We're a tool for northern Nevada businesses

For the past year-and-a-half, I've kept a secret.

Or tried my best to.

The secret? "Project X." That's what I nicknamed it.

My group of partners wanted to maintain a cloak of secrecy.We didn't want to expose our plans and make our project more vulnerable to copycat competitors.

But today, Project X is revealed.

It's Northern Nevada Business Weekly: the source for smallbusiness news and information in our fast-growing economy.

The genesis of NNBW was a conversation I had five years ago with Don Jassel, founder, owner and president of JLH Presort.

JLH is northern Nevada's largest direct-marking mail services organization.

I had just started my first publication, known today as the Wolf Pack Edge, a newsmagazine covering University of Nevada, Reno and local high school sports.

Don and I knew that northern Nevada's population and economy were steadily growing and diversifying.We knew that our region deserved a strong business newspaper.

Eighteen months ago, Don and I were joined by Marlene Olsen, president of Olsen & Associates Public Relations & Advertising; Erica Olsen, a business-development consultant specializing in startups; and Michael Sion, Reno-based editor, author and freelance journalist.

Later, this core group was joined by other talented media and business people, including Pete Copeland and John Seelmeyer.

The collaborative result is Northern Nevada Business Weekly.

We are pro-business.We recognize that small business is the backbone of our local economy as small business is to our nation's economy.

The success of small businesses enterprises with 100 or fewer employees is vital to the health of our community.

Small business provides jobs for our residents and creates essential tax revenue for our local governments.

At the same time, we favor conservative fiscal policy by our governments.

We will be your business partner.

We will tell you everything we can about every pertinent facet of doing business in northern Nevada.

We will be a handy tool in your business toolbox.

It is fitting that we a group of businesspeople are doing exactly what thousands of entrepreneurs in northern Nevada are doing: filling a niche in the market.

Our niche happens to be the need for thorough local business news.

Just like many of our readers, we are constructing an enterprise from the ground up.We have taken a dream and brought it to life as a working, breathing organization with a product for the market.

Our story is the same as our readers' fanning a creative spark into a viable venture.

Northern Nevada Business Weekly is a product of our system a product that seeks to strengthen that system by helping those who build and sustain it: small-business owners and managers.

We know the hard work we put into this project in the last three months was worth it, because you, the reader, now hold the inaugural copy of Northern Nevada Business Weekly.

Spread the word that there is a new source for business information in town, and it's called Northern Nevada Business Weekly.

The secret's out.