Six entrepreneurs sat around a table in Dover, making small talk over coffee and bagels. Then, like poker players upping the ante, they began throwing their problems on the table:
How do you get customers to pay their bills? If an employee quits, should you leave the job vacant until the economy picks up? How much slack should you give marginal workers and hyper-demanding customers?
This wasn’t a casual networking session, but a four-hour monthly meeting of The Alternative Board, a nationwide organization that brings small-business owners together to wrestle with common challenges.
And with an alarming economic slowdown lurking in the background, they were urging one another to stay optimistic and resilient in the face of adversity.
Among the group’s chief worries right now is that rampant, ruinous price-cutting will spread like wildfire during the recession. They urged one another to price their work competitively, and walk away from the pressure to lose money just to land a customer.
Mountain Lakes-based building contractor Gary Goldsmith said he’s willing to discount, “but at times I’ve gotten to the point where I’ve just said, ‘I can’t take a job for free.’â€
If the economy is in for nasty weather, the survivors will be those who refuse to yield to unreasoning fear, said Mark Bograd, a principal of Bograd’s Fine Furniture in Riverdale. “If your competitors get desperate, you have to be consistent with your principles in how you run your business,†he said.
“Otherwise, you will just be joining them.â€
Bograd had just returned from a trade show in North Carolina, where he’d watched positive thinking in action. Full article.