Why You Should Care About The Small Business Success Index : Site of the Day

I couldn’t let Friday night pass without giving you some of the best news I’ve heard in a while. (I’d say Saturday morning, but I know my entrepreneur friends – you’re up working just like me. You went out, you came home, you worked some more. Admit it.)

If you remember our last Site of the Day, you know that I don’t give these honors out lightly.

So why the Small Business Success Index? What about that site can help you build your business online?

The way I see it, knowing you’ll have a business to build this time next year helps dramatically. That seems like a pretty strong reason to care to me – and not just because much of my business is with small business owners. I’m an entrepreneur, after all.

Let’s look a little more closely at why this site is so important to those of us with smaller companies.

In a time when the pressure of the economy is being felt in ways most of us have never witnessed in our lifetimes, you know who’s not worried?

Us. Small business people.

When I first heard this I was skeptical . Then I came across proof.

And you know how I just love hard evidence and numbers — I’m always saying listen to people who make sense to you, test out their theories, and believe the results, the proof, the data, even about me.

I love it when the numbers agree with my gut reaction. Call it an extra ego stroke, but I get a buzz from knowing that

a- I was right, and
b- Other people agree with me.

Of coruse, that’s where the Small Business Success Index (SBSI) comes in. It’s hosted at GrowSmartBusiness.com, which is full of research put together by Network Solutions and the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business.

They say it better than I do, so I’ll quote from the page about SBSI’s survey of over 1000 small business owners:

The benchmark survey, which gathered data used to create the Small Business Success Index, was conducted in December 2008 and January 2009; a total of 1,000 small business owners were interviewed by phone. The Small Business Success Index found the following:

• Small businesses are succeeding despite the economic downturn.
• 69% of small businesses made a profit in 2008
• 7% of small businesses report that they broke even
• The majority (69%) of those who showed a profit in 2008 said it was equal to or better than the previous year
• 70% of small businesses expect their firms to still be operating in five years as opposed to being closed, sold or transferred, and of these, 66% expect to be bigger in size

How’s that for good news?

If you’re not seeing the connection, here it is: small business employs more people in this country than big business. We drive the economy. We’re quite a pragmatic group so we don’t cheer easily. Therefore, for things to be in this big of a mess and us to be optimistic? Bodes well for everyone.

Or as a post from the official Network Solutions blog put it:

According to the U.S. Small Business Administration Office of Advocacy, “American small businesses are the bedrock of the U.S. economy. There are more than 25 million of them in the to the Census Bureau. They employ more than 58 million people, that is a greater number of jobs than big companies, and they create more new jobs each year than any other sector.”

Before I came across the SBSI I thought maybe this was just all the Small Business Owners that I knew.

My original theory was that more companies are starting to see that they can get better results from leveraging PR, online and offline publicity and marketing than just paying for search advertising, so I thought perhaps only marketing-related companies were getting a boost in new business from this change in climate.

Apparently, the news is better than I thought – small business is doing much better than I expected, across the board.

This hopeful data isn’t all the site has to offer, either. There are also lots of tools at their site to help small business owners, including their Small Business Survey, which will help you assess how well your business is doing competitively.

For more, go visit GrowSmartBusiness.com, and read Brent Leary’s Tale of Two Studies over at AMEX’s Open Forum. (Brent’s the co-author of Barack 2.0 with our friend David Bullock.)

He also interviewed the Network Solutions CEO, Roy Dunbar, at his Social CRM site.