The economy is crashing...

Howard: I'm being cautious. I've always been optimistic but erring toward the "real" side. We have some big problems with our economy right now and only time will heal them.

Paul

Lemmings, lemmings, we're all lemmings! But a few stay behind pondering what really just happened then begin to pick up the pieces.

This credit crisis is pretty bad, but I've been 'round long enough (no - not back as far as the Great Depression) to see a few panic's: The Black Friday of the 80's, the Dot Com Bust (I lost 60% of my holdings - lesson to self, don't invest in mostly one industry), 911 etc., and every time these happened, we rebounded.

Only a couple of days after the Black Friday, stocks recovered and soared on for a long time. When I first saw rising fuel prices three years ago I bought an energy stock fund and doubled my money within a year getting most of my money back (I sold it) for the money I spent on gas that year. I continued to buy into the market after 911 and definitely benefited.

A friend invested in gold when it was on the rise in the 70's and sold near the high. He tried to talk business owners into selling their businesses and buying gold. Problem was, he was so enthusiastic about gold, he bought it back again, then it crashed. He lost his house.

Another friend bought a stock that was hyped up and told me "I quadrupled my money". I asked him then if he sold it, he said, "no" so I responded "you've not quadrupled your money, I think that only happens when you sell." It was shortly worthless. I asked him later what happened with his stock and he responded, "I don't want to talk about it". A lemming.

A few are contrarians, and I think I lean that way a bit evidenced by my purchase of energy shares. But, I am mainly conservative. Recently I converted some of my equity into cash (as luck would have it), but I'm leaving the rest where it is because selling it now would be acting like a lemming.

My family has found ways to enjoy vacations without spending thousands. It is easy to here in the great Pacific Northwest - weather permitting. We have a mentallity that when we wake up on Saturday, we're on vacation.

When food was scarce during WWII, people grew 'Victory Gardens' which were small vegitable gardens on their lots. They grew their own food! Guys, we're tougher than we think.

It is time we hunker down, control our expenses, but we must continue to market our products. We also must continue to breath, live, work, network, and play - and vote!

My best . .

By the way, I too have often been a lemming.

J.R. I hear your story. I sold my stock just as the market went back to 9500 this last time. Nothing has made me want to jump on a new item yet.

Howard is right though. The times are the times. Be aware, do homework, invest in the right areas for the next year and be patient.

There never were 'good ole days'. Every time I hear that term, I want to puke. Then I point out that bananas were not always a grocery store item...neither were mangos, papayas and Fuji apples....the grocery store tells me a lot as to what the economy is actually doing.

Well, being that people had to choose over food or flowers...Food won in most cases! Oh well, at least we tried with all our might and learned so much in the process. Owning BiZi Bee and losing it, has taught me how to be a fantastic employee. I can really help this small biz "Blooms on Broadway". Eventhough we had to close our own doors, another one opened.

That's a very interesting comment Anthony made on watching the grocery store to see how the economy os doing. Never really thought about it this way.

We are finding in this current economic climate that:

1. Finding (and sticking to) our niche has brought us all kinds of new clients. Scary move for us, but took us out of that huge pool of people who can do "everything for everyone." And when the niche includes social media, businesses redistributing their marketing dollars in hopes of stretching them further are looking for ways to leverage social media to get more visibility.

2. Exploring our first international partnerships and strategic alliances and will be developing new products and services to reach a larger customer base. Just starting down this road, but the advantage of scale (joint marketing, for instance) is promising.

Those are the two things that have helped us the most in this economy.

I strongly feel that we as small business must lead the way. The government won't - they have too much attention on navigating political minefields and trying to get re-elected. Big business won't - they're WAY overextended and still focused on how bad everything is - far too many are living on government handouts (don't make me get my soapbox out). We CAN pull ourselves out of this but it won't be a negative attitude or a victim viewpoint that does it. The strength of small business is its innovation and agility and it will have to be those strengths that pull us, and by association the rest of the country, through. We must MARKET our way out of the recession and those companies that are succeeding (as in your filthy stinking rich category) are the ones that are getting the marketing right. Enough said.

Wow.

There's a great book "Crash" that chronicles all of the major economic disruptions since WWII. In every case "the sky was falling" and things were really going to change. When recessions hit, things do change, for many individuals, but life continues much as it did before the recession for most.

I've lived and worked through enough economic cycles to know that the world will continue on as it had after a painful stretch of several quarters. In this case the stretch has been unusually long. For the youngsters out there going through their first or second recession that think the way we do business tomorrow is going be markedly different from the way we did it two years ago, think again.

Economic cycles churn the pot for a bit until everything settles down again and we pursue the next speculative bubble. This churning is a great time to take advantage of others that have taken their eyes off of the ball. Recessions hurt, but some people will come out winners. One of them might as well be you.

I plan on being dirty, stinking rich. :)