Business Information for Entrepreneurs by an Entrepreneur

Signs That Your Small Business is Moving in the Right Direction

Very often, small business owners get uncertain after some time because they are not sure whether their business is moving in the right direction or not.

If you are in this position, then these hints will help you to determine the direction of your business.

Getting New Business through References

If an increasing number of your existing clients are referring your name to their family, friends, and acquaintances, then this is a sure sign that your business is moving in the right direction.

Customers only give references when they are happy with your level of service and when they start to trust you.

Your Name Spreads in Your Market

When other companies, supplies and competitors start acknowledging your presence in the market and perceive you as a worthy competitor, then this is another sign that indicates that you are moving ahead in your market.

Your Business Translates into a Healthy Bank Account

When you are doing well in your business, then it often translates into a healthy bank account.

Your bank might also start treating you with greater respect, and may offer you various financial products - such as loans - to expand your company and increase the bank's business with you.

When Your Competitor's Employees Approach You

If your competitor's key employees approach you and ask for a job, then they obviously have seen your potential.

This could indicate that you are moving up.

When Your Clients Wait For You

Once you have developed a good rapport with most of your clients, you might find that they are willing to wait for particular items not presently in your inventory, just for a chance to continue doing business with you.

This indicates their high level of trust in you.

Use the above hints as reassurance that your business is moving in the right direction - but remember that you will need to maintain and increase your efforts to keep up the momentum.

As I've mentioned in previous blog posts, I'm a member of Vistage, the largest CEO membership organization. I learn a lot in my group's monthly meetings, but it's not always during our working sessions or speaker presentations.

After a one or two hour structured dialog, people get up to stretch, move around, maybe grab a drink or a snack. This simple change of position and activity does something to your brain. We need change to stimulate and re-energize us and periodic breaks provide that opportunity.

So what goes on next? Someone will start a casual dialog, I'll chime in, and then it happens. What seems like a innocuous comment, something that was said in passing conversation, becomes that golden nugget of information that we all strive to get - the reason that we show up at conferences, seminars, and group meetings like this.

Here's how this scenario played out earlier this year. I was trying to figure out how to guide our marketing team on publicity strategy for our bi-annual email marketing metrics report (by the way, our latest report is coming out next month - new trends are surfacing!).

At lunch, one of my group members asked how we were planning our publicity. I responded with a typical strategy: as soon as the report was finished, we would draft a press release and contact some of the media outlets with whom we have relationships.

That's when it happened. As the waiter poured the coffee, out came my colleague's casual comment: "Sometimes we write the press release first. It gives everyone who is working on the project a clearer definition of the end goal." It hit me like a bolt of lightening. It made so much sense.

Now, once we have the general statistics on what we will include in our metrics report but before the final draft is completed, we write the press announcement so everyone knows the main message points of the final report. It helps the graphic designers focus on the key points during layout and keeps the marketing and support teams ready with tidbits of teaser information for those who contact us about it prior to release. Of course, we're careful not to write the report's conclusions before we have analyzed the data.

That insight, which took all of 2 seconds to hear, was my golden nugget that day. It was worth the entire day's meeting. We now apply the concept to other small projects that warrant press announcements.

Tell me about a situation in which you learned more during a break than the actual learning event.

All of us have multiple accounts for various services on the web. Keeping track of the account IDs and passwords can be cumbersome so many people use very simple, easy to remember words as their passwords.

However, poorly chosen passwords can be easily cracked using software tools that are widely available. These tools utilize lists of words (in English or any one of dozens of other languages), given names, the names of characters in books, movies, television shows, and games. Most passwords consisting of plain, lower-case dictionary words or names can be identified in seconds.

Just this month there were over 40,000 searches for terms like "password hacker" or "stealing passwords." In other words, there are a lot of hackers out there and they don't need to be very technically knowledgeable to get in to your account.

Example of a good password: 2Hotpeet$a$

This password sounds like "2 hot pizzas" but changes the spelling to be phonetic, uses $ instead of s and mixes numbers with upper and lower case characters. If a system allows it, include spaces in your passwords to make it even harder to guess.

A good password can go a long way, but unfortunately it is not the only security measure you have to worry about. Take the case of Republican Vice Presidential Nominee, Sarah Palin. Earlier this week, it was reported that her private Yahoo email account was hacked. How? The perpetrator went to Yahoo's "Forgot My Password" link and answered the security questions she had set up, like "Where did you meet your spouse?" The answers to Yahoo's questions were easily found online so it was very simple to reset the password. The more personal information anyone can find about you online, the less secure your passwords are. Think about that the next time you post a Facebook or Twitter status update.

To protect yourself, use very difficult passwords (like the example shown above), change your passwords frequently, and do the best you can to keep private information about yourself private.

Side note: Yesterday, Tennessee State Rep. Mike Kernell confirmed that his son David, 20, is the subject of Internet and blog discussions related to Palin's hacked account.