Lousy Economy: Fantastic

Unless you've been living on another planet for a while, you know that we're facing an economy some are predicting could become the Great Depression II. I'm only an amateur economist, so I'm certainly in no position to say it's going to get that bad, but I would concur that things are pretty darn lousy right now. But depending on your outlook in this time of national crisis, things can also be pretty darn good. My company know this firsthand. Allow me to elaborate.

Admittedly, business became dangerously slow the last couple months or so of 2008. Business is still that way. We have what seem to be a ton of new leads to explore in this new year, but they have yet to convert into actual sales, complete with cold hard cash and celebratory glasses of Scotch on the rocks in hand.

Here's where what arguably is the fantastic part of this turmoil: It caused us to put our thinking caps on in a way that had, to this point, been unprecedented in our company's history (just over a year, hehe). Us three partners have been constantly on the phone and e-mail with each other the last couple of weeks or so. I, in particular, have been spending near all-nighters coming up with solutions to our sales crisis. In short, this predicament has caused us to live up to the very meaning of our corporate name, Intrepid (bold, brave, venturing into uncharted territory, etc.) and Innovations (new ideas and ways of doing things, experimenting, etc.).

The result of all this brainstorming is that we're unveiling a new Specials page on our Web site that bundles together some of our best offerings in creative, convenient, streamlined, and most importantly, affordable, packages. We also just began accepting credit card orders, another major move (we were in the Dark Ages still, accepting only cash or check).

And the truth of the matter is, if the economy was roaring right now, with times being good for everyone, we most likely wouldn't have pushed as hard as we have in the last couple of weeks or so to come up with such new ideas and then following through on them with massive action. We wouldn't have had to. But because times are generally so lousy right now, we were forced out of our comfort zone and forced to sit down and really crunch our minds. It's the ultimate exercise in personal and professional growth. And when the economy does come back roaring, we know that we're going to come out on top.

So if you're a business owner who, like us, is going through a rough time with sales, take advantage of this time to learn and grow from it. We did, and we can't be happier.