You the business owner , “Blew It!”

These are words that no business owner wants to think about! Yeah times are hard here on Long Island as they are everywhere else in America. You the business owner, “Blew It!”. You are so busy cutting costs, laying good hard working employees off, haggling with your vendors for lower prices, listening to the nay-sayers on TV and print that tell you this is how you run ‘your’ business and the only way to stay profitable, that you forgot that this is just another down cycle in our economy. Long Islanders bounce back FAST! And they have mouths. They spread the word about businesses good and bad. Sadly we usually only hear about the ‘bad’ stuff.
You as a business owner should be looking for innovative ways to take advantage of the down turn in the economy. Look into small business loans from the government to upgrade your equipment, train your employees in the new technologies. Start those projects that need research. Sitting back on your hands when ACTION is what will get you ahead of the competition is not considered ‘coasting’. It is considered loosing ground to your competition.
Every business owner right now is standing in front of a crap table called your business environment. Some of you just stand there watching, caressing those budgets carefully in your pockets, trying to make a decision to step up and get into the game. Scared to do anything other than ‘hold back’. While you watch the other people at the table ‘in the game’. Making strategic investments, and yes, taking chances. But calculated chances.
Some of the things you are holding back on are employee training and yourself (but don’t be selfish in this respect), new equipment, planning for projects that have been put aside, and advertising.
One of the first things that companies pull back on is marketing and their IT budgets. Well when everyone else is doing that, you should be out there will BIG Ads. Since everyone else is holding back you will look bigger without a lot of effort.
IT budgets, well as an IT consultant and previously employed IT Manager, I can tell you that now is the time to look at your equipment. Older, power hungry computers, monitors and servers can actually be upgraded for less than you think because you have to remember that new equipment puts out less heat (so the need to cool is less expensive), and that the newer OS from Windows called Windows 7 will make those PCs running VISTA (hold the curses) actually a pleasure to use and increase your employees output.
Contact your marketing partners. Contact your IT people in house and consultants. Start a dialogue with them to start learning what they can do for your business. You know the big boys are quietly doing this! You know you need to set yourself apart from your competition. You KNOW they ARE doing these very same things. You KNOW you don’t want to look yourself in the mirror in a few very short months and say to that stressed out person looking back at you, “YOU BLEW IT!”.