BrainTrust Editorial

In a downturn, it’s tempting to bunker down. . . to cut spending to a minimum, to eliminate all non-critical expenses, to reduce the company to the minimum required to serve current customers, and to wait for the storm to be over.

This strategy results in a death spiral. Existing customers will disappear due to natural turnover, due to their own bunkering down, and some will go out of business due to the recession. Your company will contract further to serve the new, smaller group of customers. It becomes a race to the death — which will come faster, bankruptcy, or an end to the recession?

Fortunately, not all companies react this way — otherwise, the economy would come a very sudden and cataclysmic halt. In every economic crisis there are smart companies that know opportunities abound and seize them, creating opportunities for their suppliers and service providers.

You cannot conserve your way to success. But you can innovate to it. . . innovate your products, innovate your services, and innovate your marketing.

At BrainTrust Editorial, we practice what we preach. It may seem counter-intuitive to start a company in the middle of one of the worst recessions in decades. It may seem even more foolish to start a company that focuses on marketing - the very area in which companies are mostly like to cut back their spending.

But we believe that there are smart companies out there. Companies that are coming up with innovative new products and services. Companies who are making their customers very happy. Companies who want to let the world know of their successes.

Let the companies bunkering down feel the brunt of the downturn. You don’t have to be one of them.