Within Six Months Will You Be Saying Thank You to the Global Credit Crunch?

At the start of the recession during 1978 - 1984, in December 1978, the Swedish pop group, Abba, released a music track entitled: "Thank You for the Music". Perhaps amazingly, Abba tracks appear to have stood the test of time - especially with the recent release of the surprise hit, Mamma Mia at cinemas around the world! Whatever we may think of Abba's musical style, I suspect that even today, a dedicated core of Abba fans are still buying Abba music in one form or another. Within that reality is a business lesson for all.

In "Thank You for the Music", consider the chorus:

So I say, thank you for the music, the songs I'm singing
Thanks for all the joy they're bringing
Who can live without it, I ask in all honesty
What would life be?
Without a song or a dance what are we?
So I say thank you for the music
For giving it to me.

You know - just for fun - we could replace the word "music" in the chorus above with the dreaded "R" word: "recession", to playfully capture the same emotion today for anyone brave or smart enough to:

• Consider setting up a carefully thought out new web business, or
• Have the courage and commitment to rebuild an existing website that perhaps may not be delivering sufficient returns.

Yes indeed, the recession of 2009, could be your best friend too. Here's why.

Why a Recession Can Offer the Best Time Ever to Start a Pure Web Business, or Commit to Rebuild an Existing Business That Uses the Power of the Web for its Promotional Muscle

Before, you think I may have banged my head just a little too hard, stay with me: the goal of this article is to persuade you through reasoned, rational argument and demonstration, that our current global economic woes can indeed benefit us all - but, I believe, only if we embrace the changes we may feel are being forced upon us, rather than attempt to resist them using only the tried and trusted tools that may have served us well yesterday.

Truly, the winds of change are upon us. Yet like that tall, strong, resilient majestic oak standing exposed to all around it, we too can bend amid these recessionary tempests. And, like a patient Californian sequoia redwood, we too can grow stronger and taller, as a result.

During a recession, many businesses can understandably suffer. Yet for those businesses focused on Internet or technology, or who opt to build a proactive website rather than a passive web brochure, I'm discovering that the opposite can apply.

Consider Some Benefits That a Recession Can Bring

Greater Clarity of Ideas

Those brave folk who opt to start a business, or revamp an existing business during an economic downturn, are often forced to examine and think through their business model or idea more comprehensively than perhaps they would have done when times were good. As a result, business plans can become more refined, focused, lean, solid and credible.

Yet even though every recession is real, I suggest to you that the same desires and demands for goods and services are present. Even the money required to buy and invest is still sloshing around the global wires. In truth, a recession is more about trust - or lack of it - than it is about money. When the tipping point of trust is restored, recovery closely follows and the slow climb of the boom cycle repeats again.

During a recession, smart business owners can quickly get to learn the difference between simply cutting costs and getting value for money. Sure, while some costs are definitely worth slashing, sometimes, we can often achieve a better return on our investment by actually increasing spending (often created by making savings elsewhere) in the right areas. The secret of course is to use better assessment and judgment so that we truly understand where our best value assets come from.

Strength

If we can create or continue to sustain a business during a recession or depression, when the good times come again - then such a business will almost certainly flourish even more than when the economy booms.

Guts

People who create or maintain a web business during a recession may have to learn how to do things differently. Changes are often forced, though sometimes change is embraced. Whatever the cause, business owners who somehow find ways to get through a recession develop a special kind of mettle, guts and level of determination that can help them ride the highs and lows of all and any business seasons more easily.

Problem-Solving

Recent history shows that recessions tend to creep up on economies before most realize that the monster is looming over them. Such times urge, encourage and force business owners to explore new ways to look at old problems. During such times, creativity can flourish. When backs are to the wall, some can become incredibly inventive and resourceful.

Patience and Perseverance

Past economic records show that economies regularly go through contrasting cycles. I guess we shouldn't be surprised: the natural world itself and life in general seems to be cyclic in most everything. We see ebbing and flowing of tides, giving and receiving, highs and lows, peaks and troughs. Even the very essence that sustains us: our own heartbeat, is cyclic in nature.

In economic terms, the down cycles call for an approach that almost always involves some level of continuous commitment. Put simply, getting good results when economies go "belly up" takes time.

Even when economies are thriving, anyone who decides to take the courageous step to build a web business, or reinvent an existing website learns how to become more persistent in most everything they do related to their business - and as a result, perhaps in their private life as well.

If I had to pick the two most important human traits that I believe lead to success in almost any endeavor, whatever the state of the economy, without hesitation, I would choose: persistence and perseverance above all others. With these two "big guns" in your corner, only time can place limits on progress.

Often, people who may arguably enjoy greater advantages than most - perhaps looks, raw talent, or unearned riches - can often go on to develop lives that fail miserably, even when to outsiders, "they seem to have everything". Especially so if such benefits or gifts are not accompanied in equal measure by balancing traits such as humility, attentiveness to work, and lots of patience and persistence.

Constantly, we can read about how in the drama of overcoming obstacles or achieving desired goals, often, talent, or looks, or money are not sufficient to create the breakthroughs we may desire. Rather instead, strength of character and ability to keep going amid apparent failure, provided through patience and persistence can bring us through.

A recession, perhaps more than most life experiences, can help us all develop and flex our patience and persistence "muscles".

Business Founders and Team Members Are More Likely to Be Committed to the Business Goals

For new start-ups especially, economic recessions and depressions can understandably make people nervous to say the least! However, tough economic times can also bring out greater loyalty and commitment from business owners, staff team members, associates and partners.

