If you are already a successful entrepreneur, you’re a planner. So you’ve already done a lot of thinking about surviving and succeeding in 2012.  How do you plan for your business to survive and succeed in 2012?

At this time last year I told the whole team here at HBS, that I could not argue with the economic facts that point to a massive global economic train-wreck in our future, but I was not convinced that it will happen in 2011, and would not, therefore, use the doom-and-gloom scenario as an excuse to freeze salaries or benefits, as we were forced to do in 2009 when sales fell 25% when the economy “contracted”.

In fact, we had had a good year in 2010 and I wanted to reward each of them, whom I consider my best friends, for their performance, expertise, dedication and customer friendliness, which largely accounted for our success.

So I gave everybody a raise, and told them, if times get tough, we will all be on the same train and we will all ride it uphill and downhill together. And that’s the way it will be.

That’s how I planned to be successful in 2011. It worked. That set the tone for 2011. Instead of concentrating on the negative, like the NEWS did, we all pitched in to make the company and our service more perfect, so we could better serve our current clients and win a greater share of the potential customers out there. We also concentrated on outperforming our competitors in terms of the client experience by improving on hundreds of details on all levels of the business. We weren’t trying to re-invent ourselves, just improve upon what we already do well, to set the bar higher for excellence in our tiny industry of Company Formation Services.

Every year, for 30 years, I’ve done this. I plan for greater success every year by consistently improving every aspect of the company, and getting everyone involved in the details.

We invested in making our information and services available across the whole spectrum of the web including social media, mobile devices and notebooks. We set up an active Facebook page, and a Twitter account, and produced 13 videos to walk clients through every question and quandary when it comes to forming a Delaware LLC or Corporation. We will soon be QR coding your invoices so you can access your account, and pay your Franchise Tax and Registered Agent fee in less than a minute! Poof! If compliance can be made simple, we will make it so simple for you.

If you have a smart phone, try our mobile site. Just go to the same url: www.delawareinc.com and it will recognize your phone and give you the “Wham Bam Thank You Mama” version of our info.

But I have to admit, in 2011, we were very lucky. Despite the economic reality we all faced, more people wanted to form new companies and when we asked them why they wanted to start out fresh at a time like this many of them totally dismissed the notion that times are tough and said, ”because this is THE TIME” for them. And they are right.

I started Harvard Business Services in 1981 when the economy was equally depressed. But the USA is not a depressed nation and we always prevail over economic challenges. Americans love a challenge. Americans love to work and to be the best at what they do. Americans are also innovative, and free to innovate, which is our big advantage.

2012, the election year: What policies will govern the country in 2013 and beyond? The voters will decide that. This year, it is more important than ever, that you VOTE. In the USA, VOTERS determine the future, not the politicians.

What Our Clients Want: When I talk to our clients, nobody cares what the dollar will be worth, or what gold will be worth or what the interest rate will be on treasury bills. Really, they don’t care. Do you?

What people we talk to care about is activity in the marketplace. When are the buyers going to make a comeback and start calling again? Let’s get the phones ringing, let’s get the sales folks showing people properties, let’s get the customers making offers, and deals, and buying things. Let’s get the banks making swift and easy loans again. Let’s get this economy rockin’! That’s what we’re they’re saying.

So, my advice for 2012, which is free advice and worth every penny of what you pay for it, but no more, is to invest in yourself. Invest in your company no matter how small or how large it is. Pour your money back into your own company’s infrastructure and environment and security. Invest in your people. Raise their level of education and their standard of living and challenge them to do more.  And they will. Build an emergency operation center to avoid shutting down if one strikes. Plan for the train wreck, even if it doesn’t happen.

Plan ahead and Go Ahead: By all means, if you’re just starting out, you should know that you’ve picked the very best time in recent history, in my opinion, to start your own company. Survival will determine the fittest but in these uncertain times, start-up companies with dedicated sensible owners often have the advantage over established companies with good balance sheets.

Opportunity is alive and well here in the USA. GO FOR IT! Make 2012 your year to form a company.

If you’re just starting a business now, or thinking of it, your timing couldn’t be better. Starting a small LLC during an economic slump greatly increases your chances of success in so many ways. If you already run a successful small business, 2010 will challenge your ability to adapt.

