For many businesses, this was a year to forget. Many businesses survived the year but not without the scars to prove that they fought hard to stay in business. Even those who did reasonably well saw customers pull back a bit or reorganize their spending priorities “just until this dark cloud blows over”.
Fair enough. Almost all of us had those calls from clients. Well, guess what. The economy has pretty much sorted itself out. It’s not perfect. It’s not completely healed. It will still ache when it rains. But it’s getting better. Economists tell us that we may still see a blip or two on our radar but we can see some hope in the near distance, too.
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Last year, we watched the economy melt down. Some saw it coming for a while but most people started to get worried around August or September and then we fell off the cliff in November. It has been bad for many, many people.
While there is still a lot of effort to be put into climbing out of this hole, we are hopeful that economists are correct in their prediction of a current economic recovery. While I am not an economist, I am an avid reader and I watch the trends and signs closely and everything does indeed seem to be pointing in the right direction.
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In the past couple of weeks, we’ve been hearing more and more about the potential for imminent economic recovery. It seems that economists and financial wizards are predicting that we’ll be out a recession soon (although “soon” is loosely defined). While that doesn’t mean that our businesses will be operating at the fever pitch we were operating at before recession, it does mean that hope is on the horizon and we can all breathe just a little easier.
It also means something else: It means NOW is the time to start building your business.
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Everything you enjoy about business lunches is now available on Twitter with Business Lunch Club. If you find yourself unable to have a real business lunch, simply tweet while you eat and add the hashtags #businesslunchclub, #bizlunchclub, or #blc.
Here are some ideas to get the benefits of a business lunch from Business Lunch Club. Click here to read more »
When entrepreneurs start a business they hope and pray that their business grows. Of course! They should! And as a consultant, I take my role very seriously in helping them see growth in their businesses.
But in my last post I mentioned that not all business growth is good. Growth that happens too fast, for example, without any warning, can cause financial, manufacturing, warehousing, and customer service problems galore. Click here to read more »
We’re living in turbulent economic times. Economists are now predicting that most of 2009 will continue this way with a market resurrection in the end of 2009 and through 2010. Larger businesses may have the assets and borrowing power to survive. But smaller businesses do not and many of them are wondering if they’ll survive during the year.
At the risk of sounding like I’m stating the obvious, I feel that it’s important to highlight the one best practice that all businesses should be pursuing this year:
MORE SALES
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Creating new products or services is fun! I love the idea of taking an idea and helping someone develop it, turn it into something real, and then sell it. And I know my clients like it, too, because I stay busy with this work!
Unfortunately, I’m seeing a dangerous trend in the market that impacts this product or service development. It’s related to the economy, of course: Companies are spending less on product development and many are choosing to wait until the economy improves before they bring new products to market. Click here to read more »
In the last blog, I talked about the first part of the conundrum of committedness: How the consultant needs to stay busy enough with commitments to earn and income but also have enough time to market in order to replenish the pipeline.
I said that the first part of the conundrum of committedness is: The more commitments you have now, the less time you have to generate new commitments. But the less time you spend on generating new commitments, the fewer you will soon have. Click here to read more »
