This is CBS. I on the world. I'm John Batson. Gene Marks, my colleague who travels the United States for small businesses.

He is a small business columnist for the Guardian newspaper, UK and U.S. edition, as well as our hometown newspaper, the Philadelphia Inquirer,

but Gene writes for a number of distinguished publications about small business, which is the

business of America. We begin, however, with the travels of Gene Marks, touching upon

associations and syndications that pull small businesses together several times of years, and certainly at

years end, how are we doing what does 26 look like?

We begin with Gene's travels.

We start in the south, we go north, and then we go west.

Gene, a very good evening here.

You started in Austin with the contemporary design group.

That sounds upscale and attached to building.

How are they doing?

Good evening.

Yeah, they are.

You actually hit it right on the head, John.

The contemporary design group is a group of people that are in the building industry,

they're designers, architects, people that sell supply designers.

They do upscale homes as well.

People that are in the furniture business, it's a real mishmash of a bunch of different people

that are basically you think about an upscale home that needs a lot of design work needs tiles and paving needs uh you know nice

looking furniture artwork all that those are the people that supplied that shrubbery shrubbery must

landscape correct are there actually no landscapers in that group that's in a whole other group that I speak to. But these guys are basically interior, you know. And they're, you know, and some of them own retail furniture stores. Some of them are just freelancers. Anyway, so there's like, you know, 60, 70 people there that I spoke to last Saturday. Gene, I want to interrupt here. Sure. Anticipate where we're going. This is the high end.

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