I have watched with interest as business after business grinds to a crawl.  Sure, economic times are tough.  Sure, your customers are fewer and farther between, sure they make more demands on you than ever before, but that’s no reason (read excuse) for a slowdown in your business.  In every industry, there are businesses that are thriving.

I know a realtor who’s on track to do way more this year than last.  And last year he was one of the top producers in his office.  Real estate around here is about half what it was a year ago, and realtors are dropping like flies.  But they’re not all going out of business — just the ones who give up.

If you run a small business, consider this a call to action.  Get up and get moving.  Stop looking for excuses and start looking for solutions.  There are solutions.  Don’t look at your marketing budget as a sacrificial lamb.  It’s not expendable.  Your salary might be.  Some of your employees might be.  Certainly the frivolous stuff is.  But be very careful trimming your marketing budget right now.

I have watched in our local market as inferior companies take the superior position in the market simply by aggressively marketing their products and services.  Better companies have cut way back on their marketing budgets and and idly watching as inferior companies blow past them.

What have to done to adjust to the new realities in your area?  How have you made lemonade out of our current surplus of lemons?  This isn’t going to be over any time soon.  If you are going to survive, you’re going to have to learn how to do business in hard times.  It can be done.  It takes effort, creativity, a positive attitude, an unwillingness to accept defeat, an unwillingness to let circumstances (even those beyond your control) to be an excuse for failure.

This is your reality and it will be for the foreseeable future.  Get up.  Get moving.  Be successful.  Anything good that happens to you is entirely your doing.  Anything bad the same.  you are in control.  What are you going to do?