Doom And Gloom Is A Mindset, Not Reality
2nd September 2009
For more than 12 months the doomsayers have been in their element. There’s hardly a positive word spinning around in all the doom and gloom we’re reading.
Perhaps it’s true that most people love hearing bad news. It sells more papers and keeps more viewers glued to their TV’s and radios than almost any other topic outside the Olympics and a royal wedding.
The business world has crashed into the side of a mountain and set loose an avalanche of unprecedented mayhem.
This is déjà vu for me.
My partner, Victor Pleshev, and I lived through the 1989 ‘recession we had to have’.
Yes, our architectural business finally crashed in 1992, when all our property developer clients went bankrupt, owing us hundreds of thousands of dollars we couldn’t collect. So they took us with them.
We had to sell our home and valuable possessions to avoid bankruptcy. Everything we worked for, for almost 20 years, went up in flames.
And we had to quickly start again somewhere else, doing something different.
So I speak from experience.
Doom and gloom is in the mind of the beholder. I can assure you that more doom and gloom exists in a person’s mind than exists in reality. Perception is everything and if you perceive doom and gloom around you, that’s the world you live in.
When we lost everything in 1992, we escaped Sydney to live in the bush, where the cost of living more closely fit our economic circumstances.
And I’ve learned even more about coping with adversity in the 16 years we’ve been here.
We’ve had unrelenting drought for 13 of those years.
I’ve seen our surrounding small towns lose all but one bank, the railway and coach services. And every business has suffered with that loss.
Agriculture and mining have waxed and waned many times during these 16 years.
But there’s been one constant.
The tenacious belief by ‘the locals’ to keep pressing forward.
Some bush philosophy.
Many locals around here were shaking their heads at the panic selling of the stock market. Remember that?
Why, they wonder, do people sell their investments when they’re on the way down?
What does a farmer do when cattle or sheep prices are going down?
They protect their investment by holding onto their livestock for as long as possible, so when prices go up, they’re well placed to take advantage of a much better opportunity.
During the downward slide, they don’t let their livestock die in the paddocks. They water and feed their animals to keep them as healthy as possible for when the good times return.
Because the good times always return.
Two years ago, when we had 3 years in a row of very little rain, one of my neighbours, who has a 4,000 hectare property with many dams, had all of his dams completely dry up.
He has a properly stocked property. Neither too many, nor too little sheep, for the prevailing conditions.
He’s in his 60′s, and every day, he drove to the nearest river and for 6 hours each day, he legally pumped water from the river into his truck and hand watered his sheep. This took several trips of driving back and forth.
His wife, also in her 60′s, hand fed the sheep while he was collecting water. They were exhausted at the end of every day, but they never thought about packing it in. Even when the cost of feed increased daily.
Why?
Because they have a 40 year investment in their sheep. And they won’t let anything dire happen to them unless there’s no other alternative. And also, because they love their sheep.
Last year, when rain was adequate and wool prices were good, he was smiling and thought the effort to keep going was worth every minute.
Perhaps we should think of our business in the same way.
Marketing, collecting fees owed to you, pulling out all stops to keep your business going if it’s at all possible, should be on your agenda. These activities are equivalent to the watering and feeding of my neighbour’s livestock.
And equally as hard to do when times are tough, but you’ll be surprised at how your business will be so much stronger when the good times return.
Because the good times always return.
Those of you who love your business will keep pressing forward, if you can. And you will have a much better business than you possibly imagined.
W Clement Stone, the 20th century billionaire businessman who wrote many books, including The Success System That Never Fails and Success Through A Positive Mental Attitude, says “every adversity has the seed of an equivalent or greater benefit”.
And it’s true.
Losing our business in 1992 was hard, but we so loved owning our own business, we started a much different one, in the depths of the worst recession on record since the depression.
‘Doom and gloom’ wasn’t part of our vocabulary or mindset.
And that seed of adversity has blossomed into a worldwide business that gives us much pleasure.
I’m watering and feeding my business every day, without fail. And I hope you are of the same mindset.
Perhaps, like me, you look forward to the end of the doom and gloom gabfest.
According to the press, it’s almost here. Oh no. It’s not. There’s more on the horizon. It’s so hard to let go of bad news, isn’t it?
This Guerrilla From The Bush is heartily sick of it and will do as she always does. Ignore it and keep moving forward.
Take care,
Carol
