If you want to do big business, you have to meet big players in big places. And there's no bigger place or player than the Microsoft Store in the Houston Galleria with business developer John Whaley. Last week, some of Houston's fastest-growing business leaders, Meetups, entrepreneurs, and media groups gathered for the Ideas to Action in Business workshop. The presentation presented an overview of business in general in the context of how to run your small business using Microsoft Office tools. It was one of the leading events for Microsoft's week-long National Small Business Week activities.

"We're here to leverage the technology in this incredible store. We often have the technology and information sitting on the desk, but we don't utilize it. I'm going to walk people through the steps that I take to get from the scratch pencils and notepad and ideas to the full-blown business plan set up on project running a team," said Whaley in advance of the workshop.

Ideas to Action in Business was an actionable extension of Whaley's weekly theme of combining vision and scale, a message he promotes every Saturday at 2 PM on FM 92.1's Executive Entrepreneur Hour. Groups on-site included 100% representation from Houston Business Weekly's business partner groups, the Houston Executive Meetup group, and 1MillionCups Houston.