It's time to take a deep breath

It’s time that we all calm down, take a deep breath, and look around the local area. Every morning, we wake up, turn on the Morning News, and hear the latest doom & gloom. It makes you want to pull the blanket over your head and not go out. I know, I’m in sales, selling to small businesses, and I feel that way every day. But let’s look around us locally, and see how bad things really are.

Step one, the stock market, yes I have a 401K, and I’ve taken a huge hit, but I’m not retiring any time soon, and as fast as the investments went down, they can come back. At this point there is nothing left to do but ride the roller coaster and wait for things to go up.

I don’t have any need to get a loan from any of the largest banks in America, and therefore, the fact that the banks aren’t loaning doesn’t affect me. The government is throwing money at these banks and trying to force them to loan, and they will start again soon. Credit card balances may be the next problem, but easy credit and people living beyond their needs should be brought under control. Many credit cards are based on the prime rate which is the lowest that it has been in years, and this should help people with good credit.

There have been layoffs in areas around the U.S, but here locally we haven’t faced layoffs. The local businesses are nervous, but haven’t pulled the trigger on layoffs. Let’s keep doing business locally and keep these people optimistic and keep them open.

Gasoline prices have dropped to the three dollar level and in areas of Northern California down below $2.89 a gallon. OPEC dropped their production and what happened, prices went down even more. The future looks as though, with the economy slowing down, oil futures are no longer attractive. The slowdown has done a better job than windfall profit taxes to put money back in the public’s pocket, and it should continue to be so for a while.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that we need to stop listening to the Morning News before we start our day, and actually look around our neighborhood and see what’s actually happening. The only thing that will bring America to its knees is if we all stop shopping, we stop taking vacations, we stop buying vehicles etc. I’m not saying we need to spend needlessly, but we can’t curl up and hide either, or things will go downhill locally. We are all adults and we can all look around and act responsibly. We need to temper our fear with reality.

GOOD LUCK

               

Comments

[Evan Carmichael]

Thanks for the suggestions Dave! We launched a Selling to Small Business Blog to give companies strategies to sell to the hard to reach small business community and I was pleased to see your post! If you are interested in being a guest blogger on our blog to discuss selling to small businesses, just email me!

Keep up the great work!

Evan.