Earlier today, Manta and Dell released the results of a March 2014 survey titled “Money v. Happiness” that showed some surprising trends about how SMB owners think and what they find important. To be exact, this report is a collection of 3025 Manta SMBs from between March 24 and March 27. The most intriguing finding was that 37% of those polled said that their motivation for being successful is the sense of personal achievement, while 28% said that they were driven to be financially stable.
The personal achievement aspect goes a level deeper as well in that 29% of respondents said that their top proudest moment was the time their organization earned its first award. Hosting a company celebration came second in the “proudest moment” segment with 15% of the respondent share.
A majority of those polled said they started their own business while at a previous job (49%), and that one-third of respondents started their own business in the Spring. The first major milestone for most respondents (37%) was getting the first repeat customer. A profitable year followed this at 14%.
On the tech side, SMBs polled said that their first major technology purchase was a laptop/desktop (53%), followed by a printer (13%) and a smartphone (9%). The first major technological milestone for 54% of respondents was the launch of the business website. When it came to new technologies, SMB respondents ranked new Social Media Platforms as the top potential impact (41%), followed by mobility solutions (32%) and cloud computing (10%).
You can view a survey results infographic at the site here.
