Syndicated columnist Jane Applegate joins the Business Journal this week with a weekly column designed, she says, “to help entrepreneurs avoid the potholes.”

Applegate has a decade of experience steering small-business owners around the obstacles. Her column appears in some 40 newspapers nationwide, and she is a frequent guest on CNBC and CNNfn. She also is the author of three books, including last year’s “201 Great Ideas for Your Small Business” (Bloomberg Press).

“Every entrepreneur has a great story to tell,” Applegate said. “I’ve got one of the best writing jobs in the world I get to interview interesting people every day, get them to share the secrets of their success and their darkest problems.”

Applegate, 45, is no stranger to L.A. She worked as an investigative reporter at the Los Angeles Times for several years in the 1980s, covering white-collar crime, before taking over the paper’s small-business beat in 1988.

Los Angeles, Applegate says, is a particularly fertile place for entrepreneurs. “The entrepreneurial spirit flourishes in California,” she said. “It’s not the cheapest place to do business, but entrepreneurs feel welcome. In other parts of the country, people seem to be more conservative about doing business with a tiny start-up.”

An entrepreneur herself, Applegate is president of the Applegate Group, which gives information on small businesses and provides event-planning services for corporate clients. And what has she learned as a business owner that she didn’t know as a reporter?

“It took a lot longer than I thought it would to make money,” Applegate said. “The first year in business, my assistant made more than I did.”

Larry Kanter