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HATTIE: Number 3. In-depth understanding of the financials. Bob Orenstein is founder of International Wine Accessories.

BOB: The ratios we look at are basically gross margins. We look at the percentage of gross dollars that falls to the bottom line. We'd like to keep it well above 10 percent and, of course, we struggle to try to push it to 20 percent. Most businesses are lucky if they can get 4 percent or 5 percent or 6 percent or 7 percent. We try to keep it a lot higher, if at all possible.

HATTIE: (VOICE OVER): At Hot Dogs On a Stick, everybody knows the numbers.

What is this and why do you have it posted on the back bulletin board?

MEEKO: Basically, this is something that we felt -- we use these equations each week when we fill out our payroll and weekly packet. And we use the labor percentage to find out how much money we're spending on each individual employee to have us working here. And what we do is we calculate our average pay times how many labor hours we had for that week and then we divide it by our sells for that week and then we get a labor percentage which then tells the office how much money we're spending on labor.

VOICE OVER: At Theatrical Lighting, owner Dave Milly, watches key numbers closely.

HATTIE: (Voiceover) Are there numbers that you look at daily or weekly that you go, `Wow, we're going great'?

JANET: Well, we do flash reports and we all go over those numbers.

HATTIE: What's a flash report?

JANET: This is a report that tells David everything he needs to know about receivables to payables, new customers, amount of sales for last week.

DAVID: I don't take risks. I take little bitty, you know, chances, but my odds are stacked in my favor before I go borrow that $1/2 million. I know that even if the deal I'm putting together fails, I've got enough left over, I've got plenty of time to bail it out and put something else together. So I don't feel like we're taking a high risk.