Cold Bucket Moment
I remember attending a meeting in the summer of 2008. My financial advisor hosted an afternoon dessert meeting at her husband’s restaurant. She spoke about the markets and what was projected to happen. She recommended that some people may want to move their investments back into cash temporarily or consider transferring high-risk investments to low-risk.
Although this made sense to me at the time, I wasn’t seeing a dip in my investment portfolio yet so I assumed all would be fine. As a newcomer to high-risk investments (three years in and reaping the benefits big time), I didn’t realize that when the crash came, it would wipe out at least 50% of my portfolio within a two-month period. Nor was I aware that it would take two years or more to rebuild or even stabilize my portfolio to where it was before. As a friend of mine used to say, “This is a cold bucket moment.”
While speaking and travelling over the past year, I have spent time with many business owners and managers in towns and cities where the dip in their marketplace hit late. In some cases, it’s actually just starting to take effect now. Many of these companies will be blindsided as those of us were back in October of 2008. The sad reality is they didn’t prepare their parachute even though they witnessed other struggles in other parts of Canada and abroad.
What I find both interesting and not all that surprising is how organizations that have worked with Lift Strategies prior to October 2008 until now are starting to bounce back. Sales are strong. A number of these companies have had record sales for both October and November. In fact, our own company, Lift Strategies, has had its best calendar year to date.
The root of these successes come down to planning, actively marketing during challenging times and being committed to doing whatever it takes to keep the business on task and on track.
How’s your marketing action plan looking for 2010?