I was wondering why one of my favourite long term clients had not paid their monthly invoice. Sometimes they were a few days late when things got busy for them, but this was out of the ordinary.

And then I opened the email from their accounts team.

“Gee they’ve got a great personality!”

When you first meet someone and get that magical “click” with them, often the first thing that you comment about is their personality. Yes, you may go on to rave about their looks or something funny that they said, but your first comment is about their personality.

Every business also has a personality (also known as your brand). People look at your business and are either attracted to the business personality or repelled by it. It’s what makes people want to find out more about what you offer and helps make people want to connect with you.

If you have the business equivalent of a great personality, then your business is heading down the fast track to a happy bank balance.

Are you a leaper or a planner? The first version of my small business came about after I had burned into a tiny frazzled husk from working in government. Pretty much any other option (including weapons check assistant for the zombie apocalypse) seemed like a good alternative.

I meant how hard could it be? You just think of an idea, register a name and head off into small business nirvana.

Nirvana turned out to be a bad 1990’s rock group, and the first iteration of my business self-destructed in a cloud of burned money and self-loathing. It was only marginally less memorable than the permanent exit of Nirvana’s frontman, Kurt Cobain.

Tears were pricking at the back of my eyes. I was gripping the car’s steering wheel so tightly that it left indentations on my fingers. Waves of panic were threatening to crash dump over my head and force any remaining calmness into the sand.

I was a single mum with two very young kids in my car. I had decided in a fit of independent bravado to drive 1000+ km to take my kids to visit my family. The only problem was I was in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by stony-faced sheep, and I had no idea where I was or how to get to where I needed to be.

Last week, a new piece of legislation slipped almost unnoticed into the Australian business world, barely causing a ripple of consternation in the small business pool of day to day busyness.

Just another piece of legislation, but with huge potential consequences. When the Act kicks into effect somewhere in the next 12 months, Australia will have some of the strictest data breach disclosure requirements in the world.

Small businesses need to get across what this act means and start putting in place procedures, risk mitigation strategies and support teams to help manage their obligations under the Act.