BIRMINGHAM, Alabama - Two Birmingham businesses will reach living rooms nationwide in October as they're featured on a PBS show showcasing the modern American entrepreneur.

Startup is an interview-based show that looks at the modern American entrepreneur, and this season is going to feature two Birmingham small businesses: Slice Pizza & Brew and Sarcor, a civil engineering firm. Sarcor's episode will air Wednesday and Slice's will air October 15. The show airs at 10:30 p.m. on Alabama PBS stations.

When Startup producers were looking for a place in the south to tell small business stories, they chose Birmingham because it reminded them so much of where the show is produced: Detroit.

"Birmingham in particular is very much like Detroit, in that it's a city that's undergone some turmoil and has rebuilt itself," Producer Jenny Feterovich said.

Startup's host Gary Bredow said the show wanted to include the south in its second season because people in other parts of the country often don't think of it as a hub for entrepreneurship.

"I think there's definitely a different mentality in the south, a kind of hard-working, blue collar mentality," Bredow said. "People in the pacific northwest may have no clue what's happening in cities like Birmingham, Atlanta, Louisville."

But Birmingham has businesses that Bredow didn't expect: a civil engineering firm specializing in sustainability and some of the best pizza he said he's ever had.

Sarcor owner Selena Rodgers Dickerson hadn't heard of Startup when they first called her in April.

"They called me from an unknown area code, and I was on a call, and I thought it was just a prank at first, to be totally honest," Dickerson said.

Filming was finished for both businesses in one day, and the owners won't see the episodes until they air. Neither business is being paid for their appearance. All they know is the show aims to answer questions about how to start your own business.

Dickerson decided to start her own after she got laid off from a company she had been with for four years.

"I decided I could either look for a job or look for a contract. Either way, I was going to have to search. The job market was really bad, so I did not think I would have a large opportunity of gaining a job," Dickerson said. "So I took a chance on myself. I wasn't married. I didn't have kids."

Slice Owner Jason Bajalieh said being a small business means limited resources.

"I think we'll benefit from people knowing our actual story, and knowing that it's just old-fashioned hard work that's gotten us to where we are," Bajalieh said.

So the decision to participate in the show was easy, he said – Bajalieh gets to tell his story, and tell viewers what he's learned from opening a businesses.

"Make sure you're funded properly," Bajalieh said. "Being undercapitalized is just the biggest mistake you can make. One of the hardest things to do is raise the money, but any type of retail business, in my opinion, if you're undercapitalized, it will show."