Competitive Advantage

New business start-ups brought forth during an economic recession are naturally fresh and realistic. While most established firms that choose to fight the various storms a recession can bring, without changing, the participants can feel like they're running fast just to stand still.

A new business start-up however, or an existing business who takes the initiative to create or revamp a website, can manufacture the kind of smart, competitive advantage over rivals, long before their challengers have even realized what is happening. Other contenders, who may prefer to languish doing the same old routines and rituals amid a world that is changing before their eyes, can be likened to Rome burning while the tyrant Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus played music.

Cost Savings

A recession usually means that money is not as easily available than perhaps during more favorable times. That means, start-up business owners are usually forced to limit how much they spend and work to bring in sufficient sales sooner.

Toward the end of the dot com boom years during the 1990s, autopsies of various failed startups revealed that often crazy amounts of venture capital money was spent on lavish office buildings, high priced sport cars and expensive foreign "working holidays" - even before a single sale had ever been made! Within a recession, that kind of madness is unlikely to happen or be maintained. Right from the outset, costs can be evaluated under the prudent lens of "what is value for money".

Doing More With Less

A recession often applies pressure in a variety of ways. We may have to:

• Save on a whole range of costs.
• Find different suppliers.
• Reduce the number of suppliers we have.
• Explore how to get better returns on what we spend.
• Sadly let some staff members go. And so on.

That means, those who remain, almost certainly have to soon adjust to completing more tasks with fewer resources. Such sudden assaults on established routines can in turn, mean making procedural changes or using new tools and methods so that the same goals can be met.

However, after a little period of adjustment, the new changes made, can often help make a business leaner and more efficient. Moreover, with some further fine-tuning adjustments put in place, the entire process of doing business can become easier than ever for the staff who remain. The end result can mean leveraging on a scale that we might never imagined during economic good times.

Different Thinking and Thinking Differently

Recessions cause us all to think more about what we do. As a result, we're more likely to think differently - in ways that can often result in solutions to our problems. One thing is for sure: rarely during a recession, can we prosper simply by doing what we have done previously: change and adjustment are usually essential - and sometimes quickly. Yet sometimes, the best answers come from a mix of measures. For example, we can:

• Discover that sometimes, working harder, running faster, just to meet the current demands, can mask a better, easier, simpler or cheaper solution that may only occur to us when our minds are less anxious. So if we can opt to work in a more relaxed frame of mind for a while - and especially when every fiber in our body seems to say "work harder, work longer, or you'll fail" - our thinking can become clearer, providing a "window of clarity" that can be sufficient to form the conditions that can lead to a breakthrough.
• Resolve to have an under-performing website rebuilt. If we have a site that is not delivering as well as we hoped, making repairs during a recession can offer a good time to address the problem. For if we can prosper on the web during economic upheavals, when the good times roll again, our web business will most likely soar!
• Commit once and for all to find a way to make our website search engine friendly, even if this means starting from scratch, so that in turn, we can focus on the real business of communicating with visitors, subscribers, clients and customers.
• Re-examine the "persuasion layer" within our website and truthfully answer the question: "why would someone buy?". Then edit and improve the site until we're sure the question is answered adequately.
• Question the overall marketing plan, and if required, completely start again to match changing recessionary demands.
• Explore how make a website more interesting, eye-catching and proactive, rather than just provide a passive brochure website.
• Learn how to apply suitable ways to engage more directly with our buyers, customers, clients, associates and partners. And so on.

Fulfilling Opportunities

A recession creates spaces where there were none before the economic relapse. When other companies fail, often the demand for their products is still present. Profitable supply may simply call for a different delivery approach or pricing structure. That means some companies can thrive during a recession, finding more customers for lower cost apparently easily.

Moreover, recessions can themselves create new demands and therefore, open up new markets. For example, consider some of the activities that occur during a recession:

• More people chase fewer jobs.
• Increased levels of stress and anxiety for many.
• Small businesses emerge in greater numbers.
  
• Greater number of homes are repossessed.
• Office leases and office equipment and furniture may be sold at prices that are way below their true value.
• And so forth.

Nevertheless, all of these unfortunate negative occurrences create opportunities! Moreover, often within these opportunistic markets, gaps exist that are either currently not being served well, or may even not be served at all. In short, a recession is an opportunistic goldmine.

Positive Personal Benefits

Sometimes, a forced redundancy or job loss, can provide a person with perhaps initially unwelcome, but ideal conditions that allows them to bring about the birth of a new, true ideal dream job; one that, under more normal circumstances, might never have happened.

If we can decide to face our lives head on, take courage and commit to seeing the glass as half full instead of half empty, occasionally we can discover that not getting what we may have wanted initially, can, just a little later, turn out to be the best thing for us.

Consider How Past Recessions Have Helped Create Some of Today's Big Names

If you thought recessions and depressions were all bad news, think again. Lots of companies were started when times were tough. For example, below is a brief sample of businesses that were started during a recession include:

• CNN.
• Federal Express.
• Hewlett-Packard.
• GE (General Electric).
• Microsoft.
• Wikipedia Foundation Inc.

Don't Worry, Be Happy

So while we may imagine that all about us appear to be losing their heads, why don't you too choose to play a different game and sing a different song and consider starting a low-cost web business, or resolve to fix an ailing website?

There may never be a better time.

Author: Brian Austin MISTC

While you're perhaps thinking about what's possible, relax, take a "chill out break", turn up the sound and enjoy the "Thank You for the Music" video below, courtesy of Abba, Polygram International Video Ltd., and YouTube.com

Additional Related Links

• Mamma Mia! - the Official DVD Website.
• The Official Abba Website.
• All about Abba in Wikipedia.

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