Your memory is the enemy. (And file folders are a close second.) Get thee a db.

Too many people rely on their memory, file folders, and sticky notes when trying to start up a business, whether that business is a full-time endeavor with teammates or an after-hours side thing for now.

Businesses need to keep track of lots of information -- leads and clients and the status of each, things to do, products, orders, appointments,marketing promotions and results, time sheets, inventory, employee records, and on and on. If you don't have a good system in your business to keep track of everything, important to-dos will fall through the cracks and you won't learn, and thus grow, as fast as you'd like.

Trying to keep track of everything in your head is the worst. You will forget the details of conversations over time, you won't remember the details of particular commitments you've made, and, as business gets busier, you'll soon be overwhelmed with all the details, resulting in inefficiency and ineffectiveness, lost money and lost time. Then, when you try to bring on team members, they will at best very slowly get up to speed and will frequently need to ask you questions every time something new or non-routine comes up.

Using sticky notes and random pieces of paper isn't much better, and they will quickly accumulate into a non-usable mess and they aren't sharable with team members. Something like a Franklin Day Planner religiously used and indexed can work up to a point as long as you are going to be an army of one, but it's much nicer to have quick access to your entire history with a particular customer on a single screen, and for anyone on your team who needs to see that info to be able to see it.

File folders fall way short too, though they are better than nothing at the very beginning. But they just don't scale. I once worked for a company that had tens of thousands of file folders, one per customer, with people who just fetched and returned files all day long. (Talk about a J-O-B.) That company now has zero file folders and is incredibly more efficient, and their new system propelled them into their golden age.

MS Excel is where the majority of small businesses end up, but it is so far from ideal, in particular because it is immediately very burdensome to properly add notes and attach documents regarding your various clients, orders, products, appointments,and so on. Adding notes for every non-trivial conversation you have with a customer is a key small-business best practice -- can't really do that with Excel though.

What you need is a single database system to run all aspects of your business, and to capture and store all information about your business in an easy-to-use format that current and future team members can easily access, whether they are in your main office or spread about wherever they need to work.

In the past, having such a database meant either paying a lot of money or being a technical geek and spending lots of time building one using MS Access of FileMaker Pro. Typically those investments were quite worthwhile even when the resulting database was limited to being used on a single computer or local network, but most small businesses just made do with inadequate tools and stumbled along.

My vision, goal, focus, and burning desire is to provide small businesses everywhere with a powerful, inexpensive database they can use to run and grow their business, and succeed. These databases are web-based and can be securely accessed from anywhere you have an internet connection, they can contain all of your business's key info, and they can be used by all team members, with each team member having access just to those parts they need to have access to.

I have seen how a good database can help make a great company, several times over. I look forward to seeing that much, much more.