A Brisbane family project
About Small BOB
We're Mark and Silvia, we live in Brisbane, and we started this because the best part of a corner cafe or a back-lane workshop is almost never on the menu — it's the person who opened the doors.
There are only two of us. Silvia meets the owners, sits down for a proper conversation and writes the stories. Mark looks after the website and the behind-the-scenes bits. We like it small, and we mean to keep it that way.
Why we do it
Every small business has a person behind it, and that person usually has a story worth hearing — a decision that could have gone the other way, a hard year, a reason they keep turning the lights on. Those stories are what we're here for. The directory is handy, and we hope you use it, but it comes second. When we have to choose, we choose the story.
The other business we run
We should tell you something plainly. Mark also runs a lead-generation business called LeadsGenie. Small BOB shares an owner with it, so it's only fair you know.
Here's how the two connect: they don't. Small BOB is kept deliberately apart. No business is ever charged to appear here, and being featured has nothing to do with LeadsGenie — we don't steer the owners we meet towards it, and it never has a say in who we write about. We're naming it here because that's the honest thing to do, not because there's a catch waiting at the end.
How a business gets featured
Usually, we ask. Silvia reaches out, we have a long conversation, and nothing goes live until the owner has read their story and is happy with it. Their words, their life — they get the final say.
Anyone can point us towards someone, too. If you know a Brisbane owner people would stop and read about, suggest a business.
Listings we've started from public coverage
Some listings go up before we've met the owner at all. When a business has already been covered somewhere worth reading or listening to — a radio interview, a local news piece — we sometimes build a listing that links to that coverage, so you can find them here too.
Those listings say so, clearly, and we never dress them up as one of our own stories. If one of them is yours and you'd like it updated, corrected or taken down, just ask — that's what the next two sections are about.
If it's your business
You decide how you appear here. If you'd like your listing removed, tell us. We check that the request genuinely comes from the business — through an email address or phone number the business publishes — and then we act within 48 hours. When it's the business itself asking, we take it down first and sort out the details afterwards. You don't owe us a reason.
Spotted something wrong?
You don't have to be the owner to fix a mistake. Anyone can flag one, and there's no identity check. If something's out of date or just not right, let us know, point us to a source, and we'll put it right promptly.
The newsletter
If you'd like the stories without checking back, we run a small newsletter. We'll email you when a new story drops — one story at a time, nothing else, no sales pitch. That's the whole newsletter.