So, what’s your plan for ignoring the recession?

Posted on | October 31, 2008 | Comments Off

You heard about the numbers, right?

Yesterday, the Department of Commerce announced that (gasp!) the U.S. economy contracted during the third quarter of this year, by 0.3%. That’s an “advance” estimate, which will be followed by a “preliminary” estimate at the end of November and a “final” number at the end of the year.

All of those will be subject to any number of revisions, too, but I’ll confess that I’d be surprised to learn that those revisions will do much to put the economy back into the black. Much of the reason for the contraction, evidently, was a pretty sharp decline in consumer spend and, as we have all heard countless times, consumer spending is roughly two-thirds of the U.S. economy.

All things considered, you can see why only 11% of small business owners say that now is a good time to expand, according to the most recent Small Business Optimism Index (published monthly by the National Federation of Independent Business).

And yet … sometimes, you just have to swim against the tide.

(Pause for musical interlude … )

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Because, all things considered, right now might be the very last moment you want to sit back on your haunches or hunker in your bunker or whatever relevant metaphor works best for you.

Maybe, if you’ve been thinking about ways and means for expanding your customer base or otherwise increasing your revenues, right now would be the best possible time to proceed with those plans.

I know I am.

For one thing, no matter how often they are told not to, many small business owners will cut their marketing budget before they do anything else when times get slow. If you don’t do that, you may find that you have less trouble cutting through the noise to make yourself and your marketing message heard … because there will be less noise.

Then, too, consumers have pulled back and many of them aren’t spending much money on anything except the necessities (because they can’t afford to do much else). But that doesn’t mean they have stopped buying altogether.

The same goes for businesses — for those of us in the B2B space. Sure, a lot of firms are pulling back on spending plans but that doesn’t mean they’re not spending anything at all. Since you have decided not to dispense with marketing, now would be a good time to figure out how to frame what you do as something that will save your clients some money.

Right this minute, everybody wants to hear about that.

So, recalling what I told you about setting revenue goals, I’ve decided that right now is not the time to sit on those plans. Au contraire, mon frere. Of course, the part of the plan that I was thinking I’d need to finance is going to have to fall back to Plan B — no financing of anything happening any time soon.

But I digress.

In some ways, I’m actually looking forward to the next year or two. It’ll be fun to try to come up with ways to get my numbers up while everybody around me is holding up their umbrellas waiting for the sky to stop falling. Besides, I don’t really have enough of a doomsday disposition to spend that much time quivering in terror.

It’s not my style.

How about you? Do you have a plan for how you intend to ignore the recession?


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Category: Friday Musical Interludes, The Economy
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