Please forgive the "liberties" we have taken with respect to this venerated, time-honored document. We could not resist mentioning the similarities of the implications between the intentions of the founding fathers of the United States, and the new freedoms granted to the global community with the advent of the Internet. 

We will try to abstain from further historical metaphors, but we wanted to declare what motivated us to bring forth this, our updated 2005 sequel of The Complete Small Business Internet Guide. 

	We believe in the immediate value, and future promise of the Internet.
	We firmly believe that there is a substantial portion of truth in the hype that has been associated with the Internet.
	We believe that the Net will have the same kind of impact on society (and business specifically) that every comparable technology has had in the past.

With the introductions of all new enabling technologies from the printing press and the telegraph to the telephone and computer, mankind gained new freedoms and changed the world as a result. In every instance, the financial markets overreacted, monopolies were born, bubbles burst, and people were left wondering if the hype was to be believed. 

Believe it good reader, the Internet is changing how we interact with each other, entertain ourselves and do business. The Net is a true paradigm-shifting (I hate that phrase) phenomena.  Before we get too far into this, now might be a good time to tell you a little about ourselves and how this journey began. 

Background (a side trip)

In 1992 (about fifty Web-years before the Internet was opened to the public), I bought my first Harley-Davidson. I had been riding motorcycles for almost twenty years and had owned a few 'imported' bikes, but owning a Harley was something I had fantasized about for a long time. Back then, Harley-Davidson dealers had a waiting list of eager buyers and new bikes of any model were scarce. Through a friend, I learned of a dealer in Kansas City who, through some miraculous circumstance, had some inventory. I flew to KC, saw the bike of my dreams, bought it and rode my new 1992 FXR (Lowrider) 600 miles back home to Dallas, Texas.

At that time, few of my friends or associates were aware that I was also a “closet geek”. I had been a computer devotee and an avid online user for many years. When I finally decided to park my new Harley and give the paint a chance to finish curing, I fired-up my '300 baud' computer modem, connected to CompuServe and joined the Harley-Davidson forum. Soon afterwards, I responded to a posting from a fellow who was planning to attend the Black Hills Rally in Sturgis, South Dakota that August. Over time, we got to know each other online and we talked about Harleys, the Sturgis rally, computers, world events and a host of other topics, but mostly we talked about Harley-Davidson motorcycles.

MY new friend had an interesting background. He had founded one of the first telecommunications consulting firms in the 70’s, he had taken a company public, produced car racing videos for television and was the owner of an online “store” on the CompuServe network when we first met each other. Michael became a very good friend and he took on the role as mentor for me through the building phase and eventual acquisition of my Internet ISP company, PICnet.

That summer, my wife and I met Michael and some of his friends in Sturgis for the 54th annual Black Hills Rally. We rode together all week and got to know and respect each other. The following year he was joined by his brother Mac Bledsoe, a high-school teacher and football coach who had been riding Harleys for more than twenty years. We developed a deep friendship and a genuine respect for each other.

Mac was not a computer user back then. Besides checking grades or attendance records at his school, Mac knew very little about computers or the cyber-world that his brother and I inhabited. That year, his oldest son Drew had been drafted by the NFL’s New England Patriots as the starting quarterback, and like most pro athletes he was presented with a huge salary and signing bonus for a multi-year contract. However, unlike many “star athletes” we read about today, Drew felt compelled to give something back.

For the past twenty-five years, his parents had been traveling the Northwest delivering lectures and seminars on effective parenting techniques. Mac was uniquely qualified to speak with considerable authority on this subject. 

In addition to having taught school and coaching young people for almost a quarter of a century, he and his beautiful wife Barbara were almost done raising two outstanding sons, Drew and Adam. Drew decided to fund a foundation whose charter would be to disseminate his father’s 'Parenting with Dignity'  message to parents and organizations that needed it the most. The picture above shows Michael Bledsoe, myself (middle) and Mac Bledsoe in Sturgis, SD for the Black Hills Bike Rally in 1998.

The Drew Bledsoe Foundation was launched with father Mac as President. Mac was still not a computer user yet, but as an educator he was very much aware of what was being talked about concerning the Internet and it being made available for commercial purposes. He and I spoke frequently about the possibilities that the Internet offered his foundation’s purpose in taking their message to the world. He bought his first computer for the foundation and began his learning process, he had serious work to do, and he had a lot of questions.

Mac called me sometime in late ’96 and said that he was ready to begin establishing the Drew Bledsoe Foundation online. He had been “playing around” on his new Windows 95 computer and was beginning to feel comfortable. Mac asked the question we have heard thousands of times before, “now what should I do”?

The Drew Bledsoe foundation is a typical example of what most small businesses in America look like. The foundation had three employees, a limited budget and a pressing need to generate awareness for its products and services, and develop a revenue stream so that it could grow and become self-sufficient. The foundation had a mission and they knew their vocation, but they did not have the knowledge or technical expertise necessary to launch a Web site.

I advised Mac to buy Microsoft Office so that he could import all of his seminar notes and workbook information into MS Word and be able to save it as HTML. I also recommended that he buy Microsoft FrontPage. I told him that although it was one of the easiest HTML editors to use, FrontPage was also one of the most powerful programs and would automate many of the processes that would typically require a programmer.

In short… I gave Mac much of the advice that has been incorporated into this book.

Consequently, we used the Drew Bledsoe Foundation Web site as one of our real-world examples in our book when we needed to illustrate a procedure or technique. Mac is like the millions of other small business people who are faced with this quandary about the Internet and how it relates to their business. Most find themselves asking nearly all of the same questions, and providing common sense answers is the purpose of this book