Jeb Banner said that he had run away from the idea of working in business his entire life.

"My whole family are entrepreneurs," he said. "My dad had offered to pass down the family business to me, and I said no."

Instead, Banner, who was born in Chicago and raised in South Bend, escaped to IU Bloomington for college, where he became heavily involved in the music scene and show bookings.

While at IU, he realized how important a person's base networking can be.

"I really got involved in this community of people in Bloomington, and that became my base for going forward in life," he said. "I eventually moved to Chicago (where he lived in a big ballroom on the South side) and got involved in the community there."

When he moved to Indianapolis, his life took a "left turn," and his business bloodline finally came through. First, it was antiques (he started an auction house, which was the first one in the city and state to do Ebay live auctions), but then realized he was not meant to work in a single business entity.

"I was getting a little burned out with just doing auctions. I knew I wanted to work with a lot of different businesses, and not just one," Banner said. "I sold my interests in the auction house in the beginning of this year." Along with programmer Joe Downey and Banner's knowledge of the importance of tight communities, they started Small Box Consulting.

The company's mission statement (found at www.smallboxconsulting.com) states that they are an Indianapolis, Indiana based web design, marketing, and new media consulting outfit whose aims include providing professional websites, Internet marketing and consulting services for businesses and organizations at a competitive price.

Banner said that the idea for the name of the company came to him when he was taking a walk one day early in the year.

"I started thinking about what the company was, and I thought, it's not a big box company, but it's a small box company-meaning it doesn't have a lot of overhead," he said. "We have the ability to be like an ipod-small and powerful, and the ability to go into another business and be a viable tool without creating considerable expenses."

Banner highlighted the idea that there are numerous bad websites out there, and so many not optimized for the Internet.

"There is so much you can do with Internet marketing, and even though we are small and wish to grow, we still want to have a small footprint in the companies we work for," he said.

In order for a company to get started with Small Box, Banner said the first question they have to ask is "who is our target audience?"

"We feel that with our low overhead and price structure that we can be competitive and increase a company's return on investment," he said. "What we want to do is sit down with your company and look at your budget, and say you need to stop thinking of this as throwing it out in the wind and hoping it sticks, and more of an overall part of your business plan."

Banner explained that his company feels the most critical area for smaller business is search engine listings, even though most companies do not initially realize their importance.

"Obviously, to have a website is important, but what a company needs even more is for us to come in and optimize their website for a search engine," he said. "Search engines don't look at how pretty your website is, but if they are not finding your website, it is hurting you in a lot of ways. Our approach revolves around asking, how can we bring the most value to this website?"

In addition to redesigning, re-launching, re-coding and optimizing a company's website, Small Box will not leave employees in the dark about their presence within the company or on how to manage the website when their work is done.

"A big part of what we do is creating management tools for companies," Banner said. "It uses advanced coding that allows businesses to keep up the website themselves. The sites we create should last three to five years without any major coding overhauls."

Keeping the client involved, and working with employees rather than behind their backs, is also an important issue for Small Box Consulting.

"We stand behind what we do 100 percent. Every client we have had has been thrilled and given us good references," Banner said. "Of course, we want to keep that track record."

As for choosing Broad Ripple as the Small Box headquarters, Banner said that the village had the best appeal because of its creative environment, business density, dining, clubs, and affordable rent. "We just have so many friends in the area that we felt our existing network would be a valuable advantage," Banner said.

"Being able to reinforce our presence with our physical presence was a big part of our choice. We want to be part of the community and we want to help out in different ways. Our goal is to be an asset to Broad Ripple, and help this area grow and become even more creative and interesting. I hope over time it becomes something of a technology hub, and there is great potential for Broad Ripple to attract more companies."