Strategies: Like Obama said, 'Pull up your pants!'
— -- I've heard a lot of doom and gloom from small-business owners lately. After all, the economy stinks. Headlines scream at us: Consumer confidence is down, unemployment is up. Housing prices are down, business closings are up.
In the face of all that, I have a piece of advice, "Pull up your pants!"
Heck, those of us who have small businesses don't have to read the news to know times are tough. We see what's happening in our own businesses. Costs are up, sales are down. We have fewer customers, and the customers we have place smaller orders.
Nevertheless, I say again — in the words of President-elect Barack Obama — "Pull up your pants!"
In an interview with MTV during the campaign, Obama made news by admonishing young men wearing underwear-showing baggy jeans to "Pull up their pants." He was speaking literally, but his directive was interpreted figuratively as well, along the lines of: "Stop complaining, pull up your pants, and make something of yourself."
Now, small-business owners are the ultimate example of people who've pulled up their own pants and made something of themselves. In fact, a widely used term for people who build a business from scratch — like most of us have — is "bootstrapping," meaning we've made it without any outside effort. In other words, we've pulled ourselves up from our own bootstraps. (Of course, most of us don't know what bootstraps even are any more.)
So you've already proved you know how to create something from nothing, to invent an income for yourself, create jobs for others. You've got the skills. You've got the experience. You just need to regain the can-do attitude that led you to start your business in the first place.
I'm here today to remind you that you can do it. You can survive this downturn. We're going to go through this together and come out ahead.
I'm no Pollyanna. Heck, I own a publishing company. Have you seen what's been happening to book sales lately? I have one sister who's in sales; her business has dropped dramatically. And I have another sister who's a mortgage broker; her business disappeared entirely. On top of that, I know four people who got laid off last week.
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