The economy is bad and that is certainly stating the obvious. We’re beginning to see some signs of recovery, which is good but it wasn’t too long ago that we were seeing magazine covers that looked like this:

There were other media outlets chanting predictions like “The end is near,” and “Will this be the next great depression?” Here’s a picture from an Apple Store I was in recently and, I promise, they were not serving soup:

Apple is doing really, really well. So well in fact that this past quarter Apple, that sells premium products, had their best non-holiday quarter in Apple history. So, I think it makes sense to look at some strong companies, especially companies who have either survived or thrived during very tough times. If you go all the way back to the Great Depression you can find some interesting companies that thrived and grew during that time. You don’t need to go very far because it turns out some interesting things happened here in Steamboat.

Steamboat & the Great Depression

When the Great Depression hit around 1929, about 50 percent of Steamboat businesses died. Even the main bank of Steamboat, First National Bank, closed its doors and most Steamboat residents who had all their money in that bank lost everything. These guys lost just about everything as well:

Clarence & Olin Light

These two guys are Clarence and Olin Light and at the beginning of the Great Depression in 1929 they had a very tough decision to make. They could continue business as usual and face an almost certain end or they could try to take advantage of some of the tools of the day, take a risk, do some things a little differently, modify their business and see what would happen. They choose the latter. Clarence & Olin leveraged the tools of the day to be able to market themselves and connect with customers and provide value in a way that had never been provided in this area. In 1929, they took F.M. Light & Sons on the road, bringing their products to the ranches and farmers and people in rural areas. They initially started with their own cars by filling them with products and taking them on the road to ranches and farm houses to show samples & take orders. Business took off and soon they expanded to several trucks to meet the demand.

Tools of the Day

So the point is, rather than sit in their retail shop clinging to outdated business methods, hoping things would work out, they used the tools of the day, trucks and mail, to generate new business. And so they traveled all over northwestern Colorado, Wyoming, and down into Eagle County. F.M. Light & Son not only made it through the Great Depression but they actually grew during the Great Depression. It turns out that between 1929 and 1930 their business increased by 30 percent because of what they were doing and it increased again between 1930 and 1931. By the time 1937 rolled around, and most of the country was out of the Great Depression their floor space was three times bigger than it was before the depression and their store had expanded twice.

You Have a Choice

Today we’re all in a similar position in that we can continue to do business as usual and continue to go down that road or we can begin to look at business in a different way and take advantage of the new tools of the day to connect and communicate with new businesses and new customers, deepen our relationships and grow our businesses.

Sure some of these new tools include social tools like Facebook & Twitter but these are just the latest & loudest tools. There are many others worth exploring; tools that can help manage relationships, projects & assets. Tools that can help you create better email news letters, manage your time and help you be a little more independent from the office. Here’s a graphic of every online service I use to communicate and manage business everyday:

Click to enlarge

Most are free or very low-cost so what are you waiting for?