By any estimate, 2009 had been a tough year for any business, especially small businesses. We at BLEN Corp saw our share of ups and downs as we go through the rough waters.

According to SBA, small business with “with fewer than 500 employees accounted for 64 percent (or 14.5 million) of the 22.5 million net new jobs (gains minus losses) between 1993 and the third quarter of 2008.”

That’s a real number.

However, as the economy turns around, we are hearing from the people who failed to see the first dip in first place arguing at Davos World Economic Forum about the next financial crisis. Watch this interesting video for instance:

So what does all this mean for a small business? Are small businesses going to get hit again? Does this mean, government spending will shrink?

As a small business owner, I worry about these red signals in the road ahead. But, I am pretty confident that many small businesses will not be paralyzed by this fear. Quitting because of the unknown is unreasonable.

For those who might be wavering tho, I would like to share few things that we’ve implemented at BLEN Corp to be ahead of the curve:

Be Happy!

We love what we do. But we LOVE the people who we do things with infinitely more. The people around us are simply GREAT, which makes us HAPPY! Tony Hsieh, CEO at Zappos.com, and a great hero of mine, crafted a scientific and practical way of implementing happinees in his company. As a result, Zappos.com, an internet based shoe company, zoomed from a small company from his bedroom to a BILLION dollar company to be bought by Amazon! Happiness should be a CULTURE in your business.

Know where you stand financially

As cliché as this sounds it is critical that you know where you stand financially. Be honest with yourself. Download your bank account and see your expenses. Use free accounting tools like Mint and xero to categorize your expenses. After all numbers do not lie.

Prepare a weekly and monthly goal

We found it to be incredibly important and even motivating to have a goal laid out in hard numbers. This led us to be creative with our approaches to grow our business in hard times. We even get into the habit of reading and trying to understand about what we once consider as jargons. Things like Sale Cycle, Lead Generation, Conversion, etc… became part of our vocabulary.