Editor's note: Welcome to the fortieth in our regular weekly series of PowerBlog Reviews of business weblogs.

We're very pleased that this week's PowerBlog Review is being guest-blogged by Wayne Hurlbert. Wayne Hurlbert is an expert on business blogging who edits the popular Blog Business World blog. He is also a writer who publishes online marketing articles. Wayne happens to be a huge fan of roller derby and exhibits his passion for the sport on his popular site Wayne's Derby World....


By Wayne Hurlbert

Business blogs and personal journals are two entirely different breeds of blogs, and never the twain shall meet. Right?

Well not always, as David St. Lawrence of Ripples is not your typical business blogger or personal journalist. He is both.

Blending business knowledge, gleaned from many years in a fast-paced high tech business career, with down home wisdom collected from a lifetime of studying people and nature, David St. Lawrence has a foot planted firmly in both worlds.

David's beautifully designed Ripples blog clearly illustrates that interconnectedness of all things.

There is no compartmentalizing of business on the one hand, and personal thought and contemplation on the other, in the Ripples world. Both are part of the same yin and yang of life, and richly described and shared with readers, from all walks and stages of life.

By interspersing a photograph-enhanced post on watching the deer grazing on the lawn of his rural Virginia home, with a discussion series on bootstrapping a small micro business, David has learned what is truly important in life. The sense of balance displayed in Ripples, so richly and generously shared with readers, is part and parcel with David's philosophy of business and life.

To David St. Lawrence, a successful business person is also a well rounded person, who takes time out to replenish the soul's energy through friends, family, and the beauty of nature. By taking time to see the wonders of life and the world, a business person is able to find the strength of character and wisdom necessary, to operate a successful company or maintain a rewarding career.

After all, David has learned those valuable lessons through some bitterly painful life lessons. He shares the joy and sad times of his eventful life freely on Ripples, in a business blog that truly is a conversation with his readers.


The Power: Ripples is a business blog that creates a lasting personal connection with its readers. The visitor is drawn back to the blog through the intensely rich conversation started and continued by David St. Lawrence.

A business blog should always be a vehicle of communication between blogger and the public. By combining freely given and unvarnished business advice from the real world, with intensely personal life experience, Ripples combines the best of both blogging worlds into one fully integrated whole.