In my 25+ year professional life, I’ve survived, thrived and worked through four global recessions. And, I am now working through my third U.S. recession and about seven periods of negative economic growth over one fiscal quarter or more.
I’m alive, enjoying my life and generally O.K. but certainly my business situation – owning my own business in the marketing industry – is a delicate one.
For well over a year, I’ve told my family, friends, business associates and continue to repeat to myself (to firm my belief) that recessions are a state of mind and we’re really in a time of reset not recession.
The economy is resetting people’s values of time, money, relationships and more. And, things will be different even after Wall Street settles down and hopefully a lot of people get back to work.
In my business, I’ve reset (and continue to do so) the solutions we offer and the value we provide. This recession has been a wake up call for me to hit my reset button and clean up my professional and personal life. But, I certainly saw it coming. Didn’t you?
We all had it pretty easy a few years ago – just about anyone was making good money at their job and on Wall Street.
I remember in 2000, young kids right out of college who had a little bit of HTML code experience (and no real life expereince and even less common sense and street smarts) were making high five figure incomes. Today, with Web technology advances making it easier for anyone to build a Web site – even for free – those days are long gone for those early 2000+ college grads.
This recession for me has been a good time of sorts. It’s made me work to provide more value to clients, increase my skill set in areas I never worked in before and bulletproof my tried and true skills.
And, as a result we’ve been rewarded with new clients, extended contracts and additional business from existing clients and industry awards from the Public Relations Society of America and the American Marketing Association.
Sure, it’s easy to blame others and the economy for why you may be struggling today, but if you’re honest with yourself, you saw the signs of the times changing a long time ago. The good thing is it’s never too late to change and keep making changes.
I’ll continue to hit my reset button when times get a little slow and tough and for now, in 2010 I plan to offer my clients:
- Quicker response times due to systems we’ve put in place
- New and improved marketing solutions due to re-investments in our team’s knowledge base and thought leadership
- New and improved Social Media Marketing offerings
- Marketing packages of value-added solutions
- Marketing Seminars, Webinars and Workshops
- Books and tool kits
- New Mobile marketing offerings and expertise
- More ROI – results driven solutions to drive customer acquisition, retention, winback and referrals
- More accountability in our actions
- More of everything – more nice, more helpful, more smart, more quick, more patient, more listening, more understanding, more seeking win-win opportunities
With the reset I’ve gone through, I feel I’m more recession proof and on a path of purpose and passion than on a road of obligation and duty.
Everyday you have choices to make to be better than you used to be or remain the same. Choose to be better, choose to reset and be recession proof.
