Over the Memorial Day weekend I took a trip to Monterey, CA. It had been 15 years since I’d been there although it seemed like just yesterday. Monterey is a great place. The people are friendly. The food is seasonally fresh (visit the farmer’s market, if you have the chance). The Pacific Ocean is always amazingly beautiful to see and is so very different than the Atlantic Ocean (which I reside only a few miles from). This time of year Monterey is rather chilly. Windy. The only people you’ll find in the ocean are surfers and visitors. I didn’t come away from Monterey with any particular new perspective nor did I see anything I hadn’t seen before. Yet was a most enjoyable trip.
But because I am always thinking about business there was that one moment when I got some further perspective about the economy. That moment happened as I was flying in a jet doing approximately 550 miles per hour during a flight time of 7 hours 15 minutes. For most of the trip there wasn’t a lot of cloud cover so I could look out the window of the plane and see all the cities, towns, houses, farmland, highways, rivers… and all the business opportunity that is out there.
Every day the media – cable news, local TV news and newspapers – bombard us with a pessimistic view of the economy. How terrible it is. How people every single day are losing their houses and their businesses. Although this is a true statement, looking out the window of the airplane what I was thinking instead was: Look at all that opportunity!
This country is so vast. Even in a bad economy there is opportunity if you look for it. It means turning your business inside out. Rethinking. Reinventing. Letting your creative juices flow. Being bold. Being open. Assertive. Even aggressive with your business strategy. It’s about clearing your mind so you can see what you need to see. It’s about being in action. It’s about getting your business where it needs to be – and where you want it to be.
Whether your business is local, focused on a particular geographic area or national, think about what people, your potential customers, really need. How are you going to reach them? Identify multiple ways to reach them. If you do, you’ll prosper.
The sky isn’t falling as the media would have you believe with business. Instead, the sky is the limit with endless opportunity out there. Go find it for your business starting today.