted in virtually all of our most profitable clients.

Maybe it's true that in order to coach business owners, you don't need to know how to run a business yourself.

Maybe it's true that you don't have to understand balance sheets, turnover ratios, or acceptable ROI in their industry to coach business owners in you target market.

It's possible that you don't have to know how the dozens of management tools they use regularly work, what they represent, and how they identify problems and opportunities.

Several years ago I met a guy who had been a well known consultant in the automotive industry. Auto manufacturers in Detroit knew him well. Even though this was long before today's high security in every workplace you could not just walk in off the street into the Ford research lab. However there and at the Chevrolet plant he could sail right in, without even showing his drivers license to the security guard.

Email marketing is far from dead, no matter what the so-called experts say. In fact recent software applications are putting the power of Fortune 500 companies in the hands of Main Street businesses - leveling the playing field at last.

There are challenges to be sure, such as creating and maintaining an opt-in list - so you won't jeopardize your company's good name and your established goodwill in the marketplace.

As business owners we know that sales are the key to our continued success. Of course the type of business and industry we're in has a lot to do with what we call sales. For retailers the potential buyers are in the store, so selling may simply mean closing or does it?

In other industries the sales person must sort out the potential buyers from the universe of suspects around them.

When I was listening to Jordan Ayan of SubscriberMail mention the importance of Relevant Content as it applies to email marketing I thought to myself that 99.9% of the so-called email marketers need to hear this.

For years I have worked as a translator between the online world an Main Street. I have consistently tried to point out to online marketers - that they need to make their copy relevant to the mainstream business community.

In 2003 I interviewed Steve Antisdel for a story about how they were embracing the Internet at the family furniture store.

I had been contacted by a trade association he was a member of and told that he was one of their most forward thinking members.

I ended up with something a lot more exciting than that when I found out they were taking their online business to outside investors.

After a presentation at a trade association people often come up, give me their card and ask me to call them.

This time it was different.

Bobby (a nickname from when he was a kid, before he grew to 6'3" and 245 pounds) had a look of desperation when he asked me to call him that afternoon - before I left town.

His office was at the end of the hallway.

At a recent trade association annual meeting, I was asked to do an afternoon "breakout" session with a group of fifty business owners and their spouses.

The subject matter, "Creating Shared Goals" among the owners of a family business, with a particular emphasis on "how did nice people like us get in a situation like this?"

Afterwards Ed, one of the business owners who had been in the session, approached me.

When I interviewed Kevin Rosen of Junior's Cheesecake here in NYC it was to ask him what he and his family want the Internet to do for them and their business.

I met Kevin when he appeared on a panel of business owners taking their companies online, sponsored by Crains Publishing Company at its annual Expo.

In fact I interviewed over 50 successful long established Main Street companies, asking many of the same questions that I asked Kevin.