Time

What time is it? If you could save time in a bottle, what’s the first thing you’d want to do?

As a small business owner, you may be thinking – and not totally unreasonably – that given the situation with the economy, it is time to make lemonade. And that if you could save time in a bottle, the first thing you’d want to do is take out the time when the economy was strong and small businesses were thriving, and you were making, hopefully, a truck load of cash.

But the times we live in these days, are posing a tremendous strain on most people’s pockets, no matter what the industry. We don’t even have to turn on the TV or log in to our P.C. to know it anymore. We can sense it in our REM sleep that something is terribly amiss.

What do we do, as small business owners, to, if not turn back time, use the time we have now and the resources we have now to our best advantage, and in such a way that when the tides turn, we will be well situated to capitalize on new opportunities? It’s hard to say. I think this will come down to the individual business owner and what his or her particular needs, strengths and weaknesses are, and his or her vision, mission and goals.

There is no question that it is time to live frugally. Like China,’s Mao Ze Dong advocated, it is time for guerilla warfare, time to live close to the land, and to capture the villages before the cities and really take things in smaller rather than larger chunks. It is time to “stretch our resources,” to saddle up and fight for our very existence not only as business people but as citizens of the world. It is time to reflect to see how we may have contributed to our own personal circumstances on a micro level, and to those of the world on a more macro level. It is time to assess whether we are using best practices, or whether the way we go about our every day – including our personal lives and of course, our business, is the best way to do things.

The one thing that is certain, is that time keeps moving on. It does not wait. It cannot be contained. Not in a bottle, not in anything. The current challenges that we face will either move with time, or remain with us in some capacity. But time will change. Time will surely change. This time that is now, will surely pass.

In the meantime, when life gives you lemons, what do you do? You make lemonade. Whether you are in the auto industry, the film industry, the legal profession, journalism, retail or art – whatever your industry as a small business owner, it is definitely time to cut those lemons and make yourself some lemonade. And may God be with you that there's a bit of sugar to neutralize the sour when you lift that chalice to your lips.