Are you operating your business
and making business decisions based on fear due to the economic
meltdown? If you are, you could potentially destroy your
business. What an extraordinary period of time we are living
through with our businesses. The majority of the business
community has never experienced such business turmoil.
Unless you were living in 1929,
you've not witnessed anything like our current economic
conditions. Depending on how old you are, our parents,
grandparents and great grandparents who were living during the
Crash of '29 and into the decade of the 1930s can tell story
upon story about how bad that particular period in history truly
was. Back then there were not the financial safety nets there
are today. No FDIC. No government bail out of businesses for
billions of dollars. No way to save your house from foreclosure
if you couldn't pay the mortgage. No credit cards to help tide
you over month after month.
Even with all the safeguards
put in place since the Depression the current economic crisis
could not be stopped and the feeling of uncertainty permeates
the future.
The economic crisis is REAL. It
is being felt by every one regardless of individual financial
circumstances. And it's global, not just limited to the United
States.
It seemed to come from no
where. And hit us all with a sledge hammer effect. Everyone is
saying: What happened? How could this be? How could so many
people lose their homes? How could unemployment numbers be so
high? And business be so bad? But unfortunately the astonishing
facts are reality.
The one aspect we have in
common today with that of 1929 is the fear being created.
Fear is the emotion that can
make us do things we would not do when we are thinking clearly.
As a business person, you cannot afford to operate your business
based on fear. Instead you need to sit down, work the numbers,
know every aspect of your business, leave nothing to chance and
study a situation fully before making any business decisions.
If you are making business
decisions based on fear, there is a good chance those decisions
will be wrong.
Completely assess where your
business is, then gather the best possible people you can find
to get an objective opinion as to what you need to do
differently in your business in order to remain competitive and
profitable - or depending upon your business circumstance to
just break even in order to survive the challenging business
environment. Work on turning any negatives into a positive.
Don't let fear grip you and
take hold of the present moment. Removing the emotion of fear in
your business and replacing it with the projection of positive
forward motion - even the in the face of lost sales, downsizing,
cutting costs or whatever else you may have to do for your
business to survive the recession, will only aid you in actually
making your business stronger and better prepared for future
business.
