Bad Year

[Steve]

Clients were calling to cancel because they were getting laid off, or were cutting back on services or had an unexpected bill/repair for their house happen. This is fascinating because when you look at the issue and you see it's something that you can't make immediate changes to fix, you gotta wonder, what is the best way to deal with it? This isn't an issue of poor customer service. Or poor service in general. This is a bigger problem of a slowing economy. So when one finds themselves in such a situation, what do you do? I would venture to guess more small business owners than not are dealing with this exact same issue. Should different services be offered? She different upsells be added? Or should one just try and hunker down to make it through the slow economy and be ready when the economy picks up to jump on opportunities that present themselves?

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[TiedemanLLC]

Lawn care business tips

Originally Posted by Steve This is fascinating because when you look at the issue and you see it's something that you can't make immediate changes to fix, you gotta wonder, what is the best way to deal with it? This isn't an issue of poor customer service. Or poor service in general. This is a bigger problem of a slowing economy. So when one finds themselves in such a situation, what do you do? I would venture to guess more small business owners than not are dealing with this exact same issue. Should different services be offered? She different upsells be added? Or should one just try and hunker down to make it through the slow economy and be ready when the economy picks up to jump on opportunities that present themselves? We dealt with it by trying to work with some of the clients on a better payment plan. Some jumped aboard, while still others couldn't afford it. The problem with our industry is we are a luxury. We are the one of the last bills to be paid each month, and we are the first things to be cut when money is tight. We also did a combo of things by increasing our marketing efforts to try to reach out to newer clients, since we were already maxing out the upsells to the rest of our clients, but at the same token we cut a lot of our expenses. We saw that the year was not going to go well, so we started to cut. We were able to cut our monthly expenses by 14%. Going into 2012 we are trying to have high hopes, but as of right now, things are not looking good. We have been reaching out trying to land new clients, reviewing our monthly expenses again, and at the same time paying off the business debt as much as possible just in case we run into another horrible year.

[Steve]

Do you think one can look at which way the stock market is going to get an idea which way the economy will go in the upcoming year or is it more of we just don't know until spring comes?

[SECTLANDSCAPING]

Originally Posted by Steve

Do you think one can look at which way the stock market is going to get an idea which way the economy will go in the upcoming year or is it more of we just don't know until spring comes?

No, the economy and the stock market have nothing to do with each other.

The stock market is propped up to make rich people richer which causes a inflation effect and the cost of living to rise. In turn means everyone has less spending money. For example every time the price oil rises it benefits the few that own stock. The rest of us have price increases on everything because fuel brings goods to stores, people to work, and heat their homes.

I would look at unemployment levels and new home sales as a indicator that things will be better.