In Washington, the official word is that it will “take time” for the recently passed financial bailout to show up and filter through the U.S. economy.  The problem is as a CEO, company president or business owner, we don’t have time to wait for the government to save us. 

I understand why the government and Congress did what they did and the importance of the intervention to create liquidity in the lending markets.  But nothing has really changed. 

There is still business out there to get.  The question is:  Are you going to get the business or wait for someone to save you while the competition takes the business?

Here in Florida, when a hurricane is coming, the weather report says that we should all “hunker down” and be prepared for the storm.  Right now we are in the middle of a big economic storm.  Some have even likened it to such weather extremes as an “economic tsunami”.   

As business leaders, let’s “hunker down” when it comes to how we run our businesses during these turbulent economic events.  We can get through this by cutting all unnecessary costs, analyzing and improving our sales and marketing departments, coming up with new and creative ideas; and thinking through what we need to do – not sitting by and being a victim to the current economic downturn. 

The strong will survive.  When we come out of this economic turmoil, the businesses that cut costs and made improvements will prosper more than they ever have before.  Make sure you are one of them.