For a start-up, you succeed or you die. That’s a strong incentive. During boom times you can always go back to your old profession or find another job even better than the last one. Any business – fundamentally — is only successful if the “money in” is greater than the “money out”. The more “money in” compared to the “money out” is the primary measurement in business success. That may seem simple, but it can become foggy in boom times when “early losses” can be tolerated for future success. If you keep it simple and work out of your home, how much do you really need to successfully take care of the “overhead” including the home and family expenses?

Actually, the list of advantages to starting a private little LLC now could go on and on. The internet advantage, the small computer advantage, the smart phone advantage, the low overhead advantage, the overnight shipping advantage, the changing climate advantage… the list goes on and on. It all boils down to this: because you can take advantage of being small, you have the advantage over businesses that have been successful and are established for a decade or more.

In contrast, successful small business owners that have been through the tough times in the beginning and then experienced growth and expansion due to increased demand and excellent performance in their field are vulnerable right now — perhaps more vulnerable than any period in the past 80 years.

Established small businesses have acquired increased administrative costs, increased government fees and expenses, increased energy costs, increased medical insurance costs, increased payroll costs, increased rent costs, increased insurance costs etc. etc. etc. The bottom line is, the bottom line isn’t what it used to be, and all indications are that this trend will continue. When the “money-in” becomes LESS than the “money-out” the small business has a problem.

The government term for a small business in this situation is “Too Small To Save”. Doesn’t that make you feel special? Seven hundred and eighty five BILLION dollars for failing bankers and insurance companies to give multimillion dollar bonuses to themselves and nothing for small companies hit hardest by the fraud the government and the bankers perpetrated upon them and the whole global economy.

All last year, our congress dished out billions to a few big companies and became fixated on taking over our health care industry, even while they run V.A. hospitals so badly already. Only one thing is certain about the new health care plan, it will cost small businesses more and it will introduce new taxes that will become part of our increasing costs of providing our goods and services to our customers.

Almost as bad as what Congress DID last year is what they DIDN’T DO. Congress ignored working on a new tax law. This is important because many current tax incentives for small businesses expired on December 31, 2009. At the last minute they threw some extensions into the Health Care bill, but the House and the Senate couldn’t agree upon it so, officially, many incentives that have kept American small businesses competitive in a global marketplace and growing for the past three decades expired December 31, 2009.

Currently, successful companies that want to stay successful will be the ones proactively raising their prices, producing less more profitably, investing in energy efficiency, doing more with fewer people and testing new products and services that afford them a higher margin.

In either situation, start-up or established company, small businesses are the backbone of the American economy and the American economy fuels the world economy. When it comes to ending the recession and returning to prosperity everyone’s counting on you!

Banks aren’t lending, venture capital firms are now effectively hedge funds, and American angels are about to be slammed by the crashing market and expected tax increases on capital gains, the source of angel investment power.

Money has never been easy to raise when you’re selling a dream… presented confidently as a vision — for the first time. If it were easy everyone would be doing it. The key to understanding and surviving this process is to realize that, “It isn’t SUPPOSED to be EASY!”

The lessons learned from REJECTION reveal the logic that eventually leads to long term SUCCESS. Others have described this as “having to learn to crawl before you can learn to walk”, but it’s not that elementary. It’s a simple reduction process, which allows only the most clever and detail-oriented to survive. The innovative, the committed, the determined and the clever each find that they must, in fact, be ALL of the foregoing to survive. Any single qualification would not be enough. The term “competition” provides inspiration as well as deep seeded fear. One learns that they must deliver competitively and that with every presentation excellence is expected.

In order to get money from an investor, you MUST ask them for the money and you need a presentation to ask an investor for money. The first presentation you give will be your last if you fail to impress. You must answer the usual investor questions up front, but primarily you should set your “vision” in the mind of the investor. Where are you going? Is the first question the investor wants to know after he understands what it is you want to do and how you plan to get it done.

Once you’re successful, you can reminisce with joy about the lucky breaks you got that lead to your success, and minimize the effort it took you to become successful — others will love you for it. But to BECOME successful, you need to work at it like the best professional athletes work out. Work is taken for granted. Amazing feats are taken for granted. Scoring continually is taken for granted. Even winning is taken for granted. The only effort that counts is EXTRA effort. If you can LOVE that, you’ll be successful during these tough